Peter and Jane - Sarah Macnaughtan (novels for students .TXT) 📗

himself by Christmas Day, his wife surely would pick up in health as soon as the warm weather should come. He believed he was doing right in making light of her ailments, and Mrs. Wrottesley saw all this quite plainly, and loved him none the less for it.

'How is your cold?' said Miss Abingdon, with sympathy in her voice, and the vicar threw back his handsome head and tapped his throat, which he said was a bit husky still, although it was no use giving way to illness. 'Master your health,' he said in a tone of muscular Christianity, 'and it won't master you—eh, mamma?' he added, with an encouraging glance at his wife's pale face on the sofa.

The Vicar of Wakefield, and even Mr. Pickwick himself, had never been more jovial at a Christmas party than were Miss Abingdon's guests. A silver bowl in the middle of the table suggested punch; Canon Wrottesley must brew a wassail bowl. A footman was sent for this thing and that, for lemons and boiling water—the water must boil, remember? And too much sugar would spoil the whole thing. The vicar stirred the ingredients with an air, and poured from time to time a spoonful of the punch into a wine-glass, and sampled its quality by rolling it in his mouth and screwing up his eyes.

The wassail bowl being now mixed to his satisfaction, he filled the glasses of the company, allotting to each lady the thimbleful which he believed to be a woman's share of any alcoholic beverage, and extracting compliments from every one. The wassail bowl was a triumph, and the candle of Mr. Pickwick was put out. Even Dickens' hero could not have given such an air of jollity to a festive occasion like this. He toasted every one in the good old-fashioned custom, requesting 'A glass of wine with you' on this side and on that. After dinner the presence of Dorothy Avory furnished the pretext for inaugurating a country dance in the hall. Canon Wrottesley pushed chairs aside and rolled rugs up, and before many minutes were over Sir Roger de Coverley was in full swing, and he was footing it with the indomitable energy of the man whose feet may be heavy but whose heart is aye young.

Miss Abingdon in grey satin was the vicar's partner, and attempted to go through the steps in the minuet style; the young Wrottesleys, on the other hand, were at an age when to be asked to dance Sir Roger de Coverley can only be construed as deadly insult. Fortunately for them, the vicar by some strategical movement always found himself in the enviable position of the dancer who ambles forward to make his bow.

The lady who was playing the piano at last stopped the music with a few solemn chords, faintly suggestive of an Amen, and Canon Wrottesley, who was proceeding with his fifth or sixth sally into the middle of the figure, stopped breathless. Dorothy Avory looked over-heated when the dance was finished, and as she had furnished the excuse for a rather poor attempt at romping, her obvious fatigue was quite sufficient to give the canon an opportunity of a little quiet reading until all were rested. He put on his spectacles—which he always wore with an air of apology—and gave out the title of the story, The Old Vicomte—A Christmas Episode.

Doubtless the scene of the story was laid in France, but that fact hardly justified Canon Wrottesley in reading the whole of it in broken English. His knowledge of French had always been a matter of pride with him, and he enjoyed rolling out the foreign names with a perfect accent.

The number of listeners in the room had diminished considerably before the reading was finished. Good-nights were said on all sides, the Vicarage party drove away, and, the conscientious romping and jollity being over, it may have been felt by some of Miss Abingdon's guests that the duties of Christmas Day had not been altogether light, and that now perhaps enforced cheerfulness might be abandoned in favour of a more easy and natural frame of mind.

Kitty Sherard came into Jane's room in her dressing-gown, with her hair-brush in her hand, and deliberately relaxed after the fatigues of the evening. Most girls with such a profusion of curls as Kitty's would have been content to allow them to wander unrestrained over her shoulders; but Miss Sherard with her passion for decoration would have dressed beautifully on a desert island, if her trunks had been washed ashore with her; she had fastened a knot of rose-coloured ribbon in her hair, and wore it on one side just over her eye with an unstudied and perfectly successful effect.

'I suppose you know,' said Jane, 'that you are extraordinarily pretty, Kitty?'

'I spend a fortune on dresses which look cheap,' said Kitty, 'and so people think I am nice-looking.'

Jane thought such humility on the part of any one so pretty as Miss Sherard was a sign in her that she must be out of spirits; so she said, 'Oh, nonsense, Kitty!' in a very affectionate way, and begged that Miss Sherard would smoke a cigarette if she felt inclined.

'No,' said Kitty, 'I don't think I want to smoke.'

Jane drew her chair nearer the big chair on the hearth-rug, and, blowing out the candles, the two girls sat by the firelight.

Tenderness, as every one knows, is an ineradicable instinct of womanhood. Kitty Sherard might smoke cigarettes and drive in a very high dogcart, but just then her heart felt very nearly breaking, and she was so grateful to Jane for blowing out the lights and sitting near her that in defiance of her mood she began to laugh.

'What a moist party we were in church this morning!' she said, smiling broadly, and ignoring the fact that her eyes had tears in them. 'Miss Abingdon looked conscientiously tearful, and Mrs. Avory applied herself to her pocket-handkerchief as soon as the canon began his usual joyful Christmas message about empty chairs and absent friends.'

'Poor Mrs. Avory!' said Jane, 'weeping has become a sort of habit with her, and tears come very easily. If we had trimmed parasols and eaten tinned food for supper for a year or two, Kitty, I imagine we should become very tearful too.'

Miss Sherard unloosed the rose-coloured ribbon which bound her hair, and beginning to brush out her curls she said 'Yes,' slowly, and turned to other topics.

'Do you ever feel quite old, Jane?' she said at last. 'I do, especially during a long frost. I feel as if I had tried every single bit of pleasure that there is in the world and had come through it and out on the other side, and found that none of it was the least little bit of good.'

'Heaven send us a thaw soon!' exclaimed Jane.

'I quite adore my father,' said Kitty with emphasis, 'and I think he helps to keep me young; but it is rather pathetic, isn't it, that any one should think one so perfect as he thinks me?'

Jane rose ostentatiously from her place and opened the window and consulted a thermometer that hung outside.

'Still freezing hard,' she said, and returned to her seat again.

'You are rather a brick, Jane,' said Kitty.

'To-morrow,' said Jane, 'I shall certainly write to your father urging his immediate return before you begin to grow grey-haired.'

'You 've had a fairly odious Christmas Day,' said Kitty, not noticing the interruption. 'You 've had to dry Miss Abingdon's tears, and listen to Canon Wrottesley reading aloud, and you have had to be hearty to carol-singers and to waft holly-berries in the faces of mothers. Why don't you throw something at me when I come to your room in the middle of the night as cross as a bear with a sore head, and begin to grumble at you?'

This remark Jane considered serious. 'The end of it will be, that you 'll get engaged to be married, Kitty,' she said, 'and then I shall jeer at you and recall to you every one of your past flirtations, and all your good resolutions about remaining single, and being happy ever after.'

'Is it really still Christmas Day?' said Kitty. 'I thought it began quite a week ago, and that we had had nights and nights of wassail bowls and old memories and Christmas-card cheerfulness.' She gathered up her hair-pins and brushes and gave a yawn. 'If it is nearly twelve o'clock I suppose I ought to go,' she said.

'I am not a bit sleepy,' quoth Jane.

'Apart from the fact of my winter being dull,' said Kitty, 'with my beloved parent in Rome, my temper is never proof against giving way when any one reads aloud to me. The story of the French vicomte is really answerable for my present horrible state of mind.'

'One always connects reading aloud with sick-beds and work-parties,' said Jane. 'When you are ill, Kitty, I intend to come and read good books to you.'

'Mrs. Avory encouraged the canon,' said Kitty. 'I found out afterwards that she had read the story before, and yet she gave a sort of surprised giggle at everything.'

'The Wrottesleys are being awfully good to her,' said Jane excusingly.

Kitty was still gazing into the fire; her tone when she spoke was that of a sensible person considering some subject only remotely interesting to her. 'I suppose,' she said steadily, but with a touch of curiosity, 'that Mrs. Avory will always continue to think that to be true for ever and ever to Toffy is the most noble and virtuous action in the world.'

'They have been very faithful to each other,' said Jane.

A most unexpected thing then happened, for Kitty kneeled down suddenly on the hearth-rug, while the firelight shone in her eyes and gave a fierce red look to them. 'Oh, what is the use of it all?' she cried, 'and what is to be the end of it? Mr. Avory is not going to die—he 's the strongest man I know, and he can't be much more than forty years old! How does she think it is all going to end? Don't you see how absurd the whole thing is? She's seven years older than Toffy, so that even if she could marry him it would not be the best thing for him. Oh, I know she has behaved well, and worked hard! I know she has eaten horrid food and trimmed parasols, and been faithful and good, but will she ever let him care for any one else?'

'Kitty!' said Jane; she took another step forward, and taking Kitty's face between her hands she turned it towards her. 'Kitty!'

'Isn't it ridiculous!' said Kitty. She swallowed down a sob in her throat and made a pretence of laughing while her hands played with her hair-brush, and her eyes, which endeavoured to blaze defiance, only succeeded in looking large and full of tears.

'I never knew—I never guessed——' began Jane helplessly.

'You were never meant to know,' said Kitty, and she turned away her face suddenly from Jane's encircling hands and buried it in the cushion of the chair. Her voice dropped ominously; she was still kneeling on the hearth-rug with the paraphernalia of her toilet about her—ribbons and gold-backed brushes, and a little enamel box for hair-pins. 'No one was ever meant to know!' she cried, 'and now I shall never be able to look you in the face again as long as we both do live! It's been going on so long, Jane, and you 've all been so sorry for Mrs. Avory, and so sorry for Toffy.'

'Does he know?' asked Jane, in a low voice.

Kitty raised her head and pretended to laugh again. 'I 've not proposed to him yet,' she said.

'But he cares,' said Jane, with conviction. 'He does care, Kitty!'

'Oh,' said Kitty, bursting into tears, 'isn't it all a frightful muddle!'

The conclusion, therefore, which may be arrived at on the vexed question as to which is preferable—the lot of the man