“Well, it is impossible to say whether any of them are really cured,” said Mrs. Abel. “But a great many have gone out and kept steady for several years, and now and then we hear from them that they are doing well. But of course some of them relapse and then they sometimes come back for a time. But if we get them quite early on I believe there is every chance of their keeping straight. Only it is so difficult to persuade them to come in then.”
“What a pity it is that wine was ever invented,” said Susie. “I can’t think what people want with it. It only makes them noisy and stupid; not really cheerful.”
“I don’t think it is wine that matters,” said Mrs. Abel. “In fact a little of it would do them good if they could get it. It is the beer and spirits that are so bad, because they take such quantities of beer and so little spirits affects them, especially the stuff they can afford. My husband doesn’t at all believe in actual teetotalism, except as a help to those who can’t keep away from it. The doctor says a glass of port would do him all the good in the world in the evening, but I can’t get him to take it, just for the sake of the example.”
“How splendid of him!” Susie exclaimed. “I wish I could persuade my husband to set the example to his men.”
“You see, it is the evenings that are such a temptation,” Mrs. Abel went on. “Their homes are so dreadfully uncomfortable, with the children all about and everything in a mess and nothing to do. Of course they prefer the public-houses and the clubs.”
“But if the children went to bed in proper time and the wives kept their sewing until the evening it would be quite simple,” Susie declared. “They seem to have no idea of time.”
“Still, I know myself that it is not easy to have everything straight by the evening,” Mrs. Abel sighed. “Now my little maid has gone and I have everything to do for the children, besides the house and the parish, I find it very difficult to be all neat and good tempered, and ready to listen to my husband, though I am longing to hear all about his day. And then, you see, very often with those people the children have nowhere to sleep except the living-room, and there is hardly room for them all to sit round—and perhaps no fire—and if there is illness—and they have no occupations to keep them quiet. And besides, some of the houses you really can’t make clean or cheerful, and if the man does get good wages for a time it all goes as soon as there is unemployment or if he meets with an accident; the insurance doesn’t cover it all. At least I know my husband will get his stipend whatever happens, and people are very kind and good. We were so touched by the amount of the Easter Offering this year, although it is such a poor parish.”
“Mrs. Fulton, would you like to come and see the distribution of presents?” said the matron, advancing to Susie with a smile that she did her best to make genial. Long years of bringing the passions of other people into line had made it difficult for her to relax at different milestones of the Almanack into the requirements of a moral armistice.
Susie followed her into the next room, where a small Christmas tree was glimmering and dropping wax on to a table; round it, piled high, were parcels with the forbiddingly soft contours that betray to the experienced eye the presence of wool in unattractive shapes. Two smiling men with eyeglasses and gay waistcoats, and Mr. Abel, well-bred, shabby, harassed, devoted and obviously in need of port wine, stood by with sponges, ready to quench any untoward splutterings between the dim flames and the branches on which they drooped. Festoons of tinselled cotton hung between the pine needles which still smelled of the forest, and on the top spike, precariously inclined, was a cardboard Father Christmas with frosted boots and a face like Mr. Price after dinner. The inmates crowded round, murmuring among themselves in drawling exclamations peculiar to the class who spend so much of their lives as onlookers at all kinds of pageantry.
“Eh, luk!” they said. “H’m—yes, it is, i’nt it! eh, to be sure! See, Lily, the li’l moonkey wi’ th’ baal in its mouth! See Father Christmas? Where? Eh, yes, a see ’im. Seems a pity there a’nt no children here to see it. What’s the good of it?” A terrific sniff raised the speaker’s nose in wrinkles almost into her low-growing hair. “Eh, luk! the parcel! ’tis for the paarson!” Roars of laughter broke out while Mr. Abel unwrapped a neat silver cigar-cutter and sought in vain for words that should combine truth with the idea that it was the thing he was most in need of. Mrs. Abel received a pocket manicure case, the matron was delighted with Miss Gilworth’s Outlook of the Saints, the under-matron had a sponge, “specially designed for continental use,” and the rest of the staff were given various articles ranging from penwipers to plaster dogs with one eye bandaged. The proceedings ended with a carol, in which Susie joined with her very kindest expression and a most delicate voice, reinforced by the powerful bass of one of the gentlemen with eyeglasses who was a member of Mr. Abel’s choir. Mr. Abel moved a vote of thanks in his high-pitched Oxford plaint, and soon after a piercing wind from the front door and a hum of voices and flutter of aprons in the passage betokened that the Mary Popley inmates would be left to their own reflections on a year that was about to slink away like a defaulter with the happiness they had invested.