Then the newspapers and the pulpits began to speak. A great project was evolved and set in being. There must be in every district--the press panjandrums declared with elf-induced unanimity a Christmas supper, after the good old jolly style. Funds were started to save any call upon the rates. Gifts of edibles, drinkables, and current coin rolled in.
Mayors and councillors, workers in churches, chapels, conventicles of all sorts, and of no sort; political women and plodding housewives; dukes' sons, cooks' sons, sons of belted earls with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts; my Lady Bountiful and my lady who scrubs--these with all and sundry came together in a spirit of splendid camaraderie to consider ways and means of establishing the Christmas joy-feasts.
Town-halls, village rooms, and other suitable places in all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were made ready for the great celebration. Mountains of food and rivers of delectable liquid were prepared. Chefs, professional, amateur and very amateur, went to work with a will. Localities bragged of their poultry and puddings. Small boys walked about with glistening eyes; small girls, telling their evening toll of fairy stories, got into the habit of ending their "happy ever afterwards" with the assurance that not a year passed without the wedded prince and princess having a Christmas supper with their people.
'Twas bliss to be alive. Scrooges a thousand-fold were converted wholesale. The fairies, all were working during the entire twenty-four hours of the day; and somehow--somehow they actually managed to squeeze into that ordered period of time an additional twenty minutes. How it was done they only know. Really, they are wonderful--those fairies!
Nevertheless, despite this general agreement of feeling, and unprecedented flow of goodwill, a few exalted persons and their imitators had managed to keep apart from it. They were but a few here and there, but the fact of their silent opposition was painful. There were blots on the jollity.
The Duke of Armingham was not one of them. His Grace, during that period of preparation, seemed to return to youth. His energy was wonderful. He became adept at hammering tacks, and probably nailed up more Goodwill mottoes than anyone else of his years. It was he who devised the plan of plastering dead walls with red and green cartoons, representing prominent men and women of all parties, sects, and classes united in the goodwill of Christmas.
His posters added considerably to the brightness and humour of the streets. But the Duke went just a little too far; though, in the Pepysian phrase, it did one's heart good to see him scuttle round a corner, after having pasted a picture to the front-door of a leading militant suffragist.
He used to come home after the midnight hour, as trembling and wide-eyed as the triumphant Brer Rabbit; his hands and clothing a-muck with bill-stickery. No mischievous bad boy could have been more happily guilty than he; and the way he put on his pince-nez to brazen it out before the Duchess, would have been a picture for Keene.
Certainly the Duke was not of the ungracious elect; but, alas, just as assuredly his Duchess was! Mrs. Barnett Q. Moss and her glistering circle of human dross also remained significantly apart from the general rejoicing and good-fellowship.
June determined to concentrate her attentions on the Duchess.