That year Christmas fell on a Monday. On the Saturday morning Cecil packed up her bag, and departed, grumbling, for her week at home. Before she left, Claire presented her with a Christmas gift in the shape of a charming embroidered scarf, and Cecil kissed her, and flushed, and looked at the same time pleased and oppressed, and hastily pulling out her purse extracted two sovereigns and laid them down on the table.
“I keep forgetting that money! Three weeks, wasn’t it? There’s two pounds; let me know the rest when I come back and I’ll settle up. Christmas is an awful time. The money simply melts.”
Claire had an uncomfortable and wholly unreasonable feeling of being paid for her present as she put the two sovereigns in her purse. Cecil had given her no gift, and the lack of the kindly attention increased the feeling of desolation with which she returned to her empty room. Even the tiniest offering to show that she had been thought of, would have been a comfort!
The landlady came into the room to remove the luncheon tray, her lips pursed into an expression which her lodger recognised as the preliminary to “a bit of my mind.” When the outlying cruets and dishes had been crowded together in a perilous pile, the bit of her mind came out.
“I was going to say, miss, that of course you will arrange to dine out on Christmas Day. I never take ladies as a rule, but Miss Rhodes, she said, being teachers, you would be away all holiday time. I never had a lodger before who stayed in the house over Christmas, and of course you must understand that we go over to Highgate to my mother’s for the day and the girl goes out, and I couldn’t possibly think of cooking—”
“Don’t be afraid, Mrs Mason. I am going out for the day.”
Mrs Mason lifted the tray and carried it out of the room, shutting the door behind her by the skilful insertion of a large foot encased in a cashmere boot, and Claire stood staring at her, wondering if it were really her own voice which had spoken those last words, and from what source had sprung the confidence which had suddenly flooded her heart. At this last blow of all, when even the little saffron-coloured parlour closed the door against her, the logical course would have been to collapse into utter despair, instead of which the moment had brought the first gleam of hope.
“Now,” said the voice in her heart, “everyone has failed me. I am helpless, I am alone. This is God’s moment. I will worry no more, but leave it to Him. Something will open for me when the time arrives!”
She went upstairs, put on her hat, and sallied out into the busy streets. All the world was abroad, men and women and small eager children all bent on the same task, thronging the shops to the doors, waiting in rows for the favour of being served, emerging triumphant with arms laden with spoils. On every side fragments of the same conversation floated to the ears. “What can I get for Kate?”
“I can’t think what in the world to buy for John.”