More Pages from a Journal. William Hale White
is to say all of them excepting Miss Everard—were making plans for Christmas. They always thought a long time beforehand of what was going to happen. On Tuesday morning they began to anticipate Sunday, and when the Sunday afternoon wore away slowly and drearily, they looked forward to the excitement of omnibuses and butchers’ carts on Monday. A little more than a fortnight before Christmas, on Sunday at early dinner, a leg of mutton was provided. Mrs. Poulter always sat at the head of the table and carved. This was the position she occupied when Mr. Goacher came, and she did not offer to resign it. Mrs. Mudge was helped first, but it was towards the knuckle and she had no fat.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Poulter, but will you please give me a piece of fat?’
Mrs. Poulter, scowling, placed a minute portion of hard, half-burnt skin on Mrs. Mudge’s plate.
‘Much obliged, Mrs. Poulter, but I want a piece of fat—white fat—just there,’ pointing to it with her fork.
Mrs. Poulter, as we have said, was at enmity with Mrs. Mudge. Mrs. Mudge also was Low Church; and Mrs. Poulter was High. She had just returned from a High Church service at St. Paul’s, and the demand for an undue share of fat was particularly irritating.
‘Really, Mrs. Mudge, you forget that there is hardly enough to go round. For my part, though, I care nothing about it.’
‘If I had thought you did, Mrs. Poulter, I am sure I should not have dared to ask for it.’
‘I believe,’ said Miss Taggart, ‘that the office of fat in diet is to preserve heat.’
‘If fat promotes heat,’ said Miss Everard, ‘and I have no doubt it is so, considering Miss Taggart’s physiological knowledge, my advice is that we abstain from it.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Mr. Goacher, smiling, ‘that animals will not suit our requirements. But to be practical, Miss Toller might be instructed to order legs of mutton with more fat. This reminds me of beef, and beef reminds me of Christmas. It is now the second Sunday in Advent, and there is a subject which you will remember we had agreed to discuss this week.’
This important subject was a proposal by Mrs. Mudge that Miss Toller should dine with them on Christmas Day.
‘You, Mrs. Poulter,’ said Mr. Goacher, ‘are of opinion that we should not invite her?’
‘Certainly. I do not see how she is to send up the dinner properly if she is to be our guest, and I imagine also she would not be comfortable with us.’
Mrs. M. ‘Why shouldn’t she be comfortable? Of course, if we don’t try to make her so she won’t be. There are ways to make people comfortable and ways to make them uncomfortable. Miss Toller is just as good as any of us.’
Miss T. ‘She is not an educated woman, and I am sure she would rather remain downstairs; our conversation would not interest her.’
Miss E. ‘Pray, Miss Taggart, what is an educated woman?’
Miss T. ‘What a question, Miss Everard! By an educated woman is meant a woman who has been taught the usual curriculum of a lady in cultivated circles.’
Miss E. ‘What is the curriculum of a cultivated lady?’
Miss T. ‘Really you are provoking; you understand perfectly as well as I do.’
Miss E. ‘I am still in the dark. What is the curriculum of a cultivated lady?’
Mrs. P. ‘I much doubt if Miss Toller is acquainted with the ordinary facts of geography, even those which are familiar to common seamen in the Navy. She probably could not tell us the situation of the Straits of Panama.’
Mrs. Poulter had been reading something in the newspaper the day before about the Panama Canal.
Miss E. ‘Straits of Panama!’ but she checked herself when she saw that not a muscle moved on anybody’s face. ‘Now, my dear Mrs. Poulter, I assure you I have friends who dine in the best society, and I’ll be bound they never heard of the Straits of Panama.’
Mrs. P. ‘The society in which I was accustomed to mix, Miss Everard, would have excluded a person who was so grossly ignorant.’
Miss T. ‘The possession of scientific truth, in addition to conferring social advantages, adds so much to our happiness.’
Miss E. ‘This also I am inclined to dispute. Do you really feel happier, Mrs. Poulter, because you can tell us what continents are divided by the Straits of Panama?’
Mrs. M. ‘I’ll lay a wager Miss Toller knows as much as we do, but the things she knows aren’t the things we know.’
Mr. G. ‘We are digressing, I am afraid. I suggest we should have a ballot. I will write “Yes” on five little pieces of paper, and “No” on five, and after distribution we will fold them up, and each of us shall drop one in the vase on the mantel-shelf.’
This was done, and there were three for the invitation and two against it.
Mrs. Poulter and Mr. Goacher were left alone after the table was cleared.
‘Permit me to say, dear madam, that I entirely agreed with you.’
‘You must have voted with Mrs. Mudge.’
‘I did, but not from any sympathy with her views. I strive to keep the peace. In an establishment like this concord is necessary.’
Mr. Goacher, when he dropped his paper in the vase, had not forgotten that Mrs. Mudge had offered to provide the wine for the dinner. If she had been defeated the offer might have been withdrawn.
‘I have fancied before now that I have seen in you a decided preference for Mrs. Mudge.’
This was true. He had ‘tried it on with her,’ to use her own words, but she was impregnable. ‘It was no good with me,’ she said to Miss Everard; ‘I saw what he was after.’
‘My dear Mrs. Poulter, your supposition is preposterous—forgive me—you do not suppose that I am unable to recognise superiority in birth, in manners, and in intellect. It was better, on this particular occasion, to conciliate Mrs. Mudge. She is not worthy of serious opposition. Miss Toller will not sit near you.’
Mrs. Poulter was pacified.
‘I am glad to hear this explanation. I had hoped that one might be forthcoming.’
‘I am truly thankful I am worthy of hope, truly thankful.’
Mrs. Poulter dropped Palmer’s Ecclesiastical History, which she had begun to read every Sunday afternoon for three months. Mr. Goacher picked it up, and was about to take Mrs. Poulter’s hand, but Miss Taggart entered and the conversation closed just when it was becoming interesting.
In a day or two Mrs. Poulter informed Miss Toller that the ladies and Mr. Goacher had been pleased to express a wish that she should dine with them on Christmas Day. She consented with becoming humility, as even Mrs. Poulter confessed, but with many secret misgivings. She desired to strengthen herself with her lodgers on whom her living depended, but Helen was more than a servant. She was her friend, and she could not bear the thought of leaving her in the kitchen. Helen, too, was passionate and jealous. Miss Toller therefore ventured to ask Mrs. Poulter whether, as it was Christmas, Helen also might be invited. Mrs. Poulter signified to Miss Toller her extreme surprise at the suggestion.
‘The line, Miss Toller, must be drawn somewhere. Helen will have the gratuity usual at this season—she is a well-regulated person and will see the impropriety of intrusion into a sphere for which she is unfit.’
Miss Toller withdrew. She dared not venture to explain or apologise to Helen, although delay would make matters worse. She went into North Street and spent ten shillings which she could ill afford in buying a locket for her.
Christmas Eve was black and bitter. After the lodgers