BOXING-NIGHT.
"Let us keep Christmas," said Angela, "with something like original
treatment. We will not dance, because we do that nearly every night."
"Let us," said Harry, "dress up and act."
What were they to act? That he would find for them. How were they to
dress? That they would have to find for themselves. The feature of the
Christmas festival was that they were to be mummers, and that there was
to be mummicking, and of course there would be a little feasting, and
perhaps a little singing.
"We must have just such a programme," said Angela to their master of
ceremonies, "as if you were preparing it for the Palace of Delight."
"This is the only Palace of Delight," said Harry, "that we shall ever
see. For my own part I desire no other."
"But, you know, we are going to have another one, much larger than this
little place. Have you forgotten all your projects?"
Harry laughed; it was strange how persistently Miss Kennedy returned to
the subject again and again; how seriously she talked about it; how she
dwelt upon it.
"We must have," she continued, "sports which will cost nothing, with
dresses which we can make for ourselves. Of course we must have guests
to witness them."
"Guests cost money," said Harry. "But, of course, in a Palace of Delight
money must not be considered. That would be treason to your principles."
"We shall not give our guests anything except the cold remains of the
Christmas dinner. As for champagne, we can make our own with a few
lemons and a little sugar. Do not forbid us to invite an audience."
Fortunately, a present which arrived from their patron, Miss Messenger,
the day before Christmas Day, enabled them to give their guests a
substantial supper, at no cost whatever. The present took the form of
several hampers, addressed to Miss Kennedy, with a note from the donor
conveying her love to the girls and best wishes for the next year, when
she hoped to make their acquaintance. The hampers contained turkeys,
sausages, ducks, geese, hams, tongues, and the like.
Meantime, Harry, as stage manager and dramatist, had devised the
tableaux, and the girls between them had devised the dresses from a book
of costumes. Christmas Day, as everybody remembers, fell last year on a
Sunday. This gave the girls the whole of Saturday afternoon and evening,
with Monday morning for the conversion of the trying-on room into the
stage, and the show-room for the audience. But the rehearsals took a
fortnight, for some of the girls were stupid and some were shy, though
all were willing to learn, and Harry was patient. Besides, there was the
chance of wearing the most beautiful dresses, and no one was left out;
in the allegory, a pastoral, invented by their manager, there was a part
for every one.
The gift of Miss Messenger made it possible to have two sets of guests;
one set consisting of the girls' female relations, and a few private
friends of Miss Kennedy's who lived and suffered in the neighborhood,
for the Christmas dinner, held on Monday; and the other set was
carefully chosen from a long list of the select audience in the evening.
Among them were Dick and his friend, the ex-Chartist cobbler, and a few
leading spirits of the Advanced Club. They wanted an audience who would
read between the lines.
The twenty-sixth day of last December was, in the neighborhood of
Stepney, dull and overcast; it promised to be a day of rebuke for all
quiet folk, because it was a general holiday, one of those four terrible
days when the people flock in droves to favorite haunts if it is in the
summer, or hang about public-houses if it is winter; when, in the
evening, the air is hideous with the shouts of those who roll about the
pavements; a day when even Comus and his rabble rout are fain to go home
for fear of being hustled and evilly treated by the holiday-makers of
famous London town; a day when the peaceful and the pious, the temperate
and the timid, stay at home. But to Angela it was a great day, sweet and
precious--to use the language of an ancient Puritan and modern
prig--because it was the first attempt toward the realization of her
great dream; because her girls on this night for the first time showed
the fruits of her training in the way they played their parts, their
quiet bearing and their new refinement. After the performances of this
evening she looked forward with confidence to her palace.
The day began, then, at half-past with the big dinner. All the girls
could bring their mothers, sisters, and female relations generally, who
were informed that Miss Messenger, the mysterious person who interfered
perpetually, like a goddess out of a machine, with some new gift, or
some device for their advantage, was the giver of the feast.
It was a good and ample Christmas dinner served in the long work-room by
Angela and the girls themselves. There were the turkeys of the hamper,
roasted with sausages, and roast beef and roast fowls, and roast geese
and roast pork, with an immense supply of the vegetables dear to London
people; and after this first course, there were plum-pudding and
mince-pies. Messenger's ale, with the stout so much recommended by
Bunker, flowed freely, and after dinner there was handed to each a glass
of port. None but women and children--no boy over eight being
allowed--were present at the feast, and when it was over most of the
women got up and went away, not without some little talk with Angela and
some present in kind from the benevolent Miss Messenger. Then they
cleared all away and set out the tables again, with the same provisions,
for the supper in the evening, at which there would be hungry men.
All the afternoon they spent in completing their arrangements. The
guests began to arrive at five. The music was supplied by Angela
herself, who did not act, with Captain Sorensen and Harry. The piano was
brought downstairs and stood in the hall outside the trying-on room.
The performance was to commence at six, but everybody had come long
before half-past five. At a quarter to six the little orchestra began to
play the old English tunes dear to pantomimes.
At the ringing of a bell, the music changed to a low monotonous plaint
and the curtain slowly rose on the tableau.
There was a large, bare, empty room; its sole furniture was a table and
three chairs; in one corner was a pile of shavings; upon them sat,
crouching with her knees drawn up, the pale and worn figure of a girl;
beside her were the crutches which showed that she was a cripple; her
white cheek was wasted and hollow; her chin was thrust forward as if she
was in suffering almost intolerable. During the tableau she moved not,
save to swing slowly backward and forward upon the shavings which formed
her bed.
On the table, for it was night, was a candle in a ginger-beer bottle,
and two girls sat at the table working hard; their needles were running
a race with starvation; their clothes were in rags; their hair was
gathered up in careless knots; their cheeks were pale; they were pinched
and cold and feeble with hunger and privation.
Said one of the women present, "Twopence an hour, they can make. Poor
things! poor things!"
"Dick," whispered the cobbler, "you make a note of it; I guess what's
coming."
The spectators shivered with sympathy. They knew so well what it meant;
some of them had themselves dwelt amid these garrets of misery and
suffering.
Then voices were heard outside in the street singing.
They were the waits, and they sang the joyful hymns of Christmas. When
the working-girls heard the singing, they paid no heed whatever, plying
the needle fast and furiously; and the girl in the shavings paid no
heed, slowly swinging to and fro in her pain and hunger. At the sight of
this callous contempt, this disregard of the invitation to rejoice, as
if there were neither hope nor joy for such as themselves, with only a
mad desire to work for something to stay the dreadful pains of hunger,
some of the women among the spectators wept aloud.
Then the waits went away; and there was silence again.
Then one of the girls--it was Nelly--stopped, and leaned back in her
chair, with her hand to her heart; the work fell from her lap upon the
floor; she sprang to her feet, threw up her hands, and fell in a
lifeless heap upon the floor. The other girl went on with her sewing;
and the cripple went on swinging backward and forward. For they were all
three so miserable that the misery of one could no more touch the other
two.
The curtain dropped. The tableau represented, of course, the girls who
work for an employer.
After five minutes it rose again. There were the same girls and others;
they were sitting at work in a cheerful and well-furnished room; they
were talking and laughing. The clock struck six, and they laid aside
their work, pushed back the table and advanced to the front singing all
together. Their faces were bright and happy; they were well dressed,
they looked well fed; there was no trouble among them at all; they
chatted like singing-birds; they ran and played.
Then Captain Sorensen came in with his fiddle, and first he played a
merry tune, at the sound of which the girls caught each other by the
waist, and fell to dancing the old Greek ring. Then he played a
quadrille, and they danced that simple figure, and as if they liked it;
and then he played a waltz, and they whirled round and round.
This was the labor of girls for themselves. Everybody understood
perfectly what was meant without the waste of words. Some of the mothers
present wiped their eyes and told their neighbors that this was no play
acting, but the sweet and blessed truth; and that the joy was real,
because the girls were working for themselves and there were no
naggings, no fines, no temper, no bullying, no long hours.
After this there was a concert, which seemed a falling off in point of
excitement. But it was pretty. Captain Sorensen played some rattling sea
ditties; then Miss Kennedy and Mr. Goslett played a duet; then the girls
sang a madrigal in parts, so that it was wonderful to hear them,
thinking how ignorant they were six months before. Then Miss Kennedy
played a solo, and then the girls sang another song. By what magic, by
what mystery, were girls so transformed? Then the audience talked
together, and whispered that it was all the doing of that one girl--Miss
Kennedy--who was believed by everybody to be a lady born and bred, but
pretended to be a dressmaker. She it was who got the girls together,
gave them the house, found work for them, arranged the time and duties,
and paid them week by week for shorter hours better wages. It was she
who persuaded them to spend their evenings with her instead of trapesing
about the streets, getting into mischief; it was she who taught them the
singing, and all manner of pretty things; and they were not spoiled by
it, except that they would have nothing more to say to the rough lads
and shopboys who had formerly paid them rude court and jested with them
on Stepney Green. Uppish they certainly were; what mother would find
fault with a girl for holding up her head and respecting herself? And as
for manners, why, no one could tell what a difference there was.
The Chartist looked on with a little suspicion at first, which gradually
changed to the liveliest satisfaction.
"Dick," he whispered to his friend and disciple, "I am sure that, if the
working-men like, they may find the swells their real friends. See, now
we've got all the power; they can't take it from us; very good then, who
are the men we should suspect? Why, those who've got to pay the
wages--the manufacturers and such. Not the swells. Make a note of that,
Dick. It may be the best card you've got to play. A thousand places such
as this--planted all about England--started at first by a swell--why,
man, the working classes would have not only all the power but all the
money. Oh, if I were ten years younger! What are they going to do next?"
The next thing they did pleased the women, but the men did not seem to
care much about it, and the Chartist went on developing the new idea to
Dick, who drank it all in, seeing that here, indeed, was a practical and
attractive idea even though it meant a new departure. But the preacher
of a new doctrine has generally a better chance than one who only
hammers away at an old one.
The stage showed one figure. A beautiful girl, her hair bound in a
fillet, clad in Greek dress, simple, flowing, graceful, stood upon a low
pedestal. She was intended--it was none other than Nelly--to represent
woman dressed as she should be. One after the other there advanced upon
the stage and stood beside this statue, women dressed as women ought not
to be; there they were, the hideous fashions of generations; the pinched
waists, monstrous hats, high peaks, hoops and crinolines, hair piled up,
hair stuffed out, gigot sleeves, high waists, tight skirts, bending
walk, boots with high heels--an endless array.
When Nelly got down from her pedestal and the show was over, Harry
advanced to the front and made a little speech. He reminded his hearers
that the Association was only six months old; he begged them to consider
what was its position now. To be sure, the girls had been started, and,
that he said, was the great difficulty; but, the start once made and
prejudice removed, they found themselves with work to do, and they were
now paying their own way and doing well; before long they would be able
to take in more hands; it was not all work with them, but there was
plenty of play, as they knew. Meantime the girls invited everybody to
have supper with them, and after supper there would be a little dance.
They stayed to supper, and they appreciated the gift of Miss Messenger;
then they had the little dance--Dick Coppin now taking his part without
shame. While the dancing went on the Chartist sat in the corner of the
room, talking with Angela. When he went away his heart--which was large
and generous--burned within him, and he had visions of a time when the
voices of the poor shall not be raised against the rich nor the minds of
the rich hardened against the poor. Perhaps he came unconsciously nearer
to Christianity, this man who was a scoffer and an unbeliever, that
night than he had ever before. To have faith in the future forms,
indeed, a larger part of the Christian religion than some of us ever
realize. And to believe in a single woman is one step, however small,
toward believing in the Divine Man.