“Have you and her had a fever?” one little girl inquired of Moppet, pointing at Lassie as she asked the question.
“No!”
“Then why was your hair cut so short?”
“That’s the F’ench way,” explained Moppet, gravely. “We are not F’ench, but we live in F’ance and mother likes our hair cut in the F’ench way.”
“Oh,” sighed the long-haired child, relieved in mind. “It’s very ugly. Gracie had her hair like that once, but then she’d had a fever. Your mother must be a funny woman.”
“No she ain’t,” cried Moppet, tiring instantly. She ain’t half so funny as your mother.” Moppet pointed to a stout lady in black velvet and a Roman sash — a stout lady with a rubicund face. “I shouldn’t like my mother to be as fat as yours, or as red,” said Moppet, and with this parting shot marched off and left the long-haired beautifully brushed and crinkled little girl inanely staring, shocked, but far too stupid to retort, hereditary fleshiness muffling her intellectual faculties.
Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great oaken settle in the chimney corner, after somewhat languidly performing his duty as host. Moppet walked straight to him, clambered on his knee, and nestled her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at him with very much the same dumb devotion he had seen in the topaz eyes of a favourite Clumber spaniel.
“Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little friends?” he asked kindly.
“I don’t like children. They are so silly,” answered Moppet, with decision. “I like you much better.”
“Do you really, now? I wonder how much you like me. As well as you like junket?”
“Oh, what a silly question! As if one could care for any nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live person?”
“Couldn’t one? I believe there are little boys in Boscastle who are fonder of plum pudding than of all their relations.”
“They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy; but he is not so greedy as that. I shouldn’t like to live in the same house with him if he were.”
“For fear he should turn cannibal and eat you?”
“What is a camomile, and does it really eat people?”
“Never mind, Moppet; there are none in our part of the world,” said Sir John, hastily, feeling that he had made a faux pas, and might set Moppet dreaming of cannibals if he explained their nature and attributes.
He had been warned by his friend Danby that Moppet was given to dreaming at night of anything that had moved her wonder or her fear in the day, and that she would awaken from such dreams in a cold perspiration, with wild eyes and clenched hands. Her sleep had been haunted by goblins, and made hideous by men who had sold their shadows, and by wolves who were hungry for little girls in red cloaks. It had been found perilous to tell her the old familiar fairy tales which most children have been told, and from which many children have suffered in the dim early years, before the restrictions of space and climate are understood, and wolves, bears, and lions located in their own peculiar latitudes.
Sir John looked down at the little dark head which was pressed so lovingly against his waistcoat, and at the lung dark lashes that veiled the deep-set eyes.
“And so you really like me?” said he.
“I really love you. Nut so much as I love mother, but veway, veway much.”
“As much as Danby — as Uncle Tom?”
“Better than Uncle Tom; but please don’t tell him so. It might make him unhappy.”
“I dare say it would. Uncle Tom has a jealous disposition. He might shut you up in a brazen tower.” Another faux pas. Moppet would be dreaming of brazen towers. Imagination, assisted by plum pudding, would run readily into tormenting visions.
Happily Moppet made no remark upon the tower. She was thinking — thinking deeply — and presently she looked up at Sir John with grave, grey eyes, and said —
“I believe I love you better than Uncle Tom, because you are a grander gentleman,” she said musingly, “and because you have this beautiful big house. It is yours, isn’t it — your veway, veway own?”
“My very, very own. And so you like my house, Moppet? And will you be sorry to go away?”
“Oh no, because I shall be going to mother.”
“Then you like your own home better than this big house?”
“No, I don’t. I should be very silly if I did. Home is a funny little house, in a funny little sloping garden on the side of a hill. Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. There is a tiny salon, and a tiny dining-room, and a dear little kitchen, where the bonne à tout faire lives, and four tiny bedrooms. It was a fisherman’s cottage once, and then an English lady — an old lady — bought it, and made new rooms, and had it all made pretty, and then she died; and then Uncle Tom happened to see it, and took it for mother.”
“And was my little Moppet born there?”
“No, I was born a long, long way off — up in the hills.”
“What hills?”
“The north-west provinces. It’s an awful long way off — but I can’t tell you anything about it,” added Moppet, with a solemn shake of her cropped head, “for I was born before I can remember. Laddie says we all came over the sea — but we mustn’t talk to mother about that time, and Laddie’s very stupid — he may have told me all wrong.”
“And doesn’t Lassie remember coming home in the ship?”
“She remembers a gentleman who gave her goodies.”
“But not the ship?”
“No, not the ship; but she thinks there must have been a ship, for the wind blew very hard, and the gentleman went up and down as if he was in a swing. Laddie pretends to remember all the sailors’ names, but I don’t think he really can.”
“And the only house you can remember is the house on the hill?”
“Where mother is now — yes, that’s the only one, and I’m very fond of it. Are you fond of this house?”
“Yes, Moppet; one is always fond of the house in which one was born. I was born here.”
Moppet looked up at him wonderingly.
“Is that very surprising?” he asked, smiling down at her. “It seems rather surprising you should ever have been born,” replied Moppet, frankly; “you are so veway old.” Yes, but one has to begin, you see, Moppet.”
“It must have been a twemendously long time ago when you and Uncle Tom began.”
The explosion of a cracker startled Moppet from the meditative mood. It was the signal for the rifling of the tree. The crackers — the gold and silver and sapphire and ruby and emerald crackers — were being distributed, and were exploding in every direction before Moppet could run to the tree and hold up two tiny hands, crying excitedly, “Me, me, me!”
It had been settled that the tree was not to be touched till the visitors had finished their tea. The house-party, represented by Laddie and Lassie, had been fuming and fretting at the slowness with which cakes and buns were consumed; but now Uncle Tom, robed in a long maroon-velvet dressing-gown of Sir John’s, with a black velvet cap on his head, to represent a necromancer, had given the signal, and was scattering crackers among the eager hands of dancing, leaping children, all crying, “Me, me!”
Mr. Danby had taken a good deal of trouble to disguise himself. He had made himself a long beard of white horsehair — a beard which would have done for old Father Time himself — and which reached from Mr. Danby’s ears to his waist. But the children hardly looked at him and expressed no astonishment at his appearance. All they cared for was to get the crackers and the toys.
“Me, me! Another cracker, please. Please, please give me one!” That was the cry, varied by smaller voices saying, “Dive me a doll,”
“Dive me that pretty fing up dere!” pointing to a glittering gilt watch, or to a fairy in star-spangled skirt.
But the toys on the tree were little dainty things more for ornament than use. The real toys were in a great washing basket which two men brought into the hall, staggering under it.
There were toys enough for ev
erybody; and Mr. Danby distributed them with admirable judgment. He had even a packet for Miss Hawberk, tied with blue ribbon, out of which rolled a pair of long gloves such as young ladies love. Adela screamed at sight of the gloves, just as the children screamed at their railway engines and stone bricks.
When every child had received the most appropriate toy possible and general contentment prevailed, the basket was not even half empty. Laddie peered into its depths curiously, hugging his clockwork steam-engine under his arm — a green engine modelled upon those on the South-Western Railway, which are said to be the finest in England.
“There are lots more toys,” he said to Mr. Danby, with that shrewd insinuating look which marks childish greed. “Are we going to have those?”
“No, Laddie. You have had your share. Those are for other children.”
“What children?”
“You’ll see, Laddie, all in good time.”
Laddie thought the only good time would be a time which would give him a share in those unopened parcels.
For Moppet the necromancer had a doll — a lovely fairhaired doll, with staring blue eyes which occupied about a third of her face. Nature has endowed the expensive doll with these enormous eyes. To Moppet’s lively imagination the doll, from the moment it was deposited in her arms, became a personage.
“My darling, you must have a name!” she murmured tenderly. “I shall call you Mary, after me.”
She ran to Sir John with her treasure.
“Isn’t she lovely?” she asked; and then, without waiting to be answered, “Her name is Mary.”
His wife’s name! He started ever so slightly at the sound; so familiar long ago, so strange to-day.
“Why Mary?”
“She is called after me. I am her godmother. I shall have to teach her the catechism — the catechism that Laddie has to learn.”
“And so you have an alias. I thought your name was Moppet,” said Sir John, as she seated her doll on his knee and stood leaning against him, touching and examining that divine piece of waxwork, its lace petticoats, its blue silk shoes and open-work socks — a very paragon of dolls.
“You knew my real name wasn’t Moppet,” she said. “Nobody was ever christened Moppet! It’s only one of mother’s nonsense names, like Laddie and Lassie.”
“Oh, then you all have bettermost names fur high days and holidays. Pray, what is Laddie’s name?”
“The same as yours.”
“Oh, he is John, is he?”
“Yes, John — but not Sir John. He is not a bawonight,” making a great deal of the strange word which the servants had taught her, as an attribute of the grave elderly gentleman to whom she had taken so kindly. “Will he be a bawonight when he grows up?”
“That’s his own look-out. I take it he will have to win his baronetcy.”
“Win it? At cards?”
“Why, what does my little Moppet know about cards?”
“Lots. We play at spekilation with Uncle Tom, for nuts, and vingt-et-un, and he says that’s almost as good as bac-bac-bac-ca-ra!” She stumbled over the word, but finished it triumphantly.
“I am afraid Uncle Tom is a dangerous person to be with children.”
“He is. Mother says so. He takes us down to the plage and gives us donkey rides, and I once fell off” — this with an air—”and grazed my elbow. The blood came through the sleeve of my over-all. Lassie has never fallen off a donkey. Laddie has. They generally lie down with him. He kicks them too much. They will bear a good deal of kicking because their skins are so thick, but Laddie overdoes it. He is not a nice boy — not always,” Moppet concluded musingly.
She liked standing quietly at Sir John’s knee with her doll, though the other children were playing Post in a noisy circle round Mr. Danby and Adela on the other side of the hall. The many-coloured tapers on the Christmas-tree were all extinguished but not burnt out, only half-burnt, and the tree was still covered with golden balls, and tiny oranges, and glittering green and ruby fish, and fairy dolls nodding and trembling in space.
“Wouldn’t you like to go and play with the children over there, Moppet? They seem to be having a spirited game.”
“I don’t care for games. I like to be here with you and Mary. You don’t mind me here, do you?”
“No, my dear. I think I can put up with you till your bedtime.”
That word bedtime is always it damper to juvenile spirits. In all those early years of life the idea of bed is pretty much what the idea of Portland or Dartmoor is to the criminal classes. Children hear their elders talk of wanting to go to bed, and wonder at such a perverted taste. There is always a sense of humiliation in that premature banishment. The grown-ups sit smiling and talking — bid goodnight condescendingly in a parenthesis — and one feels that their evening is only just beginning. The elder sisters step into a carriage perhaps, and are whisked off to the opera or play-house, while strong-armed Nurse conducts the little ones to their nursery cots — to premature night and darkness that seem endless. It is a cruel inequality of fortune.
“Isn’t it a lovely tree?” Moppet inquired presently, her eyes wandering to that fairy-like conifer in the middle of the hall, with horizontal branches rising tier above tier, laden with things of beauty.
“Yes, it is a fine specimen of the arbor toyensis.”
“There’s only one thing that makes me sorry about it,” said Moppet, with a sigh.
“And what may that be?”
“Everybody hasn’t got a tree.”
“Ah, you are a little socialist. You would like all children to have just as good a Christmas as you are having.”
“Why shouldn’t they? They’re just as good as me, ain’t they?”
“I suppose they are, Moppet; only you happen to be here and they are somewhere else. But don’t be down-hearted, my pet; there are a great many Christmas-trees blooming with toys and golden flowers to-night, and thousands of children dancing round them, just as happy as you and Lassie and Laddie.”
“Are there more children who have a Christmas-tree than the children who haven’t a Christmas-tree?” asked Moppet, after a pause, with the child’s love of statistics.
“No, I’m afraid there are more of the treeless children than of the fortunate ones.”
“Isn’t that a pity? If it was only the naughty children who had to go without toys it wouldn’t matter,” argued Moppet, severely; “but I dare say there are naughty boys and girls getting toys and crackers, while there are poor good children without so much as a penny toy, only because their mothers haven’t any money. Our mother isn’t rich, but we’ve had a Christmas-tree ever since I can remember — quite two Christmases. It was only a little tree; but such a pretty little tree. Uncle Tom sent us all the toys and ornaments and little coloured candles in a big wooden box; and we all helped mother to dress the tree. It was more fun than not knowing anything about it, and standing outside the door in the dark, and then coming in and being surprised. Our fun lasted ever so much longer, and we were surprised after all when we saw the tree with the candles all lighted. It wasn’t a bit like the same tree.”
“And you wouldn’t have known the dolls if you had met them in the street?” said Sir John, smiling at her grave earnestness.
Bedtime, the inexorable summons, put an end to the conversation. The fair-haired Rectory girls and the other little people were bidding good night, and the girls were being muffled in pink and blue hoods and cloaks, while the boys struggled manfully with the sleeves of their warm overcoats.
A cold wind blew in from the vestibule when the outer door was opened — a nipping, frosty wind.
“There’s a change in the weather,” said Mr. Danby. “They’ve had snow at Brighton and at Portsmouth. I shouldn’t wonder if our green Christmas were to change to a white one.”
“Oh, how nice that would be!” cried Laddie, clapping his hands.
“Would you like to be snowed-up at Penlyon Place? Well, we don’t often get snow in Cornwall, but perhaps we ma
y be able to oblige you,” said Sir John, gaily.
CHAPTER VI.
WHEN Moppet looked out of window next morning she looked at a white world — a world of fairy-like trees, whose interwoven branches made a brilliant lace-work that sparkled in the sun. A north-east wind was blowing under a blue, cloudless sky. It must have been snowing for a long time to cover the park and gardens with that thick white carpet; but the morning was bright and sunny, and Moppet thought the change delightful.
Pleasant news greeted her at breakfast. First a little present from mother, a soft Shetland shawl, knitted by mother’s own fingers, and snowy-white like the outside world a shawl to wrap Moppet’s head and shoulders when she ran out into the garden. Lassie had one exactly like it, and Laddie had a big, thick white scarf. They had come in a post-parcel to Mr. Danby.
“Did mother know it was going to be cold?” wondered Lassie.
“Mother’s thoughts always go before things,” said Moppet, gravely.
The next pleasantness was the news of a party, another children’s party, which had been planned by Mr. Danby and Miss Hawberk, and which was submitted to Sir John for approval.
Would he object to their giving the cottage children a tea-party in the schoolhouse that evening, with the reversion of the Christmas-tree as the feature of the entertainment? They had plenty of toys left for distribution, plenty of Tom Smith crackers.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1041
