THE LAST CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND
In after days the last month spent in England seemed like a dream
to the children. There was a fortnight during which packing-cases
and new flat cabin-trunks came to the house, and were filled with a
multitudinous collection of things. When all the stacks of garments,
little and big, were ready, Mrs. Conway went in and out of the
different rooms, the little girls at her heels, fingering an ornament
here she felt she must take, a book there, looking with moist eyes at
a picture that had looked down on her most of her life. Yet she did
not wish to cumber herself with unnecessary luggage, so the selection
had to be a small one. There were two tall silver candlesticks,
snuffer-dish, and snuffers she could not leave behind.
“My mother gave them to me when I was married, and said I was to give
them to my eldest daughter when _she_ married,” she said, “for her
mother had given them to her, and before that, _her_ mother had given
them to _her_.”
“Oh, of course you must take them,” said Phyl, and felt added dignity
that she had one of her wedding presents before her.
“The cake-basket is not quite so old; but that shall be for Dolly,” the
mother said, and lifted up the silver basket Dolly had always admired
ardently.
There were tears in Weenie’s voice.
“When I gets married,” she said, “what’s you got for me?”
Mrs. Conway found a cream-jug with a handsome handle.
“Did Dranma’s Dranma’s have it?” was Weenie’s critical question.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Conway.
“Zen I won’t have it,” said Miss Weenie. “Don’t want nasty old fings
for my wesing present. Want nicey new fings.”
So the mother found a butter-dish that possessed the necessary
qualification, and, to make the gift larger, a silver folding
fruit-knife that Mrs. Conway had always used was added to it.
“Now I have wedding presents for you all,” she said; “so no more
silver, except spoons and forks.” Only a few books were to go, she
said, just one small boxful. They might choose twelve each, and she
herself would select the rest.
A whole day flew, of course, in the choosing, and then the stacks
carried into the big bedroom for packing were frequently disarranged
for some change to be made, so hard was the decision. Amongst those
finally packed were _The Wide, Wide World_, a little brown, shabby
volume that was Phyl’s chiefest treasure, and the first book she
had possessed, _Little Women_, _Alice in Wonderland_ and _In the
Looking-Glass_, _Ivanhoe_, _Andersen’s Fairy Tales_, _Grimm’s Fairy
Tales_, two or three other books of Fairy Tales, _Robinson Crusoe_,
_Readings with the Poets_, _Jessica’s First Prayer_, Macaulay’s
_Lays of Rome_, _The Swiss Family Robinson_, _The Lamplighter_,
_Misunderstood_, _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, _The Scottish Chiefs_, _The
Arabian Nights_, an annual or two, _Little Wideawake_, which was
Dolly’s first book, and a volume or two of _Sunshine_.
The stack of dull-covered lesson-books was a small one, and such was
the mother’s pre-occupation she did not notice. There were _Mangnall’s
Questions_ and _Stepping Stones_, books so heartily hated, their sense
of duty was too keen to leave them behind. There was _Mary’s Grammar_,
that once they had been attached to by the seeming innocence of its
stories, but that on further acquaintance they mistrusted entirely as
being a species of powder in jam. There was _Butter’s Spelling Book_,
and a blue geography in the question and answer form. Also a very thin
atlas, and the one of the two table-books they possessed that did _not_
contain “weights and measures.”
The days leapt along; the last boxes were corded. All good-byes to
friends had been said. “Yesterday was Monday,” Phyl said once in
surprise, “and now to-day’s Saturday!” and even the mother agreed with
her.
There came the final move. The boxes went early, then breakfast
came—a strange meal, eaten without a table-cloth, and with cups and
plates that no longer belonged to them—breakfast with a world grey to
blackness out-of-doors, and within a fire that refused to burn up so
early, and gas that flickered as if to help the melancholy effect. Then
a four-wheeled cab for the long drive to the station; the backward,
fearful glance of the three at the old, quiet, dull-coloured house, and
Harriet standing waving there, red-eyed; then the forward, eager one at
the thought of the life a-stretch.
A long journey in the express train to London. Phyl had learned its
rate was sixty miles an hour, and was staggered by the announcement,
for ordinary trains she found ran only thirty to forty.
“We’ll have to catch hold of something very hard,” she told her
sisters, drawing a long breath at the beginning, “or we’ll be whirled
out of our seats and choked, I expect.”
All three were somewhat disappointed to find none of these things
happened, and that the locomotion seemed very little different from
that to which they had been accustomed on their visits to the seaside.
The roar and lights of a great station, where it seemed one half of the
world was rushing to catch trains, and the other half had come to see
them off and wave good-bye; then a stuffy big cab again.
One night in the big, quiet hotel, where the elder little maids had
stayed once before in wealthier days on a visit to the great capital,
the hotel that seemed so fascinating a fairyland to them, they had
brought it into their play for months afterwards, and shed their fairy
wings in order to play chambermaids and waiters. Indeed, there had been
a Sunday evening when Dolly, brought to book for her sins, had grown
pink with shame, and told how “when it was sermon time and she couldn’t
understand, she couldn’t help thinking how lovely the church would be
to play ‘hotel’ in.” And Phyl, equally pink, had confessed also to
imagining she was the boy chalking the number of each bedroom on the
boots outside.
“If the pews hadn’t had numbers on like those bedrooms, I shouldn’t
have thought of it,” she added excusingly.
Breakfast at the big hotel, a white world just becoming soiled and
smirched outside. A dignified waiter behind the chairs of the three
little maids.
“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham, eggs _aux
Champignons_, or fried soles?” he says rapidly to Dolly. Dolly gives a
slight gasp. It has been the unalterable rule of her life to let Phyl
decide questions like these. Once even when she and Phyl were invited
out to tea, and she was asked first what she would have, she grew red
and hesitated, and finally said in a very shy whisper, “I’ll wait and
see what Phyl has, please.”
“Devilled kidneys, chops and tomato-sauce, York ham,” begins the man
again.
“Fried soles,” says Phyl, who has deliberated thoughtfully.
“Fwied soles,” says Dolly, relievedly.
[Illustration: “Fried soles, an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says
Weenie.]
“Fried soles, an’ egg, an’ chop, an’ devilly,” says Weenie.
But after breakfast the mother goes off to find a lodging much less
expensive for the last ten days. They take an omnibus and drive towards
the East End to a tall shabby house that says “Apartments,” and stands
in a row of others in a long, quiet, shabby street. It is not very far
away from the Docks, a most necessary qualification, for every day now
they all go to look over the great ships that lean against the black
wharves as if resting before they fight their way over the seas again.
Mrs. Conway had fancied that being poor people now they could go with
the poor third-class across those seas, and so save many pounds out
of those few hundreds of hers. But when she sees it, and the motley
crowd of nationalities assembled there on a departing boat, she shrinks
from such a step. The shipping agent she has approached is kindly and
interested in the young widow and her little girls. He tells her it is
impossible for her to contemplate it. She must go second-class; but he
will stretch a point, and imagine Weenie is two years younger than she
is—in fact, he will allow the three children to go on one adult ticket.
“But I isn’t two years younger than I is,” Weenie says agitatedly. Her
sharp ears have heard the conversation, and she fears she is to be
deprived of some of her rights.
“Yes you are,” says the gentleman solemnly. “You are only two, and a
very fine little girl for your age.” And he writes out the necessary
papers.
The fortnight shortens; in three days it will be Christmas; in seven
days they sail. They go to see some inexpensive sights—the Crystal and
Alexandra Palaces, the Zoo, Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower of London,
with the wonderful armour and the Crown Jewels.
Christmas Day. The landlady has intimated to all her boarders that she
expects them to dine out in respect for the day, and allow her some
rest. Mrs. Conway and the children muffle up to their eyes. All that
can be seen of Phyl are two excited blue eyes and the curl or two that
peep from under the seal-cap.
Outside there is no snow, only a black drift here and there. A heavy
yellow fog obscures everything. Once Weenie strays, and is quite lost
for the space of three minutes, during which the greatest excitement
and anxiety prevail; finally she is found again, weeping bitterly, not
six feet away. After that they all hold each other carefully and walk
four abreast, not a difficult thing, for most of the world is cosily
indoors to-day.
They go to St. Paul’s and hear the Christmas anthem. The great solemn
place is not a quarter full; the air hangs chill and strange; the light
is dim in the far-away aisles and pews, but near the altar gas is
burning.
When the great organ rolls vibratingly through all the place, and
the far-off voices of the choristers rise to the huge domed roof and
die away, Phyl and Dolly grip each other’s hands very tightly, their
throats swell, and they badly want to cry; though why they have no
idea. But Weenie sniggers during most of the service, for she has put
one of the little flat hassocks on top of another, and, standing on
the erection, tries to imagine she is as tall as her mother.
“These funny little hassocks are much smaller than those at our old
church,” she announced audibly, once.
Out in the dreary streets again. The emotional mood of Phyl and Dolly
has passed, and they profess themselves dying of hunger, and enter into
a pleasurable discussion as to what they will have to eat.
Mrs. Conway has supposed that plenty of restaurants will be open, and
that they will be able to get a dinner “Christmassy” enough to satisfy
the children, and still inexpensive. But up and down streets they
go, anxiously scanning signs, and not one of the places is open; the
mother’s heart begins to fail her. She has been obliged to forego hung
stockings, Christmas-tree,—all the bright merriment of the season.
Surely she will not have to let her little ones go without their dinner.
“It won’t matter about holly and burning fire around the dish for once,
if we can only have the pudding,” Phyl remarks; half-an-hour ago she
had said pudding without those accompaniments was not pudding at all.
“We could do without vegetables and things if only they could let us
have turkey, or fowl, or something,” said Dolly.
Weenie begins to cry for sheer need of something to eat.
Up streets, down streets—the mother dare not go too far afield for
fear of losing her bearings entirely in this thick wretched fog—and all
this part of the world shows blank shuttered windows and inhospitably
closed doors. At last they find a place where the door, though not open
to invite customers, is ajar.
There is a delicious fragrance of roast goose in the foggy air outside,
and they all sniff it luxuriously.
The mother pushes open the door, and they troop after her in eager
anticipation. But the shopkeeper is far from pleased at this advent.
“I am not prepared for customers to-day,” she says shortly, “the door
was left open by accident.”
“But I can smell roast goose,” Phyl says, excitedly.
“So can I,” says Dolly.
“An’ me,” cries Weenie.
“Surely you can prepare a meal of some kind for us,” says the mother.
“I will pay you well for your trouble”—she has grown quite reckless.
“If there is plenty of goose, we can do without pudding,” says Phyl.
“The goose is cooked to order,” the woman returns. “There’s a party of
gents coming in, and the vegetables and pudding is for them too.”
“They wouldn’t miss a leg or two,” Phyl says imploringly. “Oh, surely
they don’t want it _all_!”
“There are five of them,” says the woman inexorably. “I couldn’t
possibly touch it, nor yet break the pudding.”
Weenie begins to cry afresh.
“I wants my dinner,” she says again and again and again between her
tears.
“Have you nothing at all in the house?” poor Mrs. Conway says. “Is
there nowhere near you could send for anything? My little girls are
quite hungry.”
The woman seems to find it hard to understand how it comes about
that they are hungry and wandering about on such a day; they are
well-dressed, and very warmly wrapped up. But when the mother begs her
again to do her best to get them a meal, she consents reluctantly.
“You’ll have to take the back room,” she says, “the gents have engaged
the front one.”
“We don’t mind if it’s the kitchen,” says Dolly joyously, “do we, Phyl?”
They are led into a room full of small oil-clothed tables, with a
common-looking cruet, a jug of water, and a glass bowl filled with
lumps of sugar in the centre of each. The children try the tables one
after the other, and finally seat themselves at a round one that holds
a dirty menu-card.
In the interval during which the woman goes very reluctantly to “do her
best,” they study this card, and speculate as to what the “best” will
be.
“If they have three soups, roast beef, curry and veal pie,
custard-pudding and fritters, on common days,” says Phyl, “surely they
can find something nice when it’s Christmas Day.”
“But the woman says she has nothing at all in her pantry,” the mother
says.
“She said she’d send to the butcher’s by the back door,” contends Dolly.
“But what could she get there to cook quickly?” says the mother; “you
wouldn’t like to wait for a joint of beef to be cooked, would you? I am
greatly afraid it will be nothing better than chops.”
And nothing better it is, after a weary twenty minutes’ wait. The
little girls’ faces fall greatly when the harassed-looking woman
appears with a tray that contains nothing more than a dish of rather
burnt-looking chops, and a plate loaded with potatoes. But they
brighten when the mother requests that instead of one large one, four
little tea-pots shall be brought, so that each may pour out for herself.
For pudding, they have hastily stewed prunes, a box of figs, plenty of
bread-and-butter, and strawberry-jam. And so hungry has the chill air
made them, they are surprised to find they have greatly enjoyed their
Christmas dinner.
They go back to the boarding-house early in the afternoon. There are
no fires in sitting-room or dining-room, so they betake themselves to
their bedroom and light the gas, and cuddle close together and talk of
Australia.
And one more Christmas Day is a thing of the past.