Orley Farm (Serial)/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHRISTMAS IN GREAT ST. HELENS.
We will now look in for a moment at the Christmas doings of our fat friend, Mr. Moulder. Mr. Moulder was a married man living in lodgings over a wine-merchant’s vaults in Great St. Helens. He was blessed—or troubled, with no children, and prided himself greatly on the material comfort with which his humble home was surrounded. 'His wife,' he often boasted, 'never wanted for plenty of the best of eating; and for linen and silks and such-like, she could show her drawers and her wardrobes with many a great lady from Russell Square, and not be ashamed, neither! And then, as for drink,—'tipple,' as Mr. Moulder sportively was accustomed to name it among his friends, he opined that he was not altogether behind the mark in that respect. 'He had got some brandy—he didn't care what anybody might say about Cognac and eau de vie; but the brandy which he had got from Betts' private establishment seventeen years ago, for richness of flavour and fullness of strength, would beat any French article that anybody in the city could show. That at least was his idea. If anybody didn't like it, they needn't take it. There was whisky that would make your hair stand on end.' So said Mr. Moulder, and I can believe him; for it has made my hair stand on end merely to see other people drinking it.
And if comforts of apparel, comforts of eating and drinking, and comforts of the feather-bed and easy-chair kind can make a woman happy, Mrs. Moulder was no doubt a happy woman. She had quite fallen in to the mode of life laid out for her. She had a little bit of hot kidney for breakfast at about ten; she dined at three, having seen herself to the accurate cooking of her roast fowl, or her bit of sweetbread, and always had her pint of Scotch ale. She turned over all her clothes almost every day. In the evening she read Reynolds's Miscellany, had her tea and buttered muffins, took a thimbleful of brandy and water at nine, and then went to bed. The work of her life consisted in sewing buttons on to Moulder's shirts, and seeing that his things were properly got up when he was at home. No doubt she would have done better as to the duties of the world, had the world's duties come to her. As it was, very few such had come in her direction. Her husband was away from home three-fourths of the year, and she had no children that required attention. As for society, some four or five times a year she would drink tea with Mrs. Hubbles at Clapham. Mrs. Hubbles was the wife of the senior partner in the firm, and on such occasions Mrs. Moulder dressed herself in her best, and having travelled to Clapham in an omnibus, spent the evening in dull propriety on one corner of Mrs. Hubbles's sofa. When I have added to this that Moulder every year took her to Broadstairs for a fortnight, I think that I have described with sufficient accuracy the course of Mrs. Moulder's life.
On the occasion of this present Christmas-day Mr. Moulder entertained a small party. And he delighted in such occasional entertainments, taking extraordinary pains that the eatables should be of the very best; and he would maintain an hospitable good humour to the last,—unless anything went wrong in the cookery, in which case he could make himself extremely unpleasant to Mrs. M. Indeed, proper cooking for Mr. M. and the proper starching of the bands of his shirts were almost the only trials that Mrs. Moulder was doomed to suffer. 'What the d— are you for?' he would say, almost throwing the displeasing viands at her head across the table, or tearing the rough linen from off his throat. 'It ain't much I ask of you in return for your keep;' and then he would scowl at her with bloodshot eyes till she shook in her shoes. But this did not happen often, as experiences had made her careful.
But on this present Christmas festival all went swimmingly to the end. 'Now, bear a hand, old girl,' was the harshest word he said to her; and he enjoyed himself like Duncan, shut up in measureless content. He had three guests with him on this auspicious day. There was his old friend Snengkeld, who had dined with him on every Christmas since his marriage; there was his wife's brother, of whom we will say a word or two just now;—and there was our old friend, Mr. Kantwise. Mr. Kantwise was not exactly the man whom Moulder would have chosen as his guest, for they were opposed to each other in all their modes of thought and action; but he had come across the travelling agent of the Patent Metallic Steel Furniture Company on the previous day, and finding that he was to be alone in London on this general holiday, he had asked him out of sheer good nature. Moulder could be very good natured, and full of pity when the sorrow to be pitied arose from some such source as the want of a Christmas dinner. So Mr. Kantwise had been asked, and precisely at four o'clock he made his appearance at Great St. Helens.
But now, as to this brother-in-law. He was no other than that John Kenneby whom Miriam Usbech did not marry,—whom Miriam Usbech might, perhaps, have done well to marry. John Kenneby, after one or two attempts in other spheres of life, had at last got into the house of Hubbles and Grease, and had risen to be their book-keeper. He had once been tried by them as a traveller, but in that line he had failed. He did not possess that rough, ready, self-confident tone of mind which is almost necessary for a man who is destined to move about quickly from one circle of persons to another. After a six months' trial he had given that up, but during the time, Mr. Moulder, the senior traveller of the house, had married his sister. John Kenneby was a good, honest, painstaking fellow, and was believed by his friends to have put a few pounds together in spite of the timidity of his character.
When Snengkeld and Kenneby were shown up into the room, they found nobody there but Kantwise. That Mrs. Moulder should be down stairs looking after the roast turkey was no more than natural; but why should not Moulder himself he there to receive his guests? He soon appeared, however, coming up without his coat.
'Well, Snengkeld, how are you, old fellow; many happy returns, and all that; the same to you, John. I'll tell you what, my lads; it's a prime 'un. I never saw such a bird in all my days.'
'What, the turkey?' said Snengkeld.
'You didn't think it'd be a ostrich, did you?'
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Snengkeld. 'No, I didn't expect nothing but a turkey here on Christmas-day.'
'And nothing but a turkey you'll have, my boys. Can you eat turkey, Kantwise?'
Mr. Kantwise declared that his only passion in the way of eating was for a turkey.
'As for John, I’m sure of him. I’ve seen him at the work before.' Whereupon John grinned but said nothing.
'I never see such a bird in my life, certainly.'
'From Norfolk, I suppose,' said Snengkeld, with a great appearance of interest.
'Oh, you may swear to that. It weighed twenty-four pounds, for I put it into the scales myself, and old Gibbetts let me have it for a guinea. The price marked on it was five-and-twenty, for I saw it. He's had it hanging for a fortnight, and I've been to see it wiped down with vinegar regular every morning. And now, my boys, it's done to a turn. I've been in the kitchen most of the time myself, and either I or Mrs. M. has never left it for a single moment.'
'How did you manage about divine service?' said Kantwise; and then, when he had spoken, closed his eyes and sucked his lips.
Mr. Moulder looked at him for a minute, and then said, 'Gammon.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Snengkeld. And then Mrs. Moulder appeared, bringing the turkey with her; for she would trust it to no hands less careful than her own.
'By George, it is a bird,' said Snengkeld, standing over it and eyeing it minutely.
'Uncommon nice it looks,' said Kantwise.
'All the same, I wouldn't eat none, if I were you,' said Moulder, 'seeing what sinners have been a basting it.' And then they all sat down to dinner, Moulder having first resumed his coat.
For the next three or four minutes Moulder did not speak a word. The turkey was on his mind, with the stuffing, the gravy, the liver, the breast, the wings, and the legs. He stood up to carve it, and while he was at the work he looked at it as though his two eyes were hardly sufficient. He did not help first one person and then another, so ending by himself; but he cut up artistically as much as might probably be consumed, and located the fragments in small heaps or shares in the hot gravy; and then, having made a partition of the spoils, he served it out with unerring impartiality. To have robbed any one of his or her fair slice of the breast would, in his mind, have been gross dishonesty. In his heart he did not love Kantwise, but he dealt by him with the utmost justice in the great affair of the turkey's breast. When he had done all this, and his own plate was laden, he gave a long sigh. 'I shall never cut up such another bird as that, the longest day that I have to live,' he said; and then he took out his large red silk handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
'Deary me, M.; don’t think of that now,' said the wife.
'What’s the use?' said Snengkeld. 'Care killed a cat.'
'And perhaps you may,' said John Kenneby, trying to comfort him; 'who knows?'
'It's all in the hands of Providence,' said Kantwise, 'and we should look to him.'
'And how does it taste?' asked Moulder, shaking the gloomy thoughts from his mind.
'Uncommon,' said Snengkeld, with his mouth quite full. 'I never eat such a turkey in all my life.'
'Like melted diamonds,' said Mrs. Moulder, who was not without a touch of poetry.
'Ah, there's nothing like hanging of 'em long enough, and watching of 'em well. It's that vinegar as done it;' and then they went seriously to work, and there was nothing more said of any importance until the eating was nearly over.
And now Mrs. M. had taken away the cloth, and they were sitting cozily over their port wine. The very apple of the eye of the evening had not arrived even yet. That would not come till the pipes were brought out, and the brandy was put on the table, and the whisky was there that made the people's hair stand on end. It was then that the floodgates of convivial eloquence would be unloosed. In the mean time it was necessary to sacrifice something to gentility, and therefore they sat over their port wine.
'Did you bring that letter with you, John?' said his sister. John replied that he had done so, and that he had also received another letter that morning from another party on the same subject.
'Do show it to Moulder, and ask him,' said Mrs. M.
'I've got 'em both on purpose,' said John; and then he brought forth two letters, and handed one of them to his brother-in-law. It contained a request, very civilly worded, from Messrs. Round and Crook, begging him to call at their office in Bedford Row on the earliest possible day, in order that they might have some conversation with him regarding the will of the late Sir Joseph Mason, who died in 18—.
'Why, this is law business,' said Moulder, who liked no business of that description. 'Don't you go near them, John, if you ain't obliged.'
And then Kenneby gave his explanation on the matter, telling how in former years,—many years ago, he had been a witness in a lawsuit. And then as he told it he sighed, remembering Miriam Usbech, for whose sake he had remained unmarried even to this day. And he went on to narrate how he had been bullied in the court, though he had valiantly striven to tell the truth with exactness; and as he spoke, an opinion of his became manifest that old Usbech had not signed the document in his presence. 'The girl signed it certainly,' said he, 'for I handed her the pen. I recollect it, as though it were yesterday.'
'They are the very people we were talking of at Leeds,' said Moulder, turning to Kantwise. 'Mason and Martock; don't you remember how you went out to Groby Park to sell some of them iron gimcracks? 'That was old Mason's son. They are the same people.'
'Ah, I shouldn't wonder,' said Kantwise, who was listening all the while. He never allowed intelligence of this kind to pass by him idly.
'And who's the other letter from?' asked Moulder. 'But, dash my wigs, it's past six o'clock. Come, old girl, why don't you give us the tobacco and stuff?'
'It ain't far to fetch,' said Mrs. Moulder. And then she put the tobacco and 'stuff' upon the table.
'The other letter is from an enemy of mine,' said John Kenneby, speaking very solemnly; 'an enemy of mine, named Dockwrath, who lives at Hamworth. He's an attorney too.'
'Dockwrath!' said Moulder.
Mr. Kantwise said nothing, but he looked round over his shoulder at Kenneby, and then shut his eyes.
'That was the name of the man whom we left in the commercial room at the Bull,' said Snengkeld.
'He went out to Mason's at Groby Park that same day,' said Moulder.
'Then it's the same man,' said Kenneby; and there was as much solemnity in the tone of his voice as though the unravelment of all the mysteries of the iron mask was now about to take place. Mr. Kantwise still said nothing, but he also perceived that it was the same man.
'Let me tell you, John Kenneby,' said Moulder, with the air of one who understood well the subject that he was discussing, 'if they two be the same man, then the man who wrote that letter to you is as big a blackguard as there is from this to hisself.' And Mr. Moulder in the excitement of the moment puffed hard at his pipe, took a long pull at his drink, and dragged open his waistcoat. 'I don't know whether Kantwise has anything to say upon that subject,' added Moulder.
'Not a word at present,' said Kantwise. Mr. Kantwise was a very careful man, and usually calculated with accuracy the value which he might extract from any circumstance with reference to his own main chance. Mr. Dockwrath had not as yet paid him for the set of metallic furniture, and therefore he also might well have joined in that sweeping accusation; but it might be that by a judicious use of what he now heard he might obtain the payment of that little bill,—and perhaps other collateral advantages.
And then the letter from Dockwrath to Kenneby was brought forth and read. 'My dear John,' it began,—for the two had known each other when they were lads together,—and it went on to request Kenneby's attendance at Hamworth for the short space of a few hours,—'I want to have a little conversation with you about a matter of considerable interest to both of us; and as I cannot expect you to undertake expense I enclose a money order for thirty shillings.'
'He's in earnest at any rate,' said Mr. Moulder.
'No mistake about that,' said Snengkeld.
But Mr. Kantwise spoke never a word.
It was at last decided that John Kenneby should go both to Hamworth and to Bedford Row, but that he should go to Hamworth first. Moulder would have counselled him to have gone to neither, but Snengkeld remarked that there were too many at work to let the matter sleep, and John himself observed that 'anyways he hadn't done anything to be ashamed of.'
'Then go,' said Moulder at last, 'only don't say more than you are obliged to.'
'I does not like these business talkings on Christmas night,' said Mrs. Moulder, when the matter was arranged.
'What can one do?' asked Moulder.
'It's a tempting of Providence in my mind,' said Kantwise, as he replenished his glass, and turned his eyes up to the ceiling.
'Now that's gammon,' said Moulder. And then there arose among them a long and animated discussion on matters theological.
'I'll tell you what my idea of death is,' said Moulder, after a while. I aint a bit afeard of it. My father was an honest man as did his duty by his employers, and he died with a bottom of brandy before him and a pipe in his mouth. I sha'n't live long myself—'
'Gracious, Moulder, don't!' said Mrs. M.
'No, more I sha'n't, 'cause I'm fat as he was; and I hope I may die as he did. I've been honest to Hubbles and Grease. They've made thousands of pounds along of me, and have never lost none. Who can say more than that? When I took to the old girl there, I insured my life, so that she shouldn't want her wittles and drink—'
'Oh, M., don't!'
'And I aint afeard to die. Snengkeld, my old pal, hand us the brandy.'
Such is the modern philosophy of the Moulders, pigs out of the sty of Epicurus. And so it was they passed Christmas-day in Great St. Helens.