It was a dark night when Kate started out, without Bob, for she was not frightened; she was too miserable to be frightened. The passing relief she had felt in making her arrangements for her Christmas tea-party was spent, and the universal merriment only served to deepen her own loneliness and disappointment. The streets were full and noisy, but not disorderly. The church bells were ringing in anticipation of the coming day, and a general holiday tone was diffused through the crowd, though business was going on briskly. Groups of little children were gathering round the brilliant shop-windows, choosing impossible Christmas presents for themselves and each other from the magnificent display within, and laughing with pathetic mirth at their own daring dreams. Kate caught herself wondering if she should ever laugh at her own vanished dream.
Wright’s Court was not a good specimen of street architecture and paving. The houses were as low as they could be to boast of two stories, and the pavement was eccentric, making it necessary to take each step with great caution. An open gutter ran down the middle, and through the passage which formed the entrance; a passage four feet wide and twenty feet long, dimly lighted by one lamp in the street, which shone behind Kate as she walked up it, and threw her shadow bewilderingly before her. The court itself had no light but that which came through the uncurtained windows of the dwellings on each side, through which she caught glimpses of startling phases of English life, before she reached Mrs. Duffy’s door, where she stood a minute or two in the dark, looking through the small panes of the casement close beside it.
It was a very little kitchen, but quite large enough for the furniture it contained. There was an old box under the window, and one shelf against the wall, holding all Mrs. Duffy’s china and plate. The only chair, and a tiny table standing on three thick legs, were drawn up to the fireplace, in which a few coals were burning. Two old tin candlesticks and a flat-iron adorned the chimneypiece, and Kate saw, with a slight prick of her conscience, for she had not cared to decorate the house at home, that a bit of holly had been stuck into each candlestick, as well as into every other pane of the little window. Mrs. Duffy herself was seated in the chair, apparently amusing herself with a pantomime of taking tea, for there was a black teapot and a cracked cup and saucer on the table, but there was no food upon it, and when she held the teapot almost perpendicularly only a few drops fell from the spout. She put it down, and looked placidly into the embers, shaking her head a little from time to time, but gently, as if more in remembrance of the past than in reproach of the present. She was a clean, fresh-looking old woman, with no teeth, and her cheeks formed a little ball, like a withered rosy apple, between her hollow eyes and sunken mouth.
‘The Lord love you, my dear,’ said Mrs. Duffy, when Kate went in, and delivered her message, ‘and the good doctor, too. It isn’t everybody as has such friends as me—on a Christmas Eve, too, when a body feels so lonesome wi’out friends. I don’t mind so much on working days, my dear, but one wants friends of a holiday like-Christmas. One can work wi’out friends; but one can’t love wi’out friends.’
‘No, indeed!’ said Kate, with a profound sigh.
‘And I’ve got such good friends!’ continued Mrs. Duffy, triumphantly; ‘there’s one as gave me sixpence, and another threepence, and another twopence, only this morning. That came up to elevenpence; so I’ve bought my Christmas joint, just like other folks, you know. You’d maybe like to see my Christmas joint like other folks, shouldn’t you, my dear?’
‘I should very much,’ answered Kate.
The Christmas joint was evidently a very precious possession, for it had been laid carefully between a plate and a basin, and these were well tied up in a ragged cloth, and put out of the way of any marauding cat. Kate’s eyebrows went up a good deal, and her eyelids smarted a little as if with coming tears, when she saw it. It was a morsel of coarse beef, which would not have covered the old woman’s hand, but which she regarded with unconcealed satisfaction and delight.
‘That cost sevenpence,’ she said, ‘and I bought two pennyworth of greens, and a twopenny loaf to eat with it—me and a friend of mine, as is coming to dine with me. It’s a very poor lame girl as lives down the court; very poor, indeed, so I asked her to come and help to eat my Christmas joint, which is exceedingly pleasant to me. The neighbour next door has promised to lend me a chair; we’re all so friendly one with another.’
‘Then if you have a visitor you must bring her with you to tea,’ said Kate, ‘and any children you have. Haven’t you got any sons or daughters? You’d enjoy yourself more with them there.’