VIII
Christmas-Day
“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said the Doctor to his wife a few days after the two marriages had been arranged in the manner thus described. It yet wanted ten days to Christmas, and it was known to all Plumplington that the Doctor intended to be more than ordinarily blithe during the present Christmas holidays. “We’ll have these young people to dinner on Christmas-day, and their fathers shall come with them.”
“Will that do, Doctor?” said his wife.
“Why should it not do?”
“I don’t think that Mr. Greenmantle will care about meeting Mr. Peppercorn.”
“If Mr. Peppercorn dines at my table,” said the Doctor with a certain amount of arrogance, “any gentleman in England may meet him. What! not meet a fellow townsman on Christmas-day and on such an occasion as this!”
“I don’t think he’ll like it,” said Mrs. Freeborn.
“Then he may lump it. You’ll see he’ll come. He’ll not like to refuse to bring Emily here especially, as she is to meet her betrothed. And the Peppercorns and Jack Hollycombe will be sure to come. Those sort of vagaries as to meeting this man and not that, in sitting next to one woman and objecting to another, don’t prevail on Christmas-day, thank God. They’ve met already at the Lord’s Supper, or ought to have met; and they surely can meet afterwards at the parson’s table. And we’ll have Harry Gresham to show that there is no ill-will. I hear that Harry is already making up to the Dean’s daughter at Barchester.”
“He won’t care whom he meets,” said Mrs. Freeborn. “He has got a position of his own and can afford to meet anybody. It isn’t quite so with Mr. Greenmantle. But of course you can have it as you please. I shall be delighted to have Polly and her husband at dinner with us.”
So it was settled and the invitations were sent out. That to the Peppercorns was despatched first, so that Mr. Greenmantle might be informed whom he would have to meet. It was conveyed in a note from Mrs. Freeborn to Polly, and came in the shape of an order rather than of a request. “Dr. Freeborn hopes that your papa and Mr. Hollycombe will bring you to dine with us on Christmas-day at six o’clock. We’ll try and get Emily Greenmantle and her lover to meet you. You must come because the Doctor has set his heart upon it.”
“That’s very civil,” said Mr. Peppercorn. “Shan’t I get any dinner till six o’clock?”
“You can have lunch, father, of course. You must go.”
“A bit of bread and cheese when I come out of church—just when I’m most famished! Of course I’ll go. I never dined with the Doctor before.”
“Nor did I; but I’ve drunk tea there. You’ll find he’ll make himself very pleasant. But what are we to do about Jack?”
“He’ll come, of course.”
“But what are we to do about his clothes?” said Polly. “I don’t think he’s got a dress coat; and I’m sure he hasn’t a white tie. Let him come just as he pleases, they won’t mind on Christmas-day as long as he’s clean. He’d better come over and go to church with us; and then I’ll see as to making him up tidy.” Word was sent to say that Polly and her father and her lover would come, and the necessary order was at once despatched to Barchester.
“I really do not know what to say about it,” said Mr. Greenmantle when the invitation was read to him. “You will meet Polly Peppercorn and her husband as is to be,” Mrs. Freeborn had written in her note; “for we look on you and Polly as the two heroines of Plumplington for this occasion.” Mr. Greenmantle had been struck with dismay as he read the words. Could he bring himself to sit down to dinner with Hickory Peppercorn and Jack Hollycombe; and ought he to do so? Or could he refuse the Doctor’s invitation on such an occasion? He suggested at first that a letter should be prepared declaring that he did not like to take his Christmas dinner away from his own house. But to this Emily would by no means consent. She had plucked up her spirits greatly since the days of the chicken-broth, and was determined at the present moment to rule both her future husband and her father. “You must go, papa. I wouldn’t not go for all the world.”
“I don’t see it, my dear; indeed I don’t.”
“The Doctor has been so kind. What’s your objection, papa?”
“There are differences, my dear.”
“But Dr. Freeborn likes to have them.”
“A clergyman is very peculiar. The rector of a parish can always meet his own flock. But rank is rank you know, and it behoves me to be careful with whom I shall associate. I shall have Mr. Peppercorn slapping my back and poking me in the ribs some of these days. And moreover they have joined your name with that of the young lady in a manner that I do not quite approve. Though you each of you may be a heroine in your own way, you are not the two heroines of Plumplington. I do not choose that you shall appear together in that light.”
“That is only his joke,” said Emily.
“It is a joke to which I do not wish to be a party. The two heroines of Plumplington! It sounds like a vulgar farce.”
Then there was a pause, during which Mr. Greenmantle was thinking how to frame the letter of excuse by which he would avoid the difficulty. But at last Emily said a word which settled him. “Oh, papa, they’ll say that you were too proud, and then they’ll laugh at you.” Mr. Greenmantle looked very angry at this, and was preparing himself to use some severe language to his daughter. But he remembered how recently she had become engaged to be married, and he abstained. “As you wish it, we will go,” he said. “At the present crisis of your life I would not desire to disappoint you in anything.” So it happened that the Doctor’s proposed guests all accepted; for Harry Gresham too expressed himself as quite delighted to meet Emily Greenmantle on the auspicious occasion.
“I shall be delighted also to meet Jack Hollycombe,” Harry had said. “I have known him ever so long and have just given him an order for twenty quarters of oats.”
They were all to be seen at the Parish Church of Plumplington on that Christmas morning;—except Harry Gresham, who, if he did so at all, went to church at Greshamsbury—and the Plumplington world all looked at them with admiring eyes. As it happened the Peppercorns sat just behind the Greenmantles, and on this occasion Jack Hollycombe and Polly were exactly in the rear of Philip Hughes and Emily. Mr. Greenmantle as he took his seat observed that it was so, and his devotions were, we fear, disturbed by the fact. He walked up proudly to the altar among the earliest and most aristocratic recipients, and as he did so could not keep himself from turning round to see whether Hickory Peppercorn was treading on his kibes. But on the present occasion Hickory Peppercorn was very modest and remained with his future son-in-law nearly to the last.
At six o’clock they all met in the Rectory drawing-room. “Our two heroines,” said the Doctor as they walked in, one just after the other, each leaning on her lover’s arm. Mr. Greenmantle looked as though he did not like it. In truth he was displeased, but he could not help himself. Of the two young ladies Polly was by far the most self-possessed. As long as she had got the husband of her choice she did not care whether she were or were not called a heroine. And her father had behaved very well on that morning as to money. “If you come out like that, father,” she had said, “I shall have to wear a silk dress every day.” “So you ought,” he said with true Christmas generosity. But the income then promised had been a solid assurance, and Polly was the best contented young woman in all Plumplington.
They all sat down to dinner, the Doctor with a bride on each side of him, the place of honour to his right having been of course accorded to Emily Greenmantle; and next to each young lady was her lover. Miss Greenmantle as was her nature was very quiet, but Philip Hughes made an effort and carried on, as best he could, a conversation with the Doctor. Jack Hollycombe till after pudding-time said not a word, and Polly tried to console herself through his silence by remembering that the happiness of the world did not depend upon loquacity. She herself said a little word now and again, always with a slight effort to bring Jack into notice. But the Doctor with his keen power of observation understood them all, and told himself that Jack was to be a happy man. At the other end of the table Mr. Greenmantle and Mr. Peppercorn sat opposite to each other, and they too, till after pudding-time, were very quiet. Mr. Peppercorn felt himself to be placed a little above his proper position, and could not at once throw off the burden. And Mr. Greenmantle would not make the attempt. He felt that an injury had been done him in that he had been made to sit opposite to Hickory Peppercorn. And in truth the dinner party as a dinner party would have been a failure, had it not been for Harry Gresham, who, seated in the middle between Philip and Mr. Peppercorn, felt it incumbent upon him in his present position to keep up the rattle of the conversation. He said a good deal about the “two heroines,” and the two heroes, till Polly felt herself bound to quiet him by saying that it was a pity that there was not another heroine also for him.
“I’m an unfortunate fellow,” said Harry, “and am always left out in the cold. But perhaps I may be a hero too some of these days.”
Then when the cloth had been removed—for the Doctor always had the cloth taken off his table—the jollity of the evening really began. The Doctor delighted to be on his legs on such an occasion and to make a little speech. He said that he had on his right and on his left two young ladies both of whom he had known and had loved throughout their entire lives, and now they were to be delivered over by their fathers, whom he delighted to welcome this Christmas-day at his modest board, each to the man who for the future was to be her lord and her husband. He did not know any occasion on which he, as a pastor of the church, could take greater delight, seeing that in both cases he had ample reason to be satisfied with the choice which the young ladies had made. The bridegrooms were in both instances of such a nature and had made for themselves such characters in the estimation of their friends and neighbours as to give all assurance of the happiness prepared for their wives. There was much more of it, but this was the gist of the Doctor’s eloquence. And then he ended by saying that he would ask the two fathers to say a word in acknowledgment of the toast.
This he had done out of affection to Polly, whom he did not wish to distress by calling upon Jack Hollycombe to take a share in the speechmaking of the evening. He felt that Jack would require a little practice before he could achieve comfort during such an operation; but the immediate effect was to plunge Mr. Greenmantle into a cold bath. What was he to say on such an opportunity? But he did blunder through, and gave occasion to none of that sorrow which Polly would have felt had Jack Hollycombe got upon his legs, and then been reduced to silence. Mr. Peppercorn in his turn made a better speech than could have been expected from him. He said that he was very proud of his position that day, which was due to his girl’s manner and education. He was not entitled to be there by anything that he had done himself. Here the Doctor cried, “Yes, yes, yes, certainly.” But Peppercorn shook his head. He wasn’t specially proud of himself, he said, but he was awfully proud of his girl. And he thought that Jack Hollycombe was about the most fortunate young man of whom he had ever heard. Here Jack declared that he was quite aware of it.
After that the jollity of the evening commenced; and they were very jolly till the Doctor began to feel that it might be difficult to restrain the spirits which he had raised. But they were broken up before a very late hour by the necessity that Harry Gresham should return to Greshamsbury. Here we must bid farewell to the “two heroines of Plumplington,” and to their young men, wishing them many joys in their new capacities. One little scene however must be described, which took place as the brides were putting on their hats in the Doctor’s study. “Now I can call you Emily again,” said Polly, “and now I can kiss you; though I know I ought to do neither the one nor the other.”
“Yes, both, both, always do both,” said Emily. Then Polly walked home with her father, who, however well satisfied he might have been in his heart, had not many words to say on that evening.