A REAL CINDERELLACHAPTER ICINDERELLA AT HOME
A REAL CINDERELLA
SHE did not know that she was a Cinderella, as she knelt on the floor putting on Miss Ada Marsh’s satin slippers. She had never even thought of such a possibility, and if any one had mentioned it to her she would have opened her big brown eyes very wide, and felt inclined to regard the suggestion as a rather foolish joke. In her own humble opinion she was not a person of the very least importance, being only little Gretel Schiller, whom nobody seemed to care very much about, and who lived with Mrs. Marsh, because there didn’t seem to be any other place for her to live. It seemed to her quite natural that she should make herself useful in the family, considering—as Mrs. Marsh frequently reminded her—that her half-brother, who lived in China, paid very inadequately for her support.But this evening her heart was beating fast and she was regarding Miss Ada Marsh with more interest than usual for was not that young lady actually going to fairy-land?
The slippers were small, and Miss Ada’s feet were large, so that the task of getting them on was a more difficult one than might have been at first supposed.
“Aren’t they—aren’t they just a little tight?” gasped Gretel, when several unsuccessful attempts had failed to produce the desired result.
“Not a bit,” responded Ada, with decision. “Just push the heel in more. There, that’s better. They do pinch a little, but that’s only because they’re new. They’ll be perfectly comfortable as soon as I’ve stretched them.” And Ada rose, and limped painfully across the room to the bureau.
“There, I believe I’m ready now, except my gloves. You can button them for me, and then just run and see if Mamma needs any help. It’s ten minutes to eight, and they always begin those long German operas promptly.”
“Oh, you mustn’t be late. It would be terrible to miss any of it,” said Gretel, anxiously. She was drawing a long white kid glove up over Miss Marsh’s plump arm.
Ada shrugged her shoulders indifferently.
“I shouldn’t mind missing a little,” she said. “All the Wagner operas are so long and so heavy. I wish Mr. Pendleton had asked us to go to the theater instead. There’s the door-bell; it must be Mr. Pendleton. My goodness! these slippers do need stretching. I’m thankful the opera house is just across the street; do hurry and finish Mamma. That Dora is so stupid about hooking her up. We mustn’t keep Mr. Pendleton waiting.”
Gretel hurried away wondering. It seemed very strange that any one could talk about going to fairy-land as Ada did, but then she was only eleven, and there were a great many things in the world that she did not understand. As she was crossing the narrow hall of the apartment to Mrs. Marsh’s room, Dora, the maid-of-all-work, opened the front door, and a young man in a dress-suit stepped in, and greeted the little girl good-naturedly.
“Good evening, little Miss Gretchen,” he said, with a smile. “Are your cousins ready? Your name is Gretchen, isn’t it?”
“My name is Margareta Schiller,” said Gretel, drawing herself up with the little air of dignity that always amused grown-up people. “Theycall me Gretel, not Gretchen. Ada’s nearly ready, and I’m going to see if I can help Mrs. Marsh with the hooks; but they’re not my cousins.”
“Not your cousins, eh? Why, I thought—” But Mr. Pendleton did not say what he thought, for at that moment Mrs. Marsh’s door opened, and that lady appeared, carrying her evening wrap over her arm.
“Ah, Mr. Pendleton, just in time,” she said, smiling, and speaking in what Gretel always called “her company voice.” “Gretel, darling, run and tell Ada, Mr. Pendleton is here. We must not lose a moment; it would be too sad to miss that beautiful overture.”
As Gretel turned away to do as she was told, Mr. Pendleton followed her rather curiously with his eyes.
“What a pretty child,” he remarked in a low voice to Mrs. Marsh. “I supposed she was a relative of yours, but she says she is not.”
“No, she is not a relative, but it was a most natural mistake for any one to make. It is rather complicated to explain. My dear husband was a cousin of Gretel’s mother’s first husband. She is an orphan, poor little girl, and her only relative—a half-brother—has been living inHong-Kong for several years. I give her a home, and Ada and I do all in our power to make her happy, but in our straitened circumstances it is scarcely possible for us to be as generous as we should like.”
Mrs. Marsh sighed, and Mr. Pendleton looked sympathetic, and murmured something about being sure the little girl had a very happy home, but just then Gretel reappeared, followed by Ada, who was still struggling with the last button of her glove.
“Good night, Gretel dear,” said Mrs. Marsh, sweetly, as she stepped into the elevator. “Don’t sit up too long reading fairy stories, but go to bed early, like a good girl.”
“Ada wants me to sit up till she comes home,” began Gretel, but on receiving a warning glance from Miss Marsh, she grew suddenly pink and did not finish her sentence.
“Good night, Miss Margareta,” said Mr. Pendleton, pleasantly, as he followed the others into the elevator. “Your time will come, too, some day, and we shall have you going to the opera before we know it.”
Then the elevator door closed, and Gretel was left standing alone in the hall. But unlike the Cinderella of fairy-tale fame, she did not sit downamong the ashes to cry. On the contrary, she smiled quite brightly, as she closed the door of the Marshes’ apartment, and hurried away to the parlor, the windows of which looked down on Broadway, and over at the great opera house just across the street.
Gretel was still smiling when she pushed aside the window-curtains, and flattened her face against the pane. To watch the people going into fairy-land was one of her favorite amusements.
“I wonder whether I really ever shall go,” she said to herself a little wistfully. “I don’t quite see how I can, for of course nobody will ever take me, and it costs so much money to buy a ticket, even for the standing-up place. But, oh, if I should—it would be something to be happy about forever!”
It was very interesting to watch the long line of carriages and motor-cars depositing their occupants at the doors of fairy-land. Gretel watched them eagerly, but for the first time a little doubt had crept into her mind.
“I used to think they must all be so happy,” she said, reflectively, “but Ada didn’t seem to care much, and I don’t believe Mrs. Marsh did, either, though she pretended to. Father said aperson must have a soul to love music, and I don’t believe Mrs. Marsh or Ada have souls—or at least not the kind he meant.”
Just then some one came into the room and turned up the light. It was Dora, the maid-of-all-work. For the first moment she did not see Gretel, who was hidden by the curtains of the window, and going over to the center table, she lifted the lid of a candy box, and was just about to help herself to a caramel when she caught sight of the little girl, and flew back hastily, with a muttered ejaculation of annoyance. But Gretel was too much absorbed to notice what the maid was doing.
“Come and watch them go in, Dora,” she said, eagerly. “There are more carriages and automobiles than ever to-night, I think. That’s because it’s ‘Lohengrin.’ Father loved ‘Lohengrin’ best of all the operas; he used to play it for me. I know the ‘Swan Song,’ and ‘Elsa’s Dream’ and the wedding march. I can play little bits of them myself. Did you ever go to fairy-land, Dora?”
“Fairy-land!” Dora repeated, laughing. “What a funny question! Of course I didn’t. There isn’t any such place really; it’s just in stories.”
“I didn’t mean to call it that,” explained Gretel, blushing. “I meant to say the opera. Father and I used to call it fairy-land because he loved it so, and I always call it that to myself. Father took me there once, and it was so beautiful. I’m sure the fairy-land they tell about in books couldn’t be any more beautiful. We sat away up in the top gallery, so it didn’t cost so very much. It was Father’s birthday, and he thought he would give us both a treat, but he was sorry afterwards, because a friend of his came the next day to ask to borrow some money, and he hadn’t any to give him. Father was so kind; he was always giving his money away to people. Mrs. Marsh says that was why there wasn’t any more money left for me when he died, but I’m glad he was like that; all his friends loved him so much.”
“Has your father been dead long?” Dora asked, with a glance at the child’s shabby black dress.
“He died a year ago this winter, just after Christmas. He was very ill on Christmas, but he would get up and light the Christmas tree. You see, Father was German, and in Germany every one has a Christmas tree. We always had one, even when there wasn’t much to put on it.I didn’t know how ill Father was, and I cried because he wouldn’t sit up and tell me stories. You see, we lived all alone in the studio, and there wasn’t anybody grown-up to take care of Father, and make him stay in bed when he was ill. But the day after Christmas he was so much worse that he couldn’t get out of bed at all and then Fritz Lipheim came and brought a doctor.”
“Who was Fritz Lipheim?” inquired Dora, who was beginning to be interested, and had seated herself comfortably on the sofa.
“He was a German, too,” said Gretel; “almost all Father’s friends were German. Fritz played the violin beautifully, but he wasn’t nearly as clever as Father.”
“What did your father do?” Dora wanted to know.
Gretel’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“Why, don’t you know?” she demanded incredulously. “I thought everybody knew about Father. He was Hermann Schiller the great pianist. I don’t believe anybody in the world ever played the piano like Father. He used to play at concerts, and crowds of people came to hear him. He might have been rich, only all his friends were so poor he had to keep giving them money. Everybody loved him. My motherloved him so much that she gave up her beautiful home, and all the money her first husband had left her, just to marry him and take care of him. She wouldn’t let him give away all his money, but she died when I was only four, and after that there wasn’t any one to take care of Father but me.”
“And what relation are you to Mrs. Marsh?” inquired Dora, who had been in the family only a few weeks.
“I’m not any relation at all to her. Mr. Marsh was a cousin of my mother’s first husband, Mr. Douane, but I never knew her till after my father died. You see, when the doctor told Father he was going to die, he was dreadfully worried, because he didn’t know what was going to become of me. He asked Fritz Lipheim to telegraph to my half-brother in China. My brother was very kind. He telegraphed back that Father wasn’t to worry, and afterwards he arranged with Mrs. Marsh to have me live with her. I have to be very grateful, Mrs. Marsh says, because if he hadn’t been willing to support me, I would have had to go to an orphan asylum. The Lipheims would have taken care of me, only they are very poor, and sometimes they don’t have enough money to pay the rent, so whenMrs. Marsh came and said I was to live with her, they were very much relieved. That was the day after Father’s funeral, and I was so very unhappy I didn’t care where I went.”
“And was Mrs. Marsh good to you?” Dora inquired rather skeptically.
“Oh, yes; she and Ada were both very kind that day. Ada gave me chocolates, and Mrs. Marsh explained how good my brother was, and how fortunate it was that I didn’t have to go to an asylum.”
“I don’t think that was much,” remarked Dora. “A nice sort of man your brother would have been if he had let you be sent to an asylum. Is he very poor?”
“Oh, no, he isn’t poor at all. When Mother married Father all the money her first husband had left her went to her son. I heard Mrs. Marsh tell a lady all about it. Then after Mother died my brother went to live with his grandfather in Virginia, and when his grandfather died he left him all his money, too. He is a great deal older than I; he was fourteen when Mother married Father. He used to come to see us sometimes when I was little, and brought Father and me beautiful presents, but I don’t remember him very well, because he went toChina when I was only six. But of course I’m very grateful to him.”
“Well, I can’t see anything to be so everlastingly grateful about,” objected Dora. “But say, don’t you want to play me a tune? I love to hear you play.”
Gretel sprang to her feet with sparkling eyes.
“Do you really want to hear me play?” she demanded, incredulously. “I didn’t suppose anybody cared about it. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of the things Father taught me, and Mrs. Marsh won’t let me touch the piano when she is at home. She says the noise makes her nervous.”
“It’s too bad,” said Dora, sympathetically; “you do play so lovely, and if you had lessons, why, my goodness, you might get to be a great musician like your papa. I don’t suppose Mrs. Marsh would let you take lessons. If she would I know an awful nice young man who’s a real high-class music teacher. He plays the piano at a moving-picture theater, and he’s been giving my sister Lillie lessons. I don’t believe he’d charge very high.”
Gretel’s face clouded for a moment, and she shook her head sadly.
“Mrs. Marsh won’t let me,” she said, with a sigh. “She says my brother only sends a verylittle money. That’s why I try to do things for Ada, to help pay my board.”
Dora gave vent to her feelings by an indignant sniff.
“I suppose that’s why you don’t go to school,” she said.
“Oh, no; my brother sends the money for my education, but Mrs. Marsh didn’t happen to know of any good school, so her sister Miss Talcott, who used to teach in a school, said she would give me lessons every afternoon. I used to go to her apartment every day till January, but then a friend invited her to go to California, so I don’t have any lessons now. Miss Talcott is very nice and I liked having lessons with her, but she has a great many engagements and quite often she had to be out all the afternoon. I didn’t mind much, because she used to let me stay and play on her piano, and I loved that.”
“Well, come along and give us a tune now,” said Dora, good-naturedly, and Gretel from whose face the momentary cloud had vanished, left her seat in the window, and hastened to open the piano.
It was true that Gretel had forgotten much of the music her father had taught her. It was more than a year since the musical education fromwhich poor Hermann Schiller had hoped such great things, had come to a sudden standstill. But Gretel still played remarkably well for a child of her age, and as her fingers wandered lovingly over the keys of Mrs. Marsh’s rather cracked piano, a strange, rapt look came into her face, and for the moment everything else in the world was forgotten. Dora, secure in the knowledge that the family could not return for several hours, curled herself up comfortably on the parlor sofa. But Dora, though fond of music of a certain kind, was not quite up to Chopin and Mendelssohn, and as Gretel played on and on, a sensation of comfortable drowsiness began to steal over her, and ere long her eyes had closed, and she was fast asleep.
Serenely unconscious of this fact Gretel played on, now a bit of one half-forgotten melody, now another, and as she played she forgot her present surroundings—forgot that she was no longer the child pianist, to whom her father’s friends had listened with astonishment and pride—but only a poor little Cinderella left alone in her shabby black frock, while Mrs. Marsh and her daughter went to fairy-land. She seemed to see again the big, half-furnished studio, that had once been home, and Hermann Schiller and his Germanfriends, smoking their pipes as they listened to her playing, always ready with a burst of applause when her father called out in his kind cheery voice, “Enough for to-night, Liebchen—time to give one of the others a turn.” It all seemed so real that for one moment she glanced up, half expecting to see the familiar scene, and the row of kindly, interested faces, but it was only Mrs. Marsh’s shabby little parlor, with Dora fast asleep on the sofa. Suddenly a great wave of homesickness swept over the little girl—the music stopped with a crash and dropping her face on the piano keys, Gretel began to cry.
At the sudden pause in the music Dora opened her eyes, and sat up with a start. The next moment she had sprung to her feet.
“Whatever are you crying about?” she demanded in astonishment. “I thought you liked to play.”
“I—I don’t know,” sobbed Gretel. “I think it must be the music. I love it so, and—and I never hear any now. I’m forgetting everything Father taught me, and he would be so unhappy if he knew.”
“There, there, I wouldn’t cry about it if I was you,” soothed Dora, laying a kind hand on one of the child’s heaving shoulders. “It’s too bad, andI’m real sorry for you, but maybe we can manage for you to hear some music if you’re so crazy about it. My sister Lillie has a lovely voice, and she’d be real glad to come and sing for you some time, I know. My little brother Peter plays the piano, too, though he’s never had a lesson in his life. Music just seems to come to him natural, and he makes up things as he goes along. Father’s going to try and get him into vaudeville.”
Gretel dried her eyes; she was beginning to be interested.
“I should love to hear him,” she said, “and your sister, too. Do you think Mrs. Marsh would let me?”
Dora looked a little doubtful.
“Well, I don’t know,” she admitted. “She’s got awful fussy notions about girls having company, even their own relations. But I’ll tell you what we might do. Mrs. Marsh and Miss Ada are both going out to dinner to-morrow night and I might get the kids to come round and play for you while they’re out. They’d be real proud to have the chance to show off.”
“It would be very pleasant indeed,” agreed Gretel, “only—only do you think we ought to have them if Mrs. Marsh objects?”
Dora reddened indignantly.
“If Mrs. Marsh wants to keep a decent girl, she’s got to let her have a little liberty,” she declared defiantly. “If anybody can show me where the harm is in my having my little sister and brother to spend the evening with me, I’d like to have them do it. Nobody’s going to do any harm, and a person’s got to have a little amusement once in a while. I’ve been in this house nearly six weeks, and not a living soul have I had to see me since I came.”
“I’m quite sure Father wouldn’t have minded,” said Gretel; “he always wanted people to be happy, but Mrs. Marsh isn’t the least like Father.”
“I should say she wasn’t. Why, what pleasure do you ever have yourself, you poor little thing? It’s nothing but run errands and wait on that lazy Miss Ada from morning till night. It makes me sick, that’s what it does. But you’re going to have a little fun this time, and don’t you forget it. I’m going right off this minute to send a postal to Lillie, to tell her and Peter to come round here and play and sing to you to-morrow evening.”
It was nearly midnight when Mrs. Marsh and her daughter reached home. Mrs. Marsh wastired and sleepy, and she was not speaking in her “company voice” as she let herself in with her latch key, and switched on the electric light.
“Really, Ada, I am surprised at you. You might at least have let Mr. Pendleton think you enjoyed it.”
“I was bored to death, and I suppose I couldn’t help showing it,” returned her daughter, with a yawn. “I never pretended to care for music, and I don’t see why he didn’t take us to the theater. There are half a dozen plays I’m dying to see. I hope that child hasn’t gone to bed, and forgotten my chocolate.”
“Really, Ada,” remonstrated her mother, “you ought not to keep Gretel up so late. It isn’t good for her, and I expressly told her to go to bed early.”
“Nonsense; it doesn’t hurt her a bit. Besides, she loves it. All children adore sitting up after they are supposed to be in bed.”
Before Mrs. Marsh could say any more, a door at the back of the apartment opened, and a little figure appeared, carrying a cup of hot chocolate on a tray. Gretel’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were shining; she did not look in the least sleepy.
“It’s all ready,” she announced cheerfully. “I heard the man calling the carriages, so I knew ‘Lohengrin’ was finished, and I went and made it right away. It’s nice and hot.”
Ada gave a satisfied nod.
“Take it to my room,” she said; “you can stay and brush my hair while I drink it.”
“She must do no such thing,” objected Mrs. Marsh, who was looking both worried and annoyed. “Gretel, didn’t you hear me tell you to go to bed early?”
Gretel glanced from Mrs. Marsh to her daughter, and her grave little face was troubled.
“I know you did,” she said, slowly, “but Ada told me to stay up and make the chocolate. I did go to sleep on the sofa after Dora went to bed, but I set the alarm-clock for half-past eleven, so as to be sure to wake in time. I’m sorry if it was wrong, Mrs. Marsh, but it’s very hard to know which I ought to mind, you or Ada.”
Gretel had no intention of being impertinent; she was merely stating a puzzling fact, which she frequently found very troublesome. But Mrs. Marsh reddened angrily.
“That is not the proper way for a little girl to speak,” she began, but her daughter cut her short.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t begin a lecture at this time of night, Mamma. We are all much too tired to argue. Come with me, Gretel.”
And Mrs. Marsh, who was a weak woman, and who was, moreover, considerably afraid of her tall, domineering daughter, made no further objections, but retired in silence to her own room.
“How did you enjoy yourself all the evening?” Ada inquired, good-naturedly, as she sipped her chocolate, while Gretel brushed out her long hair. “I hope you weren’t lonely.”
“Oh, no,” said Gretel, cheerfully; “I had a very pleasant time. First I watched the people going into fairy—I mean the opera, and then Dora came and talked to me, and I played on the piano. Mrs. Marsh doesn’t mind my playing when she’s out. I ought to be very grateful to Mrs. Marsh, oughtn’t I?”
Ada laughed.
“You funny little thing,” she said; “I never heard a child ask such questions. I suppose you ought to be grateful to Mamma, but what made you think of it?”
“I—I don’t quite know,” faltered Gretel, blushing. “I was only wondering about something Dora said. Oughtn’t it to give people pleasure to be grateful?”
“Of course it ought, but Dora had better mind her own business, and not put ideas into your head. You mustn’t spend your time gossiping with her, Gretel; she’s nothing but an ignorant servant. There, I’ve finished my chocolate, and I don’t believe my hair needs much brushing to-night. Run off to bed; it really is terribly late for you to be up.”
Gretel obeyed, but when she had bidden Ada good night, and was taking the empty cup back to the kitchen, she whispered softly to herself:
“I wonder what ‘gossip’ means? I hope I don’t do it if it’s something not nice, but I do like Dora very much, and I’m very glad I’m going to know Lillie and Peter too.”