Cousin Cinderella

by Sara Jeanette Duncan

  I don’t know that these reflections would have occurred to me so vividly but for the fact of Evelyn’s visit to Pavis Court being postponed, at rather short notice and for no very convincing reason, from Christmas to the middle of January. Somehow we had all been looking forward to that Christmas visit as marking the limit of our suspense. Things that hadn’t happened, under one excuse or another, up to now, were surely bound to happen then, when the intimate occasion—there was to be nobody else—would combine with the happy festival to abolish all excuse. Why one thought of it in terms of excuse it is impossible, so long afterward, to say; but one did. One even considered different excuses, and speculated about other ladies.

  Christmas is a time in England when everybody supposes you will be going to more intimate friends. For Graham and me that resulted quite satisfactorily, as we certainly were our most intimate friends and had only to stay at home; but Evelyn deplored it. The withdrawal of Pavis Court, as it were, for further consideration, deprived her, she declared, of a festive board of any shape or kind. Her friends at Dorchester House were going to Paris for the week; and she had joined some people from New York at their hotel, who were also deeply engaged upon Christmas Day. The London Daily was full of the names of her town acquaintances, and particulars of their flight to their various country-houses; she declared herself alone in London. It seemed the natural and the only thing that she should come to us; and she did.

  I shall always remember her appearance in the frame of the door as Towse ushered her in; it was one of those things that bring an impression one doesn’t lose. She was all slender and lovely in one of her unapproachable dresses, with the grace and the complexion of a flower, if you could imagine a flower in pearls that had nothing to do with dew, with its hair done in a manner before which any zephyr would sink away abashed. She had very little connection, in her beautiful effect, with the flat or with the occasion; she had plainly had the generous idea of not dressing down to us, of taking just as much pains with her appearance as if it were to be described in the next morning’s London Daily; and after the first gasp we did of course appreciate it. But it made her look a little like some strayed reveller, some star that had wandered from a galaxy that had gone on without it, and dropped through space to light us, in this temporary, accidental way. Detachment, that was the note she struck, for an instant only, in the door; it was soon lost in talk. The moment we opened our lips we all became trans-Atlantic together.

  “What a darling turkey!” she exclaimed, as we sat down. “And—am I in Kensington or in Connecticut? Cranberries! Oh, I have done nothing to deserve this—it’s too lovely!”

  “I did them myself,” I told her. “When I showed them to Towse she said she never ’ad. That always means that if it’s just the same to me she’d rather not; and when that happens I just take hold myself. You don’t know what you miss, Evelyn, not having a flat, and a kitchen, and a Towse.”

  “Well,” said Evelyn, “I don’t see but that I shall have to go on missing it, unless it happens to be dished up for me, like this. I certainly shouldn’t find time, in London, to stew anything, either now or at any future period. And I don’t know, honey, how you do.”

  “Oh, I find time!” I told her; “but what will you do if the simple life ever becomes really fashionable, Evie?”

  Evelyn sighed, quite a gusty, perceptible sigh. “I expect I shall be back in Roosevelt Towers, Juniper Avenue, Troy, New Jersey, long before that,” she said. That was her full address when she was at home.

  “Oh, I hope not!” I ejaculated, without thinking. “I mean—you do like it over here, don’t you? Why not make it per—why not stay on?”

  “I can’t import my family,” said Evelyn, with a half-tone of gloom, “and you may thank your stars that neither of you know what it is to be an only child. I don’t complain of James P. Dicey. He’s a model father in his way. But he’s very much in charge; and from the beginning he said I could only have six months. Then he’s coming over to fetch me.”

  “Oh, dear!” I sympathised. “And the six months is ”

  “Up in February,” said Evelyn.

  “We go back then, too,” said Graham.

  “Parliament opens,” I explained.

  “Then you are?” enquired Evelyn.

  “Are what?” he asked.

  “Going back.”

  “Why, yes,” said Graham. “What else, Miss Dicey, did you suppose?”

  “Oh, I don’t know!” she replied.

  “You thought, perhaps, he might have been tempted, too?” I suggested unguardedly.

  “Well, compared with this, you won’t deny that you’re going back to rather a one-horse show,” Evelyn challenged him, with a disarming smile.

  “It’s a one-horse show that is going some day to pull the Empire!” Graham retorted good-naturedly. “Let me give you a little more of the dressing.”

  “Yes, I will,” said Evelyn, and gave him her plate. “Now, will you tell me whether in any part of the United States of America you ever heard that called ‘insertion’? No; nor I. Yet a man apologised to me the other day for saying ‘stuffing.’ ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘“Insertion,” I should say.’ ‘Why should you say “insertion”?’ I said. ‘I think it’s rather silly;’ and then he produced the usual merry explanation. ‘Chestnuts!’ I said, and turned the conversation. I’m dead sick of the American myths they keep over here to take the place of wit and humour.”

  “I know,” I sympathised. “Somebody was making me a cup of tea the other day, and asked me archly if I’d have it with all the trimmings. For a minute I didn’t know what she meant. But never mind, Evie. Let them laugh at us as much as they can. We can laugh at them a great deal more, because we’re made that way, and they aren’t, are they?” I used “we” continentally.

  “They’re too benevolent to be very humorous,” Graham remarked.

  “Oh, benevolent! I hope you gave a thousand pounds to the West Ham Christmas Dinner Fund?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Graham.

  “Well, I’m surprised! Not willing to part with a sum like that, which you could perfectly spare, in order to provide ten thousand indigent families with one square meal! And when the dear Queen has promised to supply all the oranges! That in itself ought to have been enough—the idea of the Queen coming in that way with the dessert. I don’t understand it. You’re no true Briton, Mr. Trent—you’re a Canadian and a foreigner! The true Briton sees to that one square meal on Christmas Day, and gets West Ham off his conscience. I don’t know whether it always lasts till next Christmas Day; but he doesn’t think about it again till then.”

  “Oh, no!” laughed Graham. “He’s always thinking about it. But it’s poor relief run sentimentally mad—or it seems so to us. It’s all very well, though, for us to gibe—we can’t know the conditions; and we can’t feel the claims.”

  But Evelyn did not want to be taken seriously.

  “And you, Marykin?” she said. “Where do you come in on that scheme of the London Herald’s to provide every poor child in the kingdom with a Christmas stocking this morning? I thought I’d like to do the Santa Claus act to a few of them myself; but just as I’d brought myself round to it I saw in the paper a scare-head ‘For Heaven’s sake, Stop! Desist!’ or words to that effect, and the stream of my benevolence dried up before I’d got it going.”

  “I know!” Graham laughed. “Not enough kids for the presents, or not enough vans in the Post Office, or some such difficulty. They’re a warmhearted people.”

  “The State will be invited to do it next year,” Evelyn told us. “Mark my words. Every wage-earner who can prove that he has never been liable to income or any other tax will be entitled to a turkey at the country’s expense. You’ll see!”

  “It would be quite in their general line of procedure,” said Graham.

  “But what I most love,” Eveyln went on, “is the attitude of the beneficees. They know perfectly how valuable they are as an outlet for compassio
n. I passed a slouch with a red nose the other day in a side street; and as I came near he smiled kindly, and said: ‘Lady, would you like to be a friend to a poor man?’ It was a handsome offer, and he plainly thought I’d jump at it. I gave him the icy brow, of course. ‘I would not,’ I said. ‘Thank you, lady, thank you,’ he replied sarcastically, and the episode closed.”

  “That’s a little like Towse!” I exclaimed, “and the chrysanthemums. I bought some in pots to brighten up the kitchen for her, and Graham happened to be out there and made some remark about them. What was it she said, Graham?”

  “‘They ain’t a great deal in my way, and there, if it pleases Miss Mary!’ They’re very good and patient, that kind, over here, I notice. They let you do unto others as you wouldn’t be at all willing to have them do unto you. It’s rather touching, I think; but, phew! It’s a choking atmosphere.”

  “Well, Christmas is an obsession in this country,” said Evelyn; “and the imposition of it makes one feel real ugly. I went to see a friend the other day who isn’t very well off, and while I was there the parlour-maid came in three times to say different ‘gentlemen’ were waiting to know if she didn’t wish to give them a Christmas-box. The last was the municipal street-sweeper. And these blessed British encourage it. I saw some ‘User of Suburban Trains’ writing to the paper the other day to point out that while the porters and ticket collectors were always ‘remembered,’ nobody up to date had thought of the engine-drivers! He hoped his letter would put the engine-drivers into the heart of the travelling public! Is it any wonder they all ‘expect’?—every creature that does a hand’s turn in any capacity, public or private? If they can’t do anything else,” Evelyn added disgustedly, “they stand outside your door and sing—out of tune.”

  It seemed to me that Evelyn was not herself particularly in tune; she wasn’t usually so critical of the country.

  “It’s a pity, isn’t it, that they’ve lost their Dickens?” Graham observed. “What would he have done with the type that is coming out of all this systematised charity? What wouldn’t he have done with it? They ought to keep a Dickens always by them.”

  “It’s a pity we’ve lost our Dickens,” I said, with a slight emphasis. I never liked Graham to drop into that objective way of regarding Great Britain, especially with Evelyn.

  “How nice of you,” said she, “to mention Dickens! After all, here we are spending Christmas in Dickens’s London; and that’s all right, isn’t it? I mean it’s worth doing, anyhow. It’s a Dickensy Christmas, too; there’s snow on the roofs—at least there was this morning. Only I’m sure you ought to have had roast goose, Mary; and haven’t I some recollection of punch?”

  “Marley’s ghost didn’t mention what Marley died of,” said Graham; “but it may very well have been roast goose. I vote we drink to absent friends, and then ‘Long life to Marley’s ghost.’”

  “You can’t propose two toasts at once,” said Evelyn.

  “Absent friends is quite enough,” I said.

  “And Marley’s ghost is already immortal,” Graham acknowledged; so we drank to people who weren’t ghosts.

  “I wonder what they’re doing in Minnebiac,” I said. “Do you suppose there’s sleighing?”

  “If that New York blizzard of Sunday crawled up there probably is,” said Graham.

  “This was my last year’s present,” said Evelyn, touching her necklace. “Father went to New York and picked them out himself, at Tiffany’s. This year he sent me a check. It isn’t so amusing, as they say over here.”

  “I wish we knew,” said Graham, “whether that case got through all right from Montreal.”

  “I wrote and said I’d bring my season’s greetings with me,” said Evelyn; “crossing so soon it didn’t seem worth while to send.”

  “What I like,” I said, “is a hard frost after a thaw. The woods look lovely then. Did you ever see our woods in the winter, Evelyn?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any woods in the winter,” said Evelyn. “I’ve always lived in a pretty good-sized city at that time of year.”

  “There’s nothing so perfect,” I said—“especially by moonlight. Graham, do you remember walking back home from Minnebiac last Christmas Eve, and losing one of my skates?”

  Graham said he did.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s the first time father and mother ”

  “So it is, Sis,” he interrupted; “but never mind—half Minnebiac will have dropped in before evening to console them.”

  “Perhaps so,” I retorted; “but they won’t succeed. And mother wrote me last week that she didn’t seem to have the heart for a proper Christmas dinner, and she and father were going to take the opportunity of sitting down to a simple oyster stew.”

  “And you enjoying champagne and holly,” said Evelyn. “I know what you mean. I wish I could imagine my parents indulging in a little self-denial like that, though. It would be very good for them. They do Fletcherise; but that’s all I can say for them.”

  We were having our coffee in the drawing-room, Graham with his privileged cigarette. Outside an omnibus rolled through the void, and the end of a peal came from St. Mary Abbott’s. It was raining, and London, from the window where I went to look out, seemed quiet and dark and depressed, in spite of all the lights in all the houses. It was Christmas out there, but it wasn’t our Christmas. We were a little isolated group, high in our flat among the roofs and chimneys, that must turn upon itself for cheer. The occasion proved us aliens; we didn’t melt into it. In Rome, especially at times of festival, you can do everything but be a Roman. Evelyn, perhaps, was going to be a Roman. I wondered if she would succeed. I thought it would be a good deal to attempt, and I worked out compensations for not being invited to try.

  “Marykin,” said Evelyn, “you are creating a draught. I can see it.”

  I pulled down the blind.

  “I’m sorry,” I said; “I was only looking at London out there, and thinking how little any of us can really have to do with it.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  SO long as we were in town it seemed to us that we might spend a lifetime there and not be able to say at the end of it that we had had enough of London. Graham used to declare it was the only place in the world that reproached him with the fact that he had to die, implying, I suppose, that he would die unsatisfied. But when at last we left it for Crossshire we seemed to have exactly the same greedy feeling towards the country, except, as Graham said, that its tranquillity rather invited one to die.

  London stands for London, but the country stands for England; that is what one feels. Or perhaps one sacrifices to London with the head, and to the country with the heart. There is no comedy in the country, but there are primroses in February. And one seems to taste and savour all English history there. Graham says in the form of a salad, but he had just the same feeling. England has two chapters, London and the country; we had realised London, and now we were going to realise the country. What is there about realising things—old, often told, believed-in things—that stirs such a deep content? Is it the simple happiness, I wonder, of being so clever as to find it all out? Whatever it is, there it was for us, in a perfectly delightful form, when the carriage met us at Little Gorse station, with the dog-cart for the luggage and the footman touching his hat, and assuming with beautiful self-effacement that we were for Knowes, all as it had been done in novels ever since we could read them. And not another soul to drive away but ourselves. That, I think, impressed us as much as anything. The 4.30 train had run into Little Gorse that afternoon for our sole convenience; we could not help reflecting what a good thing it was we had come! I noticed a public-house and a hay-rick and a duckpond, and a tousled little boy in a cap, with very red cheeks, that watched us stolidly out of sight—just the kind of little red-cheeked, tousled boy that we had been led to expect—and the elbow of a lane which apparently concealed some thatched cottages, and that was all, yet I seem to possess quite a complete impression of Little Gorse. The public-hous
e was somebody’s Arms and it had a hanging sign with a weather-beaten picture; I asked Graham if he noticed. And the hay-rick was velvet brown under the rain, and as round as the tops of the trees that were everywhere stretched on the horizon; and we presently met a farmer in his gig, who touched his hat to us though he had never seen us before in his life. Broad and apple-cheeked he was, too, and looked as if he throve. It all added to my delight; but I could see that Graham didn’t much like the farmer’s salute. He lifted his hat quite ceremoniously in return, as much as to say “I’ll show you that I do not feel entitled, as between man and man, to that kind of thing,” entirely forgetting, poor dear, democratic Graham, that he was in Lord Lippington’s carriage.