Lettice

by Mrs. Molesworth

And thus they spent Christmas Day. Some among them so thankful for the unexpected lifting of the clouds that they could not but be hopeful for the future—poor Lettice, though grateful and humble, yet feeling that it was the saddest Christmas she had ever spent.

Though Christmas Eve had brought some unexpected news, which seemed to throw a little light on the matter of which all their hearts were full. This was a letter from Mr Winthrop, in answer to the one telling him of Arthur Morison’s disappearance, and asking his advice or help if he saw any way of giving either. He had at once caught up the idea that “the gentleman tramp” and Arthur were one and the same, and wrote giving all details of the two or three days during which he took refuge at the rectory, of his personal appearance, what he had said and refused to say, and everything there was to tell.

“When Philip comes—we expect him to-morrow,” he wrote—“I will get him to go with me to Liverpool. There I shall at once see Simcox, for whom I gave Arthur, if it was he, a letter, and I have very little doubt but that we shall there hear of him. He was so completely ignorant of my being in any way connected with his family, that he will have had no fear as to availing himself of my introduction.”

For the good rector had no knowledge of the conversation between the boys and Arthur when they accompanied him “a bit of the way” on his road. And Tom and Ralph were far too careless and unobservant to have noticed the start with which the young man had heard them speak of their “Uncle Ingram,” or the questions he had put to them.

And Arthur himself, for whom so many hearts were aching and anxious, how did he spend this strange Christmas far from all he cared for, in such an entirely different atmosphere from any he had ever known?

Nothing could have been kinder, considering the circumstances in which he had come among them, than the way he was received and treated by the old farmer’s family. Till Christmas was over he was to be a guest and nothing more.

“There’s a time for all things,” said James, who was jovially inclined—rather too much so sometimes for his Eliza’s tastes. “Let business lay by till Christmas is over, any way, and then we’ll see about it;” and he was profoundly distressed that no persuasions would make “John” drink a glass of wine, or even taste the bowl of punch with which they wound up, though in no unseemly fashion, the yearly festivities; while Eliza, on the other hand, was inclined to look upon it as a sign of his gentility.

The Christmas dinner was a dinner and no mistake. It began as soon as they had all got home from church in the morning; for James was a churchwarden, and would have been greatly scandalised had any one of the family played truant. So Eliza and her mother had to smother their anxieties as to the goose and the roast beef, the plum-pudding and mince-pies, in their housewifely bosoms, and their self-control was rewarded by finding all had prospered under the care of the little maid-of-all-work, in their absence.

On Christmas evening, when all the good cheer had been done justice to, and the draper and his family, with a few friends who had come in to taste the punch, were comfortably ensconced round the fire, Arthur managed to steal up to his room, to sit there quietly for a few minutes’ thought. It was a small room, with a sloping roof and a dormer window, through which he could see the twinkling lights of the little town below, and the purer radiance of the innumerable stars above. For it was a most beautiful winter night. Not a cloud obscured the sky, but it was bitterly cold. Arthur got down his great-coat from the peg where it was hanging, and wrapped it round him, for he felt still colder from the contrast with the warmth of the room downstairs. And then he sat gazing out of the little window, feeling as absolutely cut off from all he had known and cared for, as if the sea already rolled between them! Some of the excitement which had led to the step he had taken had worn off. He no longer felt quite so sure that it had been the best and most unselfish thing to do, and there were times even, when he began to fancy that perhaps he, as well as Lettice, had exaggerated the consequences of his failure. But with this reflection, in his calmer state of mind, came another. Was not the present state of things, had not all his troubles been brought about by his want of moral courage? It was all very well to call it his consideration for Lettice’s feelings; he was far too right-judging not to know that consideration of that kind carried too far, becomes insincerity, and foolish, wrong self-sacrifice. He knew, too, at the bottom of his heart, that for all the stress Lettice had laid on his dead father’s and mother’s wishes, they would have been the last to have urged upon him a profession which he had no taste for.

“They might have been disappointed,” he said to himself, “but I can’t think that they would have been angry. Not at least, if I had been frank with them.” And words of his father’s, which he had been too young at the time fully to understand, came back to his mind. “Don’t be in too great a hurry, my boy. I have suffered too much from other people deciding my course in life for me before I was old enough to know my own mind. I hope you will be a soldier, but don’t be in a hurry.”