"Bank holidays are admittedly common nuisances; they are neither
Sundays nor week-days; they disorganise everything, both public and
private life; and what is Christmas Day but a bank holiday, I should
like to know! Here am I actually having to make my own bed and prepare
my own breakfast; goodness only knows what I shall do about my lunch
and dinner. And this in the twentieth century."
It was a monstrous fact. Granted that to a certain extent I had
to thank my own weakness, still, Christmas Day was to blame. When,
about a month before, Mr and Mrs Baines had begun to drop hints
that they would like to spend Christmas Day with relatives at some
out-of-the-way hole in Kent--it was three years since they had spent
Christmas Day together, Mrs Baines told me with her own lips--I was
gradually brought to consent. Of course I could not remain alone with
Eliza--who is a remarkably pretty girl, mind you, though she is a
housemaid--so I let her spend Christmas Day with her mother. They all
three went off the day before--Eliza's home is in Devonshire--so that
there was I left without a soul to look after me.
I allow that to some small extent the fault was mine. My bag was
packed--Baines had packed it with his own hands, assisted by his wife
and Eliza, and to my certain knowledge each had inserted a Christmas
present, which it was intended should burst upon me with the force of a
surprise. I had meant to spend Christmas with Popham. It seemed to me
that since I had to spend it under somebody else's roof it might as
well be under his. But on the morning of the twenty-fourth--Tuesday--I
had had a letter--a most cheerful letter--in which Popham informed me
that since one of his children had the measles, and another the mumps,
and his wife was not well, and his own constitution was slightly
unbalanced owing to a little trouble he had had with his motor--he had
nearly broken his neck, from what I could gather--it had occurred to
him that Christmas under his roof might not be such a festive season as
he had hoped, and so he gave me warning. Obviously I did not want to
force myself into a hospital, so I wired to Popham that I thought, on
the whole, that I preferred my own fireside.
But I said nothing about my change of plans to Mr and Mrs Baines or
Eliza, for it seemed to me that since they had made their arrangements
they might as well carry them out, and I had intended to go to one of
those innumerable establishments where, nowadays, homeless and
friendless creatures are guaranteed--for a consideration--a "social
season."
Eliza started after breakfast, Mr and Mrs Baines after lunch. I told
them that I was going by the four o'clock and could get my bag taken to
the cab without their assistance. When the time came I could not make
up my mind to go anywhere. So I dined at the club and had a dullish
evening. And on Christmas Day I had to make my own bed and light my own
fire.
A really disreputable state of affairs!
I never had such a time in my life. I was bitterly cold when I first
got up--it had been freezing all night--but I was hot enough long
before I had a fire. The thing would not burn. There was a gas
stove in the kitchen, I could manage that all right, to a certain
extent--though it made an abominable smell, which I had not noticed
when Mrs Baines had been on the premises--but I could not spend all
Christmas Day crouching over half a dozen gas jets. Not to speak of the
danger of asphyxiation, which, judging from the horrible odour,
appeared to me to be a pretty real one. I wanted coal fires in my own
rooms, or, at least, in one of them. But the thing would not behave in
a reasonable manner. I grew hot with rage, but the grate remained as
cold as charity.
I live in a flat--Badminton Mansions--endless staircases, I don't know
how many floors, and not a Christian within miles. I had a dim notion,
I don't know how I got it, but I had a dim notion that a person of the
charwoman species ascended each morning to a flat somewhere overhead to
do--I had not the faintest idea what, but the sort of things charwomen
do do. Driven to the verge of desperation--consider the state I was in,
no fire, no breakfast, no nothing, except that wretched gas stove,
which I was convinced that I should shortly have to put out if I did
not wish to be suffocated--it occurred to me, more or less vaguely,
that if I could only intercept that female I might induce her, by the
offer of a substantial sum, to put my establishment into something like
order. So, with a view of ascertaining if she was anywhere about, I
went out on to the landing to look for her.
"Now," I told myself, "I suppose I shall have to stand in this
condition"--I had as nearly as possible blacked myself all over--"for a
couple of hours outside my own door and then she won't come."
No sooner had I shown my unwashed face outside than I became conscious
that a child--a girl--was standing at the open door of the flat on the
opposite side of the landing. I was not going to retreat from a mere
infant; I declined even to notice her presence, though I became
instantly aware that she was taking the liveliest interest in mine. I
looked up and down, saw there were no signs of any charwoman, and
feeling that it would be more dignified to return anon--when that child
had vanished--was about to retire within my own precincts,
when--the child addressed me.
"I wish you a merry Christmas."
I was really startled. The child was a perfect stranger to me. I just
glanced across at her, wishing that I was certain if what I felt upon
my nose actually was soot, and replied--with sufficient frigidity,--
"Thank you. Your wish is obliging. But there is not the slightest
chance of my having a merry Christmas, I give you my word of honour."
My intention was to--metaphorically--crush the child, but she was not
to be crushed. I already had my back to her, when she observed,--
"I am so sorry. Are you in any trouble?"