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Pixie O'Shaughnessy

<h3>Chapter Eighteen.</h3> <h4>Christmas Preparations.</h4> Esmeralda strolled into the house in time for afternoon tea, and smiled complacently around as she warmed herself at the fire. “Blue cloth!” she announced triumphantly. “No more serge, thank you, but good, solid cloth with a fine surface to it, and a smart little coat instead of a bodice, which was pure unselfishness on my part, for I should have been fitted well enough, and the man pressed it on me, but I thought of you, me darling, and the agony it would be to you to have your waist misjudged by a couple of inches, so I stuck to the coat, and I hope you are grateful!” “I am,” said Bridgie frankly; but there was a pained expression mingling with her satisfaction, and presently she added slowly, “So Dennis was right, and you got your way again. I have been trying for ages to persuade father that we needed a new habit, but he paid no attention to me.” “You didn’t go about it the right way, me dear. You are fifty times cleverer than I, but there is one thing you don’t understand, and that is how to manage men! They hate and detest being told what to do, and the secret of getting round them is to make them believe that what you want is their own suggestion. You have to be very cunning, and that’s just what you can never manage to be!” “Yes, she can!” came a shrill cry from the doorway, as Pixie burst into the room and made a bee-line for the tea-table. “Indeed she can now, Esmeralda, so it’s no use denying it. She can, perfectly well!” The three listeners looked at each other with questioning glances, for such vehemence was somewhat bewildering on the part of one who could not possibly have heard the first part of the conversation. “What can she do?” queried Esmeralda sternly. “Whatever you say she can’t,” replied the champion, unabashed; and at that the cloud rolled off Bridgie’s brow, like mist before the sun. “Oh, you precious goose! Bridgie can do everything, can’t she? She always could in your eyes. It’s very silly of you, dear, but it’s very nice. I’m not at all vexed with you about it.” “You would be, though, if you were her true friend, but you always spoil one another, you two!” cried Esmeralda lightly. Then she stared round the room with a surprised expression, and added disapprovingly, “You seem to have been fairly lazy while I’ve been out. I thought you would have been getting on with the decorations. Whatever have you been doing?” “Roaming about, and actually daring to enjoy ourselves like other people,” retorted Bridgie, with what Mademoiselle was glad to recognise as a decided nip of severity; “but from this minute there must be no more playing until the work is finished. Dennis has cut the evergreens, and we must begin making wreaths at once, so as to be in order when Jack arrives to-morrow evening. We could have two hours’ work before dinner.” “I loathe making wreaths; they are so dirty and prickly, and I take a pride in me hands; they are the only ones I have, and what’s the use of sleeping in white kid gloves, the same as if I were dressed for a party, if they are to be scratched all over with that hateful holly?” Esmeralda stretched out two well-shaped if somewhat large hands, and gazed at them with pensive admiration; but Bridgie was firm, and, scratches or no scratches, insisted that she should take her own share of the work. As soon as tea was over, then, the family descended to the servants’ hall, a whitewashed apartment about as cheerful as a vault, and but little warmer despite the big peat fire, where they set to work to reduce a stack of evergreens into wreaths and borderings for cotton wool “Merrie Christmases” and “Happy Newe Yeares” reserved from former occasions. Pat and Miles cut the branches into smaller and more workable proportions. Pixie unravelled string and wire, and the three elders worked steadily at their separate wreaths. At the end of an hour they had progressed so well that it was suggested that the three fragments should be tied together, and the wreath hung in the hall, to clear the room for further operations. The suggestion being universally approved, a stormy half-hour followed, when each of the five O’Shaughnessys harangued the others concerning the superiority of his or her own plan of decoration, and precious lives were imperilled on the oldest and shakiest of step-ladders. The boys could naturally mount to the highest step without a fear, but, when mounted, were so clumsy and inartistic in their arrangements that they were called down with derisive cries, and retired to sulk in a corner. Then Bridgie lifted her skirt and gallantly ascended five steps, felt the boards sway beneath her, and scuttled down to make way for her sister. The daring rider across country possessed stronger nerves, but also a heavier body, and the ladder creaked so ominously beneath her that she insisted upon the whole company acting as props, in one breath sending them running for hammer and rope, and in the next shrieking to them to return to their posts. By the time that the wreath was really hung, the friction had reached such a pitch that Mademoiselle expected a state of civil war for the rest of the evening, and even wondered if the atmosphere would have time to clear before Christmas itself. She could hardly believe the evidence of her senses when the boys affably volunteered to clear away the rubbish, and Bridgie and Esmeralda went upstairs with wreathed arms, calling one another “Darling” and “Love,” with the echo of sharp taunt and sharper reply still ringing in the air! Certainly, if the Irish tongue were quick, the heart seemed even quicker to forgive an enemy, or pardon an offence. By the time that Mademoiselle retired to bed that night the last remnant of strangeness had vanished, and she felt like a lifelong friend and confidante. She had seen the ménu for the Christmas dinner, and had helped to manufacture jellies and creams, while Pixie perched upon the dresser industriously scraping basins of their sweet, lemony, creamy leavings, with the aid of a teaspoon and an occasional surreptitious finger when her sisters were looking in an opposite direction. She suggested and achieved such marvels in the way of garnishing that Molly was greatly impressed, being a very plain cook in more ways than one, and solemnly asked for advice upon the killing of turkeys, when Mademoiselle had to acknowledge ignorance, and lost caste forthwith. Then Esmeralda invited her to a display of evening dresses in her bedroom, and wished to know which she should wear—the black silk with the net top, or the net top over a white skirt, or the black silk with no top at all, and Bridgie plaintively appealed to her for the casting vote on the great question of crackers or no crackers! It was certainly a curious mingling of grandeur and poverty, this life in the half-ruined Castle, with its magnificent tapestries and carvings, its evidences of bygone splendour, and, alas! present-day parsimony. The little house at Passy could have been put down inside the great entrance hall, but it was a trim little habitation, where on a minute scale all the refinements and niceties of life were observed, and income and expenditure were so well balanced that there was always a margin to the good; but the Misses O’Shaughnessy, who bore themselves as queens in the neighbourhood, and were treated with truly loyal deference, owned hardly a decent gown between them, and were seriously exercised about spending an extra half-crown on a Christmas dinner! “It’s the trifles that mount up! I am a miser about pennies, but I can spend pounds with the best!” Bridgie explained; and Mademoiselle smiled meaningly, for had not the order just gone forth that the Castle was to be “illumined” once more for the arrival of the son and heir? On Christmas Eve the rain fell in torrents, and, after a morning spent in preparations of one sort and another, the workers felt the need of a little amusing recreation. This did not seem easy to achieve, in this lonely habitation set in the midst of a rain-swept plain, but Bridgie’s fertile brain came to the rescue, and proposed a scheme which kept the young people busy for the rest of the afternoon. “I vote we have a fancy-dress dinner to-night!” she cried, at the conclusion of lunch. “Not an ordinary affair, but like the one the Pegrams enjoyed so much when they were spending the winter in Grindelwald. ‘A sheet and pillow-case party,’ they called it, for that is all you have out of which to make your dress. I will open the linen-box and give you each a pair of sheets, and a pillow-case for head-gear, and you must arrange them in your own rooms, and not let anyone see you until the gong rings. It really will be quite pretty—all the white figures against the flags and holly, and we shall feel more festive than in our ordinary clothes. I think it will be great fun, don’t you?” Great fun indeed! The O’Shaughnessy family was always ready for any excitement, and particularly so at Christmas-time, a season when we all feel that we ought to be festive, and are injured in our minds if there is nothing to make us so. Esmeralda fell at once to pleating her table-napkin into one shape after another, Mademoiselle smiled over a happy inspiration, whereupon wily Pat put on his most angelic look and asked— “Will you dress me, Mademoiselle? A man’s no good at this sort of thing. You can’t fasten sheets with screws, and I’m no hand at fancy stitching. I’ve an idea I’d look rather well as—” He whispered a few words in her ear, and Mademoiselle threw up her hands, and laughed, and nodded in emphatic assent. Pixie and Miles fell to Bridgie’s share, while the Major declared that he would have nothing to do with such foolishness, but with a ruminating expression on his face which belied the words. Bridgie went upstairs immediately after lunch, and, opening her linen-chest, apportioned its contents among the different members of the family. Some wanted large sheets, some wanted small; some begged for frills to their pillow-cases, some preferred plain; but at last all were satisfied, and were further supplied with tape from the various work-baskets, while Pixie was sent a round of the bedrooms to pick up the pins with which the floors were liberally scattered, as the demand in this direction was so large as to be practically unlimited. Esmeralda flew off at once, with the boys in her train; but Mademoiselle lingered to help Bridgie to fold away the linen that was not needed, and to enjoy the luxury of a quiet chat, which was not an easy thing to accomplish in this noisy household. Bridgie in company was always laughing and gay, but the visitor had already noticed that Bridgie alone was apt to grow grave and to wear a wistful pucker on her brow. It was there now as she locked the chest and sat down on the lid, stretching out her arms with a sigh of weariness. The wintry light left the gallery full of shadows, and the only bright thing to be seen was the girl’s own golden head outlined against the oak walls. Mademoiselle thought that if she had been an artist she could have wished for no fairer picture than this old-world corridor, with the fair face of the young mistress shining out like a lily in the darkness; but the lily toiled more than she liked to see, and she could not restrain a protest against the custom which gave one sister all the work, and another all the play. “You are tired already before the day is half over, and now you have those children’s dresses to look after as well as your own! Why do you not make Esmeralda help, instead of doing everything yourself?” “Esmeralda, is it?” Bridgie’s face lit up with a smile as she repeated the name. “Indeed now, Mademoiselle, I’m never worked so hard in my life as when Esmeralda has been trying to help, and I have to tidy away after her! She has the best will in the world, poor thing; but work doesn’t come naturally to her. You mustn’t be hard on her. She shows her worst side to a stranger, for, though her first impulse may be selfish, when she takes time to think, she is all generosity and kindness. That habit, now! She was longing to have a fitted bodice, but she chose a coat, out of consideration for me. She is a darling, and so young yet that I don’t like to worry her. Let her have a good time as long as she may. It will be hard enough soon.” Mademoiselle started and looked alarmed questionings, and Bridgie smiled in response, saying in cool, conversational tones— “We are ruined, you know! We can’t go on living here much longer. Father has spent all his money, and we should have had to leave before now, but that he came into a little more at mother’s death. It was not much, and it is going very fast. It can’t be more than a year or two at most before the crash comes, so you can’t wonder I let the boys and girls enjoy themselves, can you?” “Mais oui! I wonder very much!” cried Mademoiselle, dismayed at what seemed to her prudent mind such a fatal way of preparing for a difficulty. “The kind thing surely would be to prepare them for what will come. It will make it more hard if they have never known work. In three years one can do much to prepare for a struggle. Why do you not speak to your sister, and say it is time to stop play? Why do you not send her away to work, and then perhaps the bad day need never come after all?” Bridgie looked surprised, almost shocked at the suggestion. The easy-going Irish nature saw things in a different light from that taken by the thrifty Frenchwoman; moreover, the idea of girls working for themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old-fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father’s wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda’s earnings being large enough to stave off the coming ruin. “I’m afraid it would be taking more than that to prevent it, Thérèse! You don’t know the state our landlords are in over here. There’s no money to be got at all, and things go from bad to worse. Until mother died I didn’t know how poor we were, and at first I wore myself to pieces saving pennies here and halfpennies there; but there’s not much fun in saving twopence when nothing less than thousands of pounds would do any good. I grew tired of it, and says I to myself, ‘A short life, and a merry one!’ If I can’t help, I’ll just put the thought from my mind, and give the young ones a good time to remember. No use troubling the creatures before it’s necessary!” Mademoiselle grunted in eloquent disapproval, and wished to know whether the master of the house had been equally philosophical. “Is it the Major?” cried Bridgie, laughing. “He never troubles himself about anything, and he has it all fitted up like a puzzle. Esmeralda is to marry a duke, Jack a countess in her own right, and meself a millionaire manufacturer, who will be so flattered at marrying an O’Shaughnessy that he will be proud to house Pixie into the bargain. Pat and Miles are to go to London to seek their fortunes, and the Castle is to be let—to Jack and his wife by preference, but, failing them, to anyone who offers, when the Major can keep himself and his hunters on the rental without a ‘Thank you’ to anyone. It works out so beautifully when you hear him talk, that it seems folly to trouble oneself beforehand.” “And suppose you don’t marry? Your country is full of old maids. And suppose the Castle does not let? It is very far from—anywhere!” said Mademoiselle, who had lived in the gayest city in the world, and felt the solitude of Bally William only a degree less absolute than that of the backwoods themselves. “Suppose none of these things of which you speak were to ’appen, what then?” “Indeed, I can’t tell you!” returned Bridgie, truthfully enough. “And—excuse me, me love, it’s not a very diverting suggestion for the time of year! Let me keep my millionaire, if it’s only for the day, for by the same token I’m quite attached to him in prospect! Will you come and visit me, Thérèse, when I’m comfortably established in my soap bubble?” She was laughing again, full of mischief and wilful impracticability, and Mademoiselle was tactful enough to realise that the time was not apt for pressing her lesson further. Later on she would return to the charge, but to-day at least might be safely given over to enjoyment. <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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