THE CHRISTMAS AFTER. OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SATISFAX, AND A YOUNG IDIOT
WHO CAME THERE
When one is called away in the middle of a street-fight, and misses
seeing the end of it, how embittered one's existence is, and continues
for some time after! Think what our friend the cabman would have felt
had he missed the _dénouement_! And when one finds oneself again
on its site--if that is the correct expression--how one wishes one
was not ashamed to inquire about its result from the permanent
officials on the spot--the waterman attached to the cab-rank, the
crossing-sweeper at the corner, the neolithographic artist who didn't
really draw that half-mackerel himself, but is there all day long, for
all that; or even the apothecary's shop over the way, on the chance
that the casualties went or were taken there for treatment after the
battle. One never does ask, because one is so proud; but if one did
ask, one would probably find that oblivion had drawn a veil over the
event, and that none of one's catechumens had heard speak of any such
an occurrence, and that it must have been another street. Because, if
it had 'a been there, they would have seen to a certainty. And the
monotonous traffic rolls on, on, on; and the two counter-streams of
creatures, each with a story, divide and subdivide over the spot where
the underneath man's head sounded on the kerbstone, which took no
notice at the time, and now seems to know less than ever about it.
Are we, in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the
author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he
ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not
dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get
to it in time. Let us only be clear what it is ourselves.
It refers, at any rate, to the way in which the contents of Chapters
I. and II. had become records of the past six months later, when the
snow was on the ground four inches thick on Christmas morning--two
inches, at least, having been last night's contribution--and made it
all sweet and smooth all over so that there need be no unpleasantness.
As Sally looked out of her mother's bedroom window towards the front
through the Venetian blind, she saw the footprints of cats alone on
the snow in the road, and of the milk alone along the pavement. For
the milk had preferred to come by hand, rather than plough its
tricycle through the unknown depths and drifts of Glenmoira Road, W.,
to which it had found its way over tracks already palliated by the
courage of the early 'bus--not plying for hire at that hour, but only
seeking its equivalent of the _carceres_ of the Roman Coliseum, to
inaugurate the carriage of twelve inside and fourteen out to many
kinds of Divine Service early in the day, and one kind only of
dinner-service late--the one folk eat too much pudding and mince-pie
at, and have to take a dose after. During this early introductory
movement of the 'bus its conductor sits inside like a lord, and
classifies documents. But he has nothing to do with our story. Let us
thank him for facilitating the milk, and dismiss him.
"My gracious goodness me!" said Sally, when she saw the snow. She did
not say it quite from the bottom of her heart, and as her own form of
expression; but in inverted commas, as it were, the primary
responsibility being cook's or Jane's. "You mustn't think of getting
up, mother."
"Oh, nonsense! I shall get up the minute the hot water comes."
"You won't do any good by getting up. You had much better lie in bed.
_I_ shouldn't get up, if I was you," etc., etc.
"Oh, stuff! My rheumatism's better. Do you know, I really think the
ring _has_ done it good. Dr. Vereker may laugh as much as he
likes----"
"Well, the proof of the pudding's in the eating. But wait till you
see how thick the snow is. _Come--in!_" This is very staccato. Jane
was knocking at the door with cans of really hot water this time.
"I said come in before. Merry Christmas and happy New Year, Jane!...
Oh, I say! What a dear little robin! He's such a little duck, I hope
that cat won't get him!" And Sally, who is huddled up in a thick
dressing-gown and is shivering, is so excited that she goes on
looking through the blind, and the peep-hole she has had to make to
see clear through the frosted pane, in spite of the deadly cold on the
finger-tip she rubbed it with. Her mother felt interested, too, in the
fate of the robin, but not to the extent of impairing her last two
minutes in bed by admitting the slightest breath of cold air inside a
well-considered fortress. She was really going to get up, though, that
was flat! The fire would blaze directly, although at this moment it
was blowing wood-smoke down Jane's throat, and making her choke.
Directly was five or six minutes, but the fire did blaze up royally in
the end. You see, it wasn't a slow-combustion-grate, and it burned too
much fuel, and flared away the coal, and did all sorts of comfortable,
uneconomical things. So did Jane, who had put in a whole bundle of
wood.
But now that the wood was past praying for, and Jane had departed,
after thawing the hearts of two sponges, it was just as well to take
advantage of the blaze while it lasted. And Mrs. Nightingale and her
daughter, in the thickest available dressing-gowns, and pretending
they were not taking baths only because the bath-room was thrown out
of gear by the frost, took advantage of the said blaze to their
heart's content and harked back--a good way back--on the conversation.
"You never said 'Come in,' chick."
"I _did_, mother! Well, if I didn't, at any rate, I always tell her
not to knock. She is the stupidest girl. She _will_ knock!" Her mother
doesn't press the point. There is no bad blood anywhere. Did not Sally
wish the handmaiden a merry Christmas?
"The cat didn't get the robin, Sally?"
"Not he! The robin was too sharp by half. Such a little darling! But
I was sorry for the cat."
"Poor pussy! Not our pussy, was it?"
"Oh no; it was that piebald Tom that lives in at the empty house next
door."
"I know. Horrible beast!"
"Well, but just think of being out in the cold in this weather, with
nothing to eat! Oo--oo--oogh!" Sally illustrates, with an intentional
shudder. "I wonder who that is!"
"I didn't hear any one."
"You'll see, he'll ring directly. I know who it is; it's Mr. Fenwick
come to say he can't come to-night. I heard the click of his skates.
They've a sort of twinkly click, skates have, when they're swung by
a strap. He'll go out and skate all day. He'll go to Wimbledon."
The girl's hearing was quite correct. A ring came at the
bell--Krakatoa had no knocker--and a short colloquy followed between
Jane and the ringer. Then he departed, with his twinkly click and
noiseless footstep on the snow, slamming the front gate. Jane was able
to include a card he had left in a recrudescence or reinforcement of
hot water. Sally takes the card and looks at it, and her mother says,
"Well, Sally?" with a slight remonstrance against the unfairness of
keeping back information after you have satisfied your own
curiosity--a thing people are odious about, as we all know.
"_He's_ coming all right," says Sally, looking at both sides of the
card, and passing it on when she has quite done with it. Sally, we may
mention, as it occurs to us at this moment,--though _why_ we have no
idea,--means to have a double chin when she is five years older than
her mother is now. At present it--the chin--is merely so much youthful
roundness and softness, very white underneath. Her mother is quite of
a different type. Her daughter's father must have had black hair, for
Sally can make huge shining coils, or close plaits, very wide, out of
her inheritance. Or it will assume the form of a bush, if indulged,
till Sally is almost hidden under it, as the Bosjesman under his
version of Birnam Wood, that he shoots his assegai from. But the
mother's is brown, with a tinge of chestnut; going well with her eyes,
which have a claret tone, or what is so called; but we believe people
really mean pale old port when they say so. She has had--still has, we
might say--a remarkably fine figure, and we don't feel the same faith
in Miss Sally's. That young lassie will get described as plump some
day, if she doesn't take care.
But really it is a breach of confidence to get behind the scenes and
describe two ladies in this way, when they are so very much in
_déshabille_--have not even washed! We will look at them again when
they have got their things on. However, they may go on talking now.
The blaze has lost its splendour, and dressing cannot be indefinitely
delayed. But they can and do talk from room to room, confident that
cook and Jane are in the basement out of hearing.
"We shall do nicely, kitten! Six at table. I'm glad Mr. Fenwick can
come. Aren't you?"
"Rather! Fancy having Dr. and Mrs. Vereker and the dear old fossil
and nobody to help out!"
"My dear! You say 'Dr. and Mrs. Vereker' as if he was a married man!"
"Well--him and his mammy, then! He's good--but he's professional.
Oh dear--his professional manner! You have to be forming square to
receive cavalry every five minutes to prevent his writing you a
prescription."
"Ungrateful little monkey! You know the last he wrote you did you no
end of good."
"Yes, but I didn't ask him for it. He wrote it by force. I hate being
hectored over and bullied. I say, mother!"
"What, kitten?"
"I hope, as Mr. Fenwick's coming, you'll wear your wedding-ring."
"Wear _what_?"
"Wear your wedding-ring. _His_ ring, you know! You know what I
mean--the rheumatic one."
"Of course I know perfectly well what you mean," says her mother,
with a shade of impatience in her voice. "But why?"
"Why? Because it gives him pleasure always to see it on your
finger--he fancies it's doing good to the neuritis."
"Perhaps it is."
"Very well, then; why not wear it?"
"Because it's so big, and comes off in the soup, and is a nuisance.
And, then, he didn't give it to me, either. He was to have had a
shilling for it."
"But he never _did_ have it. And it wasn't a shilling. It was sixpence.
And he says it's the only little return he's ever been able to make
for what he calls our kindness."
"I couldn't shovel him out into the street."
"Put his wedding-ring on, mammy, to oblige me!"
"Very well, chick--I don't mind." And so that point is settled. But
something makes the daughter repeat, as she comes into her mother's
room dry-towelling herself, "You're sure you don't mind, mammy?" to
which the reply is, "No, no! _Why_ should I mind? It's all quite
right," with a forced decision, equivalent to wavering, about it.
Sally looks at her a moment in a pause of dry-towelling, and goes
back to her room not quite convinced. Persons of the same blood,
living constantly together, are sometimes quite embarrassed by their
own brain-waves, and very often misled.
Exigencies of teeth and hair cut the talk short about Mr. Fenwick. But
he gets renewed at breakfast, and, in fact, goes on more or less until
brought up short by the early service at St. Satisfax, when he is
extinguished by a preliminary hymn. But not before his whole story,
so far as is known, has been passed in review. So that an attentive
listener might have gathered from their disjointed chat most of the
particulars of his strange appearance on the scene, and of the
incidents of the next few weeks, and their result in the foundation
of what seemed likely to be a permanent friendship between himself and
Krakatoa Villa, and what certainly was (all things considered) that most
lucrative and lucky post in a good wine-merchant's house in the City.
For Mr. Fenwick had nothing to recommend him but his address and
capacity, brought into notice by an accidental concurrence of
circumstances.
It had been difficult to talk much about him to himself without
seeming to wish to probe into his past life; and as Mrs. Nightingale
impressed on Sally for the twentieth time, just as they arrived at
St. Satisfax, they really knew nothing of it. How could they even know
that this oblivion was altogether genuine? It might easily have been
so at first, but who could say how much of his past had come back to
him during the last six months? An unwelcome past, perhaps, and one
he was glad to help Oblivion in extinguishing.
As this was on the semi-circular path in front of the Saint's shrine,
between two ramparts of swept-up snow, and on a corrective of
cinder-grit, Sally ascribed this speculation to a disposition on her
mother's part to preach, she having come, as it were, within the scope
and atmosphere of a pending decalogue. Also, she thought the
ostentatious way in which Mr. Fenwick had gone away to skate had
something to do with it.
But she was at all times conscious of a certain access of severity in
her mother as she approached altars--rather beyond the common attitude
of mind one ascribes to the bearer of a prayer-book when one doesn't
mean to go to church oneself. (We are indebted for this piece of
information to an intermittent church-goer; it is on a subject on
which our own impressions have little value.) In the present case
Sally _was_ going to church, so she had to account to herself for a
_nuance_ in her mother's manner--after dwelling on the needlessness
and inadvisability of pressing Mr. Fenwick as to his recollections--by
ascribing it to the consciousness of some secularism elsewhere; and he
was the nearest case of ungodliness to hand.
"I wonder whether he believes anything at all!" said Sally, assuming
the consecutiveness of her remark.
"I don't see why he shouldn't.... Why should he disbelieve more
than...? All I mean is, I don't know." The speaker ended abruptly; but
then that may have been because they were at the church door. Possibly
as a protest against having carried chat almost into the precinct,
Mrs. Nightingale's preliminary burial of her face in her hands lasted
a long time--in fact, Sally almost thought she had gone to sleep, and
told her so afterwards. "Perhaps, though," she added, "it was me came
up from under the bedclothes too soon." Then she thought her levity
displeased her mother, and kissed her. But it wasn't that. She was
thoughtful over something else.
This time, in the church, it may be Sally noticed her mother's
abstraction (or was it, perhaps, devotional tension?) less than she
had done when her attention had been caught once or twice lately by
a similar strained look. For Miss Sally had her eyes on a little
gratifying incident of her own--a trifle that would already have
appeared as an incident in her diary, had she kept one, somewhat
thus:--"Saw that young idiot from Cattley's Stores again in church
to-day, in a new scarlet necktie. I wonder whether it's me, or Miss
Peplow that gollops, or the large Miss Baker." Which would have shown
that she was not always a nun breathless with adoration during
religious exercises. The fact is, Sally would have made a very poor
St. Teresa indeed.
The young idiot was the same young man who had brought the difficult
French idiom to Krakatoa, while Mr. Fenwick was still without an
anchorage of his own. Martha the cook, who admitted him, not feeling
equal to the negotiation, had merely said--would he mind steppin' in
the parlour, and she would send Miss Sally up? and had departed
bearing Mrs. Nightingale's credential-card in a hand as free from
grease as an apron so deeply committed could make it, and brought Miss
Nightingale in from the garden, where she was gardening--possibly
effectually, but what do we know? When you are gardening on a summer
afternoon, you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the
right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our
own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally
was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards
out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one
interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick
had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why
not ask Mrs. Prince at the school, opposite St. Satisfax, where we
went to church; she was French, and would be sure to know what it
meant. _She_ wouldn't mind! "Say I sent you." And the youth, whom the
torpedo had struck amidships, was just departing, conscious of
reluctance, when Mr. Fenwick appeared, having come back for his
umbrella.
Sally played quite fair. She didn't hang about as she might have done,
to rub her pearly teeth and merry eyebrows into her victim. She went
back and gardened honourably, while Mr. Fenwick solved the riddle and
supplied the letter. But for all that, the young man appeared next
Sunday at St. Satisfax's, with an extremely new prayer-book that
looked as if his religious convictions were recent, and never took
his eyes off Sally all through the service--that is, if he did as she
supposed, and peeped all the while that his head ought to have been,
as she metaphorically expressed it, "under the clothes."
Now, this was naturally a little unaccountable to Sally, after such
a very short interview; and on the part, too, of a young gentleman who
passed all the working hours of the day among working houris, as it
were soaked and saturated in their fascinations, and not at liberty
to squeeze their hands or ask them for one little lock of hair all
through shop-time. Sally did not realise the force of sameness, nor
the amount of contempt familiarity will breed. Perhaps the houris got
tired and snappish, poor things! and used up their artificial smiles
on the customers. Perhaps it had leaked out that the trying-on hands
contributed only length, personally, to the loveliness of the
trying-on figures. All sorts of things might have happened to
influence this young man towards St. Satisfax; and how did Sally know
how often he had seen the other young lady communicants she had
speculated about? Her mind had certainly thrown in the large Miss
Baker with something of derision. But that Sylvia Peplow was just the
sort of girl men run after, like a big pale gloire-de-Dijon rose all
on one side, with pale golden wavy hair, and great big goggly blue
eyes, looking as if she couldn't help it! Now that we have given you
details, from Sally's inner consciousness, of Miss Peplow's
appearance, we hope you will perceive why she said she "golloped." We
don't, exactly.
However, on this Christmas morning it was made clear whom this young
donkey was hankering after--this is Sally's way of putting it--as Miss
Peplow failed to get her usual place through being late, and had to
sit in a side-aisle, instead of the opposite of her to the idiot--we
are again borrowing from Sally--and now the Idiot would have to glare
round over his shoulder at her or go without! It was soon evident that
he was quite content to go without, and that Sally herself had been
his lode-star. The certainty of this was what prevented her taking so
much notice of her mother as she might otherwise have done.
Had she done so closely, she would hardly have put down her
preoccupation, or tension, or whatever it was, to displeasure at Mr.
Fenwick's going to skate on Christmas morning instead of going to
church. What concern was it of theirs what Mr. Fenwick did?