_ Mr. Povey was playing a hymn tune on the harmonium, it having been
decided that no one should go to chapel. Constance, in mourning,
with a white apron over her dress, sat on a hassock in front of
the fire; and near her, in a rocking-chair, Mrs. Baines swayed
very gently to and fro. The weather was extremely cold. Mr.
Povey's mittened hands were blue and red; but, like many
shopkeepers, he had apparently grown almost insensible to vagaries
of temperature. Although the fire was immense and furious, its
influence, owing to the fact that the mediaeval grate was designed
to heat the flue rather than the room, seemed to die away at the
borders of the fender. Constance could not have been much closer
to it without being a salamander. The era of good old-fashioned
Christmases, so agreeably picturesque for the poor, was not yet at
an end.
Yes, Samuel Povey had won the battle concerning the locus of the
family Christmas. But he had received the help of a formidable
ally, death. Mrs. Harriet Maddack had passed away, after an
operation, leaving her house and her money to her sister. The
solemn rite of her interment had deeply affected all the
respectability of the town of Axe, where the late Mr. Maddack had
been a figure of consequence; it had even shut up the shop in St.
Luke's Square for a whole day. It was such a funeral as Aunt
Harriet herself would have approved, a tremendous ceremonial which
left on the crushed mind an ineffaceable, intricate impression of
shiny cloth, crape, horses with arching necks and long manes, the
drawl of parsons, cake, port, sighs, and Christian submission to
the inscrutable decrees of Providence. Mrs. Baines had borne
herself with unnatural calmness until the funeral was over: and
then Constance perceived that the remembered mother of her
girlhood existed no longer. For the majority of human souls it
would have been easier to love a virtuous principle, or a
mountain, than to love Aunt Harriet, who was assuredly less a
woman than an institution. But Mrs. Baines had loved her, and she
had been the one person to whom Mrs. Baines looked for support and
guidance. When she died, Mrs. Baines paid the tribute of respect
with the last hoarded remains of her proud fortitude, and
weepingly confessed that the unconquerable had been conquered, the
inexhaustible exhausted; and became old with whitening hair.
She had persisted in her refusal to spend Christmas in Bursley,
but both Constance and Samuel knew that the resistance was only
formal. She soon yielded. When Constance's second new servant took
it into her head to leave a week before Christmas, Mrs. Baines
might have pointed out the finger of Providence at work again, and
this time in her favour. But no! With amazing pliancy she
suggested that she should bring one of her own servants to 'tide
Constance over' Christmas. She was met with all the forms of
loving solicitude, and she found that her daughter and son-in-law
had 'turned out of' the state bedroom in her favour. Intensely
nattered by this attention (which was Mr. Povey's magnanimous
idea), she nevertheless protested strongly. Indeed she 'would not
hear of it.'
"Now, mother, don't be silly," Constance had said firmly. "You
don't expect us to be at all the trouble of moving back again, do
you?" And Mrs. Baines had surrendered in tears.
Thus had come Christmas. Perhaps it was fortunate that, the Axe
servant being not quite the ordinary servant, but a benefactor
where a benefactor was needed, both Constance and her mother
thought it well to occupy themselves in household work, 'sparing'
the benefactor as much as possible. Hence's Constance's white
apron.
"There he is!" said Mr. Povey, still playing, but with his eye on
the street.
Constance sprang up eagerly. Then there was a knock on the door.
Constance opened, and an icy blast swept into the room. The
postman stood on the steps, his instrument for knocking (like a
drumstick) in one hand, a large bundle of letters in the other,
and a yawning bag across the pit of his stomach.
"Merry Christmas, ma'am!" cried the postman, trying to keep warm
by cheerfulness.
Constance, taking the letters, responded, while Mr. Povey, playing
the harmonium with his right hand, drew half a crown from his
pocket with the left.
"Here you are!" he said, giving it to Constance, who gave it to
the postman.
Fan, who had been keeping her muzzle warm with the extremity of
her tail on the sofa, jumped down to superintend the transaction.
"Brrr!" vibrated Mr. Povey as Constance shut the door.
"What lots!" Constance exclaimed, rushing to the fire. "Here,
mother! Here, Sam!"
The girl had resumed possession of the woman's body.
Though the Baines family had few friends (sustained hospitality
being little practised in those days) they had, of course, many
acquaintances, and, like other families, they counted their
Christmas cards as an Indian counts scalps. The tale was
satisfactory. There were between thirty and forty envelopes.
Constance extracted Christmas cards rapidly, reading their
contents aloud, and then propping them up on the mantelpiece. Mrs.
Baines assisted. Fan dealt with the envelopes on the floor. Mr.
Povey, to prove that his soul was above toys and gewgaws,
continued to play the harmonium.
"Oh, mother!" Constance murmured in a startled, hesitant voice,
holding an envelope.
"What is it, my chuck?"
"It's----"
The envelope was addressed to "Mrs. and Miss Baines" in large,
perpendicular, dashing characters which Constance instantly
recognised as Sophia's. The stamps were strange, the postmark
'Paris.' Mrs. Baines leaned forward and looked.
"Open it, child," she said.
The envelope contained an English Christmas card of a common type,
a spray of holly with greetings, and on it was written, "I do hope
this will reach you on Christmas morning. Fondest love." No
signature, nor address.
Mrs. Baines took it with a trembling hand, and adjusted her
spectacles. She gazed at it a long time.
"And it has done!" she said, and wept.
She tried to speak again, but not being able to command herself,
held forth the card to Constance and jerked her head in the
direction of Mr. Povey. Constance rose and put the card on the
keyboard of the harmonium.
"Sophia!" she whispered.
Mr. Povey stopped playing. "Dear, dear!" he muttered.
Fan, perceiving that nobody was interested in her feats, suddenly
stood still.
Mrs. Baines tried once more to speak, but could not. Then, her
ringlets shaking beneath the band of her weeds, she found her
feet, stepped to the harmonium, and, with a movement almost
convulsive, snatched the card from Mr. Povey, and returned to her
chair.
Mr. Povey abruptly left the room, followed by Fan. Both the women
were in tears, and he was tremendously surprised to discover a
dangerous lump in his own throat. The beautiful and imperious
vision of Sophia, Sophia as she had left them, innocent, wayward,
had swiftly risen up before him and made even him a woman too! Yet
he had never liked Sophia. The awful secret wound in the family
pride revealed itself to him as never before, and he felt
intensely the mother's tragedy, which she carried in her breast as
Aunt Harriet had carried a cancer.
At dinner he said suddenly to Mrs. Baines, who still wept: "Now,
mother, you must cheer up, you know."
"Yes, I must," she said quickly. And she did do.
Neither Samuel nor Constance saw the card again. Little was said.
There was nothing to say. As Sophia had given no address she must
be still ashamed of her situation. But she had thought of her
mother and sister. She ... she did not even know that Constance
was married ... What sort of a place was Paris? To Bursley, Paris
was nothing but the site of a great exhibition which had recently
closed.
Through the influence of Mrs. Baines a new servant was found for
Constance in a village near Axe, a raw, comely girl who had never
been in a 'place.' And through the post it was arranged that this
innocent should come to the cave on the thirty-first of December.
In obedience to the safe rule that servants should never be
allowed to meet for the interchange of opinions, Mrs. Baines
decided to leave with her own servant on the thirtieth. She would
not be persuaded to spend the New Year in the Square. On the
twenty-ninth poor Aunt Maria died all of a sudden in her cottage
in Brougham Street. Everybody was duly distressed, and in
particular Mrs. Baines's demeanour under this affliction showed
the perfection of correctness. But she caused it to be understood
that she should not remain for the funeral. Her nerves would be
unequal to the ordeal; and, moreover, her servant must not stay to
corrupt the new girl, nor could Mrs. Baines think of sending her
servant to Axe in advance, to spend several days in idle gossip
with her colleague.
This decision took the backbone out of Aunt Maria's funeral, which
touched the extreme of modesty: a hearse and a one-horse coach.
Mr. Povey was glad, because he happened to be very busy. An hour
before his mother-in-law's departure he came into the parlour with
the proof of a poster.
"What is that, Samuel?" asked Mrs. Baines, not dreaming of the
blow that awaited her.
"It's for my first Annual Sale," replied Mr. Povey with false
tranquillity.
Mrs. Baines merely tossed her head. Constance, happily for
Constance, was not present at this final defeat of the old order.
Had she been there, she would certainly not have known where to
look. _