CHAPTER VIII.
A FALL IN THE KITCHEN.
ucy felt wonderfully cheered and strengthened as Christmas approached. She was working hard and successfully. She had completed her sketches and had received payment for them, and she meant to give herself a little holiday from Christmas Eve until after the New Year, so that she might go fresh and bright to take her class at the Institute, which would re-open on January 3rd.
“Giving herself holiday” only signified that Lucy hoped to enjoy a week of her old life as Hugh’s mother and as general housewife. Like many who have special gifts, Lucy really enjoyed house-work and needlework. She intended in this interval to so overhaul book-cases, china cupboard and linen closet, that she might afterwards apply herself to her “professional” work with the contented assurance that her household would run on for awhile without other care than the worthy Mrs. Morison seemed able and willing to give.
Lucy felt that she had indeed found a treasure! She had not yet despatched any letter to Charlie, as the Slains Castle would not touch at its first port for fully three months, and it was not yet quite time for the mail which would take a letter there to await his arrival. But though the letter was not despatched, it was begun. It had been begun the day after she got Charlie’s farewell telegram, and a few lines had been added every night.
Now the letter would soon have to be despatched, and as Lucy sat down to her desk on Christmas Eve, she felt that she could safely tell the whole story of Pollie’s departure, and of the blessing which filled her vacant place. Mrs. Morison had been in the kitchen nearly two months, and every day she gave greater satisfaction. She had thrown herself with great zest into the idea of the Christmas party, and Lucy began to think that under this cook’s skilled fingers her festive dishes would probably achieve perfections at which she and poor Pollie had never aimed. As she sat writing to Charlie concerning the domestic good fortune which had befallen her, she felt her heart grow very soft towards this middle-aged woman who had once had a home of her own, but who was now so contentedly and worthily serving others. What life of her own had she? She had paid no visit since she had entered Lucy’s service; she had had no visitor. Yes, Lucy remembered she had had one—a middle-aged woman, who had called on her when she had been in her situation for a month. She had volunteered to say that this person was the wife of her cousin, the plumber at Willesden. Lucy had asked whether she had offered her a cup of tea. No, Mrs. Morison said; her cousin would not expect that; and Lucy had rejoined that she hoped she would show this little hospitality on future occasions. Lucy remembered now that Mrs. Morison had not seemed brightened by this visit, nay, that for a day or two afterwards she had even seemed a little depressed. It occurred to Lucy that perhaps this cousin had come possibly seeking a little loan, or perhaps pressing for the repayment of some trifling debt. Lucy knew that one or two of Pollie’s relatives had not been inclined to spare her hard earnings, and that Charlie and she had intervened to protect the girl from the weak soft-heartedness which can be so easily wrought upon by the loafing or the greedy.
What Christmas in any real sense would there be for this woman in the kitchen, whose presence there yet made a social Christmas possible for the rest of the household? If she had any old friends they must be in the North, beyond the reach of anything but the struggling, slow letters of the uneducated. Lucy wondered whether there was anybody to whom Mrs. Morison would like to send some “gift from London in kind remembrance.” She had taken quite a pathetic interest in certain trifling gifts which Lucy had despatched that afternoon.
“Eh, it’s bonnie!” she had said, adding with a little sigh, “It’s a gran’ thing to gie pleasure to folk.”
Lucy had got a nice cambric handkerchief with an “M” in the corner, tied up with a piece of red ribbon, which was to be Mrs. Morison’s own Christmas-box. It was all that it was reasonable to give to a servant who had been only two months in the house, to say nothing of the fact that Lucy was anxious to spend little this year, and had sent no Christmas gift save what was taken out of her own stores or of her own manufacture.
But Lucy wondered whether she could not do something more.
A bright idea seized her. Mrs. Morison’s next month’s wage would not fall due till just after the New Year. Why shouldn’t Lucy advance it to her now? That would not impoverish Lucy, who had the money in her purse, and yet it might be a real neighbourly kindness.
She laid down her pen, sprang up and hurried to the kitchen, which was pervaded by festive smells of spice and stuffing herbs.
“Mrs. Morison,” she said, “as your month’s wages are due just after the New Year, I should like to advance them to you now. Most of us spend a little extra at this season, and as you haven’t been earning money for some time, you may not have much cash ready at hand. For one does not care to disturb one’s little investments to buy Christmas cards or comforters.”
She laid on the table a sovereign and a little silver.
“Oh, ma’am,” cried Mrs. Morison, “you’re far ow’re kind! You shouldn’t ha’ thought o’ sic a thing. ’Deed, there is a thing or two one would like to do, though there’s no many carin’ for me now. An’ you gave me my last month’s money down on the vera day, an’ it came in handy when my cousin’s wife called. I was glad to have a bit to help her with, poor body, for they’d been kind to me, and they’ve got a cripple child, and some of their customers are slow in paying bills. There’s a mighty differ between people, as I’ve often heard my poor husband say.”
Lucy went back to her letter as light-hearted and elate as we always feel after doing a trifling kindness. She confided it all to her letter to Charlie—told him why she had interrupted her writing, and how very pleased Mrs. Morison had been, and how nicely she always spoke about “the master.” She added that she should finish her letter on the evening of Christmas Day after the visitors had gone, when she could tell him how everything had passed off. “So it will seem almost as if we had had Christmas together after all.” She had just written this when Mrs. Morison came into the parlour, saying,
“Please, ma’am, you won’t mind if I go out for a little? I sha’n’t be gone more than half-an-hour. It won’t ill-convenience you?”
“Certainly not,” Lucy answered cordially. “She is off to buy something,” she thought to herself, and added aloud, “I’m afraid you are rather late for most of the shops.”
“Some of them keep open late on Christmas Eve,” said Mrs. Morison; “not the shops you’ll know, m’m, but quiet little places where working people go.”
Mrs. Morison came back in about a quarter of an hour. She had a parcel under her shawl, and in her hand was a little bright-coloured ball.
“If you please, m’m,” she said, “I’ll make bold to drop that into the stocking that I see you’ve hung outside Master Hugh’s door. And I’m sure I’m sending my good Christmas wishes to the master, if the winds will carry them. And please, ma’am, if you’ll do me a favour, you won’t trouble yourself a bit about kitchen things to-morrow, but just trust to me. All is ready now as far as it can be till it’s fairly put on the fire.”
Lucy gratefully promised full confidence. She had fixed her dinner-hour carefully—two hours earlier than she had ever had Christmas dinner. It was to come off at four o’clock, because it would not be nice for dear old Miss Latimer to have to return home late, now there was no Charlie to escort her. It would not have been kind to fix it sooner than four, since Wilfrid Somerset so much disliked being abroad before dusk.
Next morning, after the Christmas cards had been admired and arranged gaily on the mantelshelf—after the Christmas stocking had been emptied of all its contents and Hugh had made a right guess as to the giver of the pretty ball—Lucy and Hugh went to morning service. Of course, the familiar hymns, even the fresh smell of the “holly, bay and mistletoe” of which the church was full, all had a pathos for her, as indeed they do for everybody except such as little Hugh, to whose short experience it seems that all Christmas Days will be as this one or even more abundant. Yet Lucy reflected that, looking forward, she could never have foreseen herself so full of cheer and patience and hope.
Kneeling in her pew, thinking of all the happy festivals of her married life, her mind went back to those earlier days when she and Florence had looked over one book while they warbled—
“Hark, the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.”
Then—as always happens with all healthy, right-minded people, when their nerves are emerging, quiet, after a storm, and their hearts are full of thankfulness for blessings already realised, and for hopes brightening before them—Lucy began to wonder whether she had not been a little severe and unjust to Florence—whether she might not have blamed her for jars due rather to Lucy’s own morbidly irritable condition. She was glad she was to spend Christmas Day in her own house—glad that Miss Latimer and Mr. Somerset and the country boy were to be her guests—but possibly it did seem hard to Florence that she had been set aside. That last speech of hers about being now free to invite other guests might perhaps have been wrung from her by a jar inflicted by Lucy herself. Lucy felt that she would be the happier at her own little festival, if she could feel quite sure that all was right between Florence and herself, and that she had made due amends for aught she had done amiss.
She and Hugh were to have a slight lunch when they returned from church. She resolved that they would hurry over this, and then go to the Brands’ house, just to wish them “A Merry Christmas!” They could be back in the little house with the verandah before Miss Latimer and Mr. Somerset could arrive.
They had to knock twice before Mrs. Morison let them in.
“She’s so busy with her cooking, ma,” Hugh explained sagaciously. And indeed when she did come, her face was very red, and she was so pre-occupied that, as Hugh lingered a moment to knock snow from his boot, she actually hurried back to her kitchen and left them to close the door themselves.
“Don’t roast yourself as well as the chickens, Mrs. Morison!” Lucy called after her playfully.
Their nice little cold meal was awaiting them on a side table in the dining-room, the dining-table itself being already occupied by the best napery, crystal and cutlery, set out by Lucy before she went to church.
Hugh was all eagerness to see his little cousins and their Christmas cards and gifts—they were sure to have so many, and such beauties!
After all, the call, though satisfactory in one sense, proved less so in another. It convinced Lucy that her sister had not been hurt or offended; it also convinced her that the whole matter had been of such slight interest to Florence that she had forgotten all about it!
Jem Brand did not seem even to know that Lucy had been invited to be his guest! Said he—
“You ought to have been invited, and anyhow, wouldn’t you stay on now? There are a good many people coming, but there would be room for you, never fear.”
Even when he heard she was to have guests of her own, he actually suggested that he should send round a cab and bring them all over!
It seemed to Lucy that Florence spoke rather sharply to Jem, saying significantly, that he had better not go into the dining-room again till dinner was served. She supposed Florence was tired and cumbered. Florence had sent out a hundred and fifty Christmas cards—“Private cards, of course!”—one conventional salutation alike to oldest friend and newest acquaintance, to the wise and to the simple, the merry and the sad. And Florence had received already two hundred cards, and nearly one hundred were from people whom she had overlooked, and whom she would have to “remember” at New Year. Also, the cutler had not sent home her new fruit knives with the agate handles, and she would have to use her old ones. It was enough to provoke a saint!
The two little Brand girls were whining and fuming.
“Muriel is out of sorts,” said the lady nurse, “because she has been allowed to breakfast with her mamma and has eaten too much cake, and Sybil is out of temper because her papa has given Muriel a mechanical walking doll, and she does not think her own gift of toy drawing-room furniture so good.” She would have stamped on it had not the lady nurse taken it away.
“I must soothe them up somehow to make a pretty appearance downstairs after dinner,” she said. “And a nice to-do I shall have up here when they come back again.”
Well, at any rate, the comfort was that Florence kissed Lucy almost effusively.
“It was so sweet of you to come!” she said. She might be sharp with Jem and vexed about her children, but it was evidently all right between her and Lucy. “How well-behaved your Hugh is!” she said, and clung on to her sister, pouring out the story of all the frictions working in her own kitchen.
Lucy hinted gently that she must be at home in time for her visitors; but she remembered the mission which had brought her, and shrank from seeming unsympathetic. At last it was so late that she had to say definitely that she must go at once, or she would not be back in her own house at four o’clock.
“Dear me”—Florence looked at her watch—“you really must go! It’s well you don’t have much dressing for dinner to do, or you’d be late already. It has been such a comfort to have a reasonable creature to speak to. And you’ll take a cab, my dear, or I’ll never forgive myself for having kept you. You are to take a cab, mind!”
Lucy smiled and hurried away. A cab? No! A woman who knows what it is to earn shillings cannot willingly afford to spend them because another woman’s whim delays her. Lucy, too, looked at her watch. There would be just time for her to reach home ere her guests arrived.
When they got into the quieter streets she shortened the journey by running little races with Hugh. Nevertheless, just as they came in sight of the house with the verandah, they saw Mr. Somerset’s cab drive up.
They all went in together. Of course, Mrs. Morison opened the door. She had on a fresh white apron as if she were ready to serve up dinner. Mr. Somerset had a big parcel to get out of his cab, and that made a little delay, during which Mrs. Morison hurried off again downstairs.
Lucy was comforted to find that Miss Latimer had not arrived yet, nor the lad Tom Black. Mr. Somerset was such an old and familiar friend that she could easily leave him to the chattering ministrations of little Hugh, while she hurried to her own room to take off her walking garb and add a few touches of lacy brightness to her apparel.
While she was thus employed, she heard Hugh give a shout of joy and go leaping downstairs. From the drawing-room window, he had seen Miss Latimer approach. Lucy heard him and the old governess exchanging rapturous greetings. She went out and met Miss Latimer, and led her to her own room, where the old lady had some little titivations to make, and a few private inquiries to get answered, so that they lingered there until another knock announced Tom Black, and they went downstairs to receive him.
They found the youth standing awkwardly alone on the landing outside the drawing-room door. He had only just reached that spot, led thereto by the sound of Hugh’s shrill pipe and Mr. Somerset’s deeper tones. He was vastly relieved to see Lucy, and to be made welcome by her. Lucy herself made the inward reflection that Mrs. Morison was either less trained in receiving guests than in other departments of service, or that she felt her devotion to the Christmas dinner must justify any lapse in minor attentions.
They went into the drawing-room. Tom Black was introduced all round, and a little conversation was got up about the weather, about Hugh’s gifts, and about Mr. Challoner, and how he was possibly keeping his Christmas day.
By this time it was fully half-past four. Lucy did not feel at all nervous on that score. If her husband had been at home to remain with her guests, she would certainly have stepped out of the room and taken a housewifely survey. But she did not care to leave her visitors quite to themselves, since she had the just idea that hospitality loses its sweetest grace if it seems burdensome to the hosts. It was natural, too, that dinner should be a little deferred. Mrs. Morison had probably thoughtfully retarded matters when her mistress’s return had been so late.
Lucy had not even begun to feel anxious—when there came a sudden heavy fall and a smash!
(To be continued.)
