The Christmas Hirelings (Children's Book). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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NO, no, let Danby indulge his fancy. Danby’s fancies are always successful, however absurd they may seem to reasonable beings.
DANBY (throwing his head back upon the chair-cushion and laughing his joyous laugh, a laugh that always puts other people in good spirits). There spoke my noble Sheik — the Prince of Penlyon — the man with the blood of Cornish kings in his veins. We may have our little bit of reasonable Christmas festivity, Miss Hawberk and I, and you won’t mind. But how about the fee for the children? We must pay for our little mummers. We must compensate the parents or parent fur the sacrifice of Christmas pleasures — the happy morning faces over the stockingful of toys — the glowing evening faces round the humble fireplace, watching the chestnuts roasting on the bars. You don’t know what a little world of joy humble folks lose when they don’t have their children about them at Christmas.
SIR JOHN. Confound the fee! Give them twenty, fifty pounds, if you like; but don’t talk to me of poor children. I will have no poor children at Penlyon. Adela is quite right. They have always colds in their heads; they don’t know how to treat decent furniture; they would scroop the heavy chairs on the oak floor; they would leave prints of their horrid little thumbs on my books; and though the imprint of the human thumb may be very interesting to the detective physiologist, I am not a student of thumbs, and I want to keep my books clean.
DANBY. I am not thinking of poor children in your sense of the word. Though I am thinking of people for whom your cheque, of say fifty pounds, would be a boon.
Sir JOHN. Poor relations of your own, I suppose, Danby. Don’t be offended. Everybody has poor relations.
MISS HAWBERK. Dear Princess Romanoff-Moscova has often told me how much she has to do for some of her German connections.
DANBY. You’ve hit it. I am thinking of some poor relations.
SIR JOHN. Good. If they have any of your blood they are sure to be little ladies and gentlemen. Only — forgive me, Danby — poverty is apt to be pushing. I shall write my cheque for a hundred guineas, since the little people belong to you; but don’t let this Christmas visit be the thin end of the wedge. Don’t let me hear any more of the little dears, unless I myself wish it.
DANBY. You shall see them and hear of them no more after old Christmas Day, unless at your own desire. Remember it is not a visit. It is a transaction. You hire these little creatures for your amusement — our amusement if you like — just as you would hire a conjuror for a juvenile party. You pay them their fee, and you have done with them.
SIR JOHN. That is as it should be.
SIR John walks across the room to his desk, lights a candle, and writes his cheque, payable to Horatio Danby for one hundred guineas, while two footmen are bringing in lamps and afternoon tea.
DANBY (folding up the cheque). Miss Hawberk, did I not rightly call your uncle a prince?
(The scene closes.)
Chapter I.
Sir John Penlyon was generally described by his friends as a man of peculiar temper. He was not a bad-tempered man — indeed, be bad a certain princely graciousness which overlooked small offences. He was not easily made angry; but, on the other hand, when deeply offended, he was vindictive, and nursed his wrath from year’s end to year’s end, refusing ever again to touch the hand of the offender. He had reigned at Penlyon as a lord of the soil ever since he left the university, coming into his own at three and twenty years of age. He had married late, married a very young woman, dowerless, but of good birth, who loved him far better than he ever believed during her lifetime. She died when the younger of her two daughters was only six years old, and it was some years after she had been laid at rest in the family vault of the Penlyons that Sir John found an old diary hidden in a secret drawer at the back of the secretaire in his wife’s dressing-room; a girlish diary, written at intervals; a record of thoughts and feelings rather than of the facts and occupations of daily life; a record which told the widower how fondly he had been beloved, and how many a careless wound he had inflicted upon that tender creature whose gentle countenance was hidden from his sight for ever.
The reading of his wife’s journal left in Sir John Penlyon’s mind the burden of a lasting remorse. He had believed that when the daughter of an impoverished house, his junior by twenty years, had accepted his stately offer of marriage, she had been influenced as much by questions of convenience as he himself had been. He was marrying because the time had come when he ought to marry, unless he wanted to sink into hopeless bachelorhood and loneliness. She was marrying because marriage with a magnate in the land would give her fortune and position. Fixed in this notion of an equality of indifference, he had been studiously polite and kind to his young wife; but he had never taken the trouble to sound the depths of that girlish heart. He had taken everything for granted.
There had been a domestic disappointment, too, in his married life, calm and undisturbed as it was. Two daughters had been born at Penlyon Castle, but no son. And Sir John Penlyon ardently longed for a son. His chief motive in marrying at over forty years of age was the desire of a son and heir. He was angry at the thought that a distant cousin should ever bear his title, and come to reign at Penlyon. The estate was strictly entailed, and that second cousin, a soldier in a line regiment, must needs succeed if Sir John died without leaving a son.
The diary reminded him of many sins; reminded him how cold and unloving he had been to those baby daughters. The mother’s girlish handwriting had put every little slight on record; not in anger, but in sorrow. The widower came upon such entries as this: “I think it must be because he does not care for me that he is so neglectful of Lilian. Every one says she is a lovely child. It can’t be because I am fond of her that I think her so beautiful. The servants all worship her. Mr. Danby adores her, and she adores him. I couldn’t help crying the other day — I had to run out of the room, or I should have made an absolute fool of myself before my husband — when I saw Mr. Danby playing with her, going on his hands and knees under the billiard-table to play at bo-peep with her, just as if he had been her father; while Sir John sat reading his paper at the other end of the room, and only looked up once, to complain of the noise — Lilian’s sweet little silvery laugh! How could he call that a noise!”
And this: “I took Sibyl to the library yesterday morning when her father was sitting there alone. It was her birthday — her third birthday — and I thought I might presume upon that. I opened the door a little way and looked in. He was sitting at his desk writing. I ought to have waited till he was disengaged. I whispered to her to go to him and give him a big birthday kiss, and she ran in, toddling across the room in her pretty blue shoes, so busy, so happy, and she caught hold of his arm as he wrote, and lifted herself up on tiptoe, and said, ‘Papa, big birsday tiss,’ in her funny little baby talk. He put down his pen, and he stooped down to kiss her; but a moment after he rang his spring bell, two or three times, and called out, ‘What is this child doing here, roaming about the house alone? Where is her nurse?’ He was very kind and polite when he looked round and saw me standing at the door, and when I begged his pardon for having disturbed him; but I could see that he was bored, and I took Sibyl away directly. We met Mr. Danby in the corridor with an armful of toys. What a useful good soul he is, and how sorry I shall be when he has left us to go to the Duchess at Endsleigh.”
There were many entries of the same nature — womanly regrets, recorded again and again. “‘I wonder why he married me.” “I wonder whether he once loved somebody very dearly and couldn’t marry her.”
“I think there must be some reason for his not earing for me. I ought not to complain, even to this stupid old book — but the book is like an old friend. I sit staring at my name and the date, written by my old governess at the Manor House, and recalling those careless, thoughtless days when my sisters and I used to think our Ollendorff exercises the worst troubles we had in this world — before mother began to be an invalid — before father used to confide all his difficulties to us girls — the debts, the tenants that wouldn’t pay, the roofs that wanted new slating. Oh, how long ago it all