XI
Next morning her guests came down to breakfast with white faces. They shot doubtful glances at Lydia when she blandly wished them a happy Christmas. There were parcels put ready for them beside all their plates, and Lydia observed with sarcasm their reviving spirits as they opened them in optimistic expectancy, and their consternation as they discovered the contents: a big, pink turned-up nose for Bertie, a blue wig for Bertie’s wife, a pair of ears for Fred, and a black moustache for Emily. Led by Bertie, they tried at first to disguise their vexation under good-humour:
“Ha! ha! very funny, my dear,” said Bertie, putting on the nose and poking it facetiously into his wife’s face.
“But you must all put them on,” said Miss Protheroe, without a smile.
They looked at her: she was perfectly serious and even compelling. They began to be a little afraid, though they were even more afraid of showing it. They tried to expostulate, still good-humouredly, but, “If you don’t like my presents, you can’t eat my breakfast,” said Miss Protheroe.
They had to comply. Lydia presided gravely, while the four sat round the table, eating kippers, tricked out in their respective presents. Emily, whose black moustache worked up and down as she ate, was controlled only by the beseeching gaze of Bertie’s eyes over the top of the enormous nose; Bertie’s wife shed silent tears which fell into her plate.
“Shall you expect us, my dear,” Bertie said towards the end of that grim meal, feeling that it was becoming urgent to break the silence, “to go to church like this?”
“Church? you aren’t going to church,” replied Lydia.
There was a chorus: Not go to church on Christmas-day?
“No,” said Lydia; “but,” she added suddenly, “you can give me your offertory, and I’ll see that it reaches the proper quarter. Charity at Christmas time! Turn out your pockets.”
“Look here, Alice,” said Bertie, standing up, “this is going beyond a joke. Be very careful, or we shall be obliged to leave your house.”
“You can’t,” said Miss Protheroe. “The doors are locked, the shutters are locked and barred, and you stay here for as long as I choose to keep you. You are my guests—see? And I’ve waited for you, for forty years. I shan’t let you go now.”
They heard her words; they stared at one another with a sudden horror leaping in their eyes.