I think, along with the sinking sensation of pleasure at seeing her again, came the realisation that her family really was of inferior status to ours, or they could not have been brought so soon to overlook the deadly act of eviction.
From St Thomas’s until Christmas Eve the children and a halfdozen servants had been decorating the great hall and the principal chambers. Holly and ivy had been brought in from the woods near the river and the apple trees stripped of their mistletoe. The window sills were boweredwith bay leaves, and rosettes made of dyed rags were strung across the hall. Belemus, given his way for once, painted some of the window panes crimson and ochre and vivid green, so that in the day coloured light fell in, and in the night coloured light shone out. Oranges and lemons were tied together in bunches and some crimson cloth found to hang upon the walls hiding the duller arras.
To make room for our visitors we children were turned out of our bedrooms and slept five in a room on straw at the back of the house. At table we were crowded closer together than ever before, for none of the parties came with less than two servants to accompany them.
Christmas Eve there was a fine supper, and the Yule log was dragged in and laid across the hearth. It was expected that it would burn for four days. After supper we sang madrigals and carols; then at midnight the Lord of Misrule came in in a gaudy yellow robe followed by twelve attendants in all the colours they could find. Dick Stable, because he was a lively comic lad, and because he had a sense of how far he might go without setting my father on him, had been chosen for the part, and he was crowned by my stepmother amid much cheering and laughter. Henceforward he was to command the merry-making and to keep his throne for twelve days.
On Christmas Day nearly the whole household went across the fields in procession to communicate at Budock, and after a great dinner at which there was pigeon-pie and a boar’s head and mince-meat and plum-porridge and saddles of mutton, the afternoon was spent in a torpor. In the evening presents were given all round, and we danced until ten o’clock. Apart from little things for my own family, I had only two present to give, for I had scant money or for that matter scant opportunity of spending it. But I had had Rose buy me in Truro a pair of stockings of fine wool dyed scarlet, and from one of the sailors I had bought a little cap made of delicate bone lace from Antwerp.
Having bought them, I spent an agony of time deciding which to give to Meg and which to Sue. Because the stockings had cost more I esteemed them more, but I was not sure whether Sue would regard stockings as a proper present from me. I could not make her out at alclass="underline" she looked so shy and pale and hostile.
So I gave the stockings to Meg. I did this before supper when she was trimming the candles, and she took the stockings from me and let them slowly unroll out of her hands.
“For me? … Dear life, boy … Where did ee get ‘em? Bought ‘em? For me? Proper ladies’ they are. Well, my blessed parliament! Thank you, Master Maugan. I’ll never bear to wear ‘em. But I’ll put ‘em on. Truly. Not that you can ever see ‘em.” She giggled. “Well maybe once, so long as Dick don’t catch us.” She took two dancing steps up to me and put her arms, stockings and all, round me and kissed me on the lips. It was the first time she’d kissed me on the lips. There was much more taste and it was more exciting.
Suddenly she drew away. “Do anyone know about this?”
“No.”
“Then nary a one tell, will ee, Maugan? Tis better that way, boy.” -
“I won’t tell,” I said.
“My dear life, ladies’ stockings. You’re a real gentleman, Maugan. When you d’grow up there’ll be no holding of you. And thank you.”
I went away feeling as if I had done something I should not have done. Yet I was not ashamed for it.
I carried the little cap for Sue in my pocket all through supper and through the dance after, but was shy of giving it to her in front of others. Meg’s attitude had added to my shyness and reserve. But when the dancing broke up there was a lot of talk and movement and no one attended to what others were doing, so I edged over.
“Sue, I bought you this, I thought it would perhaps pleasure you, it was the only thing I could think of, and ...”
She was flushing from dancing, and the many conflicting and coloured lights in the room gave new expression to her face. I remember how white her eyelids were as she took the lace cap and looked down at it.
“It’s very … kind of you, Maugan. This lace is … fine.” She turned it over and her fingers suddenly trembled. “But should you not buy me a gown too? A pomander ball, a muff, a mirror? It’s the least a Killigrew should give a Farnaby, now that my father’s bankrupted and may go to prison.”
“It was not my doing.”
“Do you know we were given but an hour? We were allowed to take nothing but the clothes we were in, and one small valise besides among the three of us. Do you know that your father had raised the rent fourfold since we went there? Do you know my father wrote six letters asking for time and promising to pay? And it was all just two weeks before Christmas, a time of peace and goodwill toward men and among neighbours. See all this: all the luxury, the table, the wines, the jewellery; we don’t begrudge it to others if we could have had an understanding of our own straits.”
She looked up, and her eyes were full of tears.
I said: “Oh, Sue, Sue. I know … I know it all, but it was done before I heard. But if I had known I couldn’t have stopped it … Why did you come?”
“Because my aunt thought it best. I was one less for her to feed.”
The next day, which was St Stephen’s Day, most of the men went hawking, and it was good to have them out of the way. The rest of us, after longer prayers than usual which were to suffice the day and a quick breakfast of brawn and mustard and malmsey, set about preparing the hall for the mummers’ play in the evening.
The nature of the play was such that, although we all knew who was taking part in it, each player should be so disguised that the watchers could not easily name him, and work had been in hand for two weeks making new and remaking. old masks. Some looked like unicorns, some like bears; others wore deer’s hides and antlers, and a few with no other disguise must black their faces. Dick Stable was to be St George and old Penruddock the Devil.
I do not know if many guessed the identity of the boy who played the young companion to St George. He wore a white skintight mask, a black cap, a green jerkin, tight grey breeches with garters just above the knee and brilliant scarlet stockings. Meg was not only showing them to me, she was showing them to all the house. I was afraid for her because she risked a beating. I kept looking at her legs as if they were something beautiful but forbidden that I would never see again.
The play would have been a greater success if so much double beer had not been drunk before it. Twice it had to be halted because the stage was giving way from over-many persons on it. When there was a fight to the death between St George and Satan, Satan forgot that he was mumming and encouraged by the shouts of his followers laid St George over on his back with a Cornish wrestler’s throw and looked up with a drunken grin of triumph beneath his loosened mask. St George’s boy tried to drag him off, and a fight broke out. In a moment eight or ten figures were wrestling and punching; but there were some sober enough to stop them before it became more than a matter for passing laughter among the distinguished audience.