Part 1, Chapter IX.The Professor Leaves Home.As I took my place in class I observed that all the girls stared at me; and after staring, one whispered to another, and then they stared again. It was really very confusing. After a time I did not like it. I thought they were impertinent. I could have borne with the stares and all the nudges and the whispers if I had been wearing my dark-blue dress with the grey fur, for I should have put down the curious behaviour of my schoolfellows to the fact of the dress: they were admiring the dress; they were jealous of the dress. But I had gone to school that morning just the ordinary Dumps—Dumps in clothes she had grown out of, Dumps with a somewhat untidy head, Dumps with her plain face. Why should the girls look at me? It was not possible that the good food I had eaten and the happy life I had led at Miss Donnithorne’s could have made such a marvellous difference in so short a time—just about three days and a half.But my lessons were more absorbing than usual, and I forgot the girls. In the playground I resolved to avoid the Swans, and in order to do this I went up to Augusta Moore and slipped my hand through her arm.“Do let us walk about,” I said, “and let us be chums, if you don’t mind.”“Chums?” said Augusta, turning her dreamy, wonderful eyes upon my face.“Yes,” I said.“But chums have tastes in common,” was her next remark.“Well, you are very fond of books, are you not?” I said.“Fond of books!” cried Augusta. “Fond of books! I love them. But that is not the right word: I reverence them; I have a passion for them.”She looked hurriedly round her. “I shall never marry,” she continued in a low whisper, “but I shall surround myself with books—the books of the great departed; their words, their thoughts, shall fill my brain and my heart. I shall be satisfied; nothing else will satisfy me but books, books, books!”“Do come to this corner of the playground,” I said. “You speak as though you were reciting, and if you raise your voice the least bit in the world some one will hear you, and we shall have a crowd round us.”She obeyed me. She was in a world of her own. As I looked at her I thought she was marvellously like the Professor in her mind.“It is a dreadful pity,” I said.“What is a pity?” she asked.“That you are not me, and I am not you.”“Oh dear,” she said, “how you do mix things up! How could I be you?”“Well, if you lived with the Professor—if you were his child—you’d have books; you’d live in the world you love.”Her eyes lit up then. They really were fine eyes, although she was—I could not help feeling it—a most provoking girl.“That would be paradise,” she said. “But that can never happen. It never does happen. Men like your marvellous, your wonderful father have commonplace children like you. Now I, who have all the instincts and all that soul within me that just burns for books, and books alone, have a painfully commonplace mother. It is a mixed world. It is painfully mixed.”“Well, at any rate let us be chums,” I said, for the Swans were getting nearer and nearer.“Oh, as you please, Dumps. But you mustn’t interrupt my work; I always avoid having a girl chum, because she is sure to interrupt. If you like to walk with me in recess you may.”“Oh, I should, Augusta—I should! I find the other girls so chattery and so queer. I don’t understand them.”“Well, naturally, to-day they’re excited,” said Augusta.She looked full at me.“What about?” I said.“Why, about you.”“But why in the world about me? What has happened to me? Have I grown—grown beautiful?”I coloured as I said the words. Another girl would have laughed, but Augusta did not; it was not her way.“You are very plain indeed,” she said calmly; “you have not one feature which could possibly, at any time, grow into a beautiful feature. But that doesn’t matter. You have privileges. Every evening you can look at the Professor and think how marvellous is his brain and how beautiful is his face. Oh, do you think there is any chance of my being able to get a ticket for the next meeting of the Royal Society? He is going to speak. I could listen to him; I could hang on his words.”I made no answer; but I made a special resolution. It was quite impossible for me to be friends with Augusta Moore. She was looking at me at that moment, however, with great attention.“I tell you what it is,” she said; “if you are inclined to be friends with me, you might now and then get me tickets for your father’s lectures. I mean, of course,” she added, colouring very much, “that is, when you do not want them yourself.”“I never go to them,” I said fervently. “I would not go to them for all the world.”“How queer of you!”“I think I can promise to get you two tickets for the next meeting of the Royal Society,” I said, “if it will make you really happy. Father was busy over his lecture last night. It has gone to be typed this morning.”“Oh, don’t!” said Augusta, with a shudder.“Don’t what?”“Make the thing so realistic. Leave it, I beseech of you, leave it in the clouds. Don’t show me the ropes, but get me the tickets. Do! I shall worship you. I will even think you beautiful if you can get me tickets for your father’s lectures.”“I’ll see; I’ll speak to him to-day.”Augusta glanced nervously round.“Do you think it would be possible for you to bring them to our house? We live just outside Inverness Terrace, Bayswater. You could come by the Tube. I would meet you, and I’d bring you home. We have only three rooms, mother and I—a sort of flat at the top of the house. I come every day to this school because it is thought quite the best in London. It doesn’t take long by the Twopenny Tube. You have a station not far from your house. You could come, could you not?”“I could come, of course.”“Well then, let me see. Shall I meet you at four o’clock to-day just outside the Bayswater Station? I’ll be there when you come.”The bell rang for us to return to school.“I’ll come,” I said.“I’ll have quite a nice tea for you—that is, if you care for food.”“I do—I love it,” I said in a stout voice. Augusta did not smile. She went very gravely back to the school. She had forgotten me; she was a sort of female Professor. I certainly did not like her, and yet I would get her the tickets and go to her house. She was better than the Swans.Agnes Swan came up to me when school was over.“You have been nasty in your ways to-day, Dumps,” she said. “Can’t you stay a minute now?”“No,” I said, “I cannot I must run all the way home; I am late.”“Nonsense! Well, will you come to tea with us to-night?”“No, thank you,” I replied; “I have an engagement.”“Oh, she’ll have heaps of engagements from this out!” said Rita. “Don’t worry her. She’ll be much too grand to speak to us by-and-by.”“I have an engagement,” I replied. “I am going to tea with Augusta Moore.”“Oh, with that old frump!”“She is an exceedingly clever girl.”“But you and she have nothing in common, Dumps.”“Yes, we have,” I replied. “Have we not a Professor in common?” I murmured to myself; and then I left the Swans standing discomfited, their faces all agog with longing to tell me something which I would on no account hear from their lips.I hurried back to the house. To my joy, father was in. He was very neatly dressed. I had not seen him so smart for a long time. “Why, father!” I said.“I am leaving home to-night,” was his remark. “I shall be away for a little. I shall be back presently. You will get a letter from me.”“But, father, the lecture at the Royal Society?” I said.“That is not until next Wednesday, this day week. I shall be back again by then. I shall return probably on Sunday, or Monday morning. My dear child, don’t gape. Another man is taking my place at the school. Here, Dumps, here; you’d like five shillings, wouldn’t you?”“Oh yes, father.”It did not really greatly matter to me whether my dear father was in the house or not. I was bewildered at his going; it was quite amazing that he should get any one else to take his boys in the middle of term, but it did not seriously affect my interests or my peace. “You have a very smart coat on,” I said.“Have I?” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, if it pleases you it will please other women. Can’t understand why people look so much at the exterior. Exterior matters nothing. It is how the brain is worked, how the mind tells on the body, how the soul is moved. Those are the things that matter.”“Father, have you had any food?”“Yes; Hannah gave me a chop.”There was a bone from a mutton-chop on a plate near by, but there seemed to be no appearance of a meal for me, and I was very hungry.“The boys are dining at the school to-day,” said my father. “Now, my child, it is time for me to be off.”“But one minute first. There is a girl at school—”“There are two hundred girls at your school. Which special one do you now allude to?”“Her name is Augusta Moore. She has a love for books, somewhat as you have a love for books.”The Professor raised one hand.“I beseech of you, Dumps,” he said, “don’t speak of any girl’s immature admiration for the great works of the mighty dead. Don’t! Your words will get on my nerves.”“Well, I won’t; but she wants to learn, and I suppose she has a right to,” I said in a somewhat dogged tone. “She has begged of me to ask you to give her two tickets for next Wednesday when you are lecturing at the Royal Society. She wants two, for she would not be allowed to go alone.”For answer my father stalked across the room. He crossed the wide hall and entered his own study, a room he seldom used, for he did most of his home work in his bedroom. He came back presently with a couple of tickets and threw them on the table.“There,” he said; “don’t say anything more about her. Don’t worry me on the subject. Good-bye, my little girl.”He stooped and kissed me; his kiss was more affectionate than usual.“Be a good girl, Dumps. What I do I do for my children’s sake.”“Of course, father;” I said, touched by the feeling which seemed to be in the kiss he had just bestowed upon me.“By the way, Dumps, I gave you that picture of your mother?”“Oh yes, father; but I have not looked at it yet.”“It is a good likeness,” he said. “She was a pretty woman, and a good wife to me; I never forget that. I don’t forget it now. Good-bye, Dumps.”“You will write, father?”“Yes, yes; anyhow you will hear. Good-bye, child; good-bye.”I followed him into the hall. There was a neat little Gladstone bag on a chair. It really was brand-new, and it had his initials on it.“Why,” I said, taking it up in my hand, “this is exactly the same sort of bag as my trunk—I mean it is such very new-looking leather. How pretty! When did you get it?”“Don’t be inquisitive, child. Is it new? Upon my word! Well, that’s all right. Good-bye, good-bye, Dumps.”He snatched up the bag and went out, banging the hall door. I went straight back to the parlour and pulled the bell. I pulled it twice in desperation. There was no response of any sort.“Hannah gets worse and worse,” I thought. I was ravenously hungry. There was not a scrap of preparation for a meal on the table, only the glass out of which father had drunk his accustomed quantity of beer, and the bone of the mutton-chop, and a small piece of bread. Hannah was certainly in her deafest and worst humour, and the cotton-wool was sticking firmly into her right ear.I ran downstairs. I entered the kitchen.“Sakes!” said Hannah.I went close to her and dexterously put out my hand and removed the cotton-wool from her ear.“Miss Dumps, how dare you?”“I want my dinner,” I said.“Sakes! What with frying chops for the Professor, and him going off in a hurry, why, my head is in a moil.”“Hannah,” I said, “I must have some food. I am awfully hungry.”“Well, set down right there by the kitchen table and I’ll give you another chop,” said Hannah. “I hear the Professor’s not coming back to-night. It’s the very queerest thing I remember happening since your poor mother died. But you set there and I’ll grill a chop for you, and you shall have it piping hot, and potatoes as well. There, now, what do you say to that?”I thought I would oblige Hannah to any extent with the prospect of such a meal in front of me, and accordingly I sat down while she prepared the chop and potatoes. Presently she brought them to me, and I ate them with the satisfaction which only a hungry schoolgirl can feel when she is seldom given a satisfying meal.“Master said to me just before he left, ‘Tidy up the house a bit, Hannah.’ Never heard him make such a remark before in all my life since your poor mother were took.”“You remember mother very well, don’t you, Hannah?”“Bless her! yes, I have memories.”Hannah looked very thoughtful.“Do sit down,” I said. “You and I are alone in the house.”“You are her mortal image,” said Hannah as she sank into her chair.“I like mother?”“Not in face, but in ways. You have a sort of coaxing way with you, and your temper is good—I will say that. But God only knows who you hark back with regard to face, for you are plain, Dumps, there’s no doubt of that.”“So every one says—that is, every one except Mr Von Marlo.”“That queer Dutch boy—that foreigner? Nobody minds what foreigners say.”“Still, it is nice sometimes, by somebody, to be called even fairly good-looking,” I responded.“Maybe you’re in Dutch style,” said Hannah. “I always was told they had flattened-out faces, same as the Dutch dolls, you know.”This remark was scarcely flattering; but then Hannah, on principle, never did flatter.“Tell me about mother,” I said. “What was she really like?”“Mr Alex takes after her. Eyes blue as the sky, a tender, gentle face, rather tall, rather slim, the sweetest of voices.”“Why did she die?” I asked.My own voice trembled.“Killed, child—killed.”“Killed?” I exclaimed. “I never heard that.”“Oh, there are ways of doing the job! She weren’t killed by any accident—not by fire, nor by water, nor by a street accident—but just she wanted what she couldn’t get.”“And what was that?”“Why, the understanding of the sort of man she had married. He is real good is the Professor, downright good at heart, but he wanted a different sort of wife from your mother, some one as could rouse him and take him by the shoulders and shake him. That’s the sort he wanted, and she weren’t the kind. So, you see, she hadn’t enough sunshine, and by-and-by the want of sunshine killed her. Yes, she were killed if ever a woman were killed; yes, that’s it—killed.”I started to my feet.“You really are very melancholy, Hannah.”“And why in the name of fortune should I be merry? What’s to make me merry?”“Well, we all have to make the best of things. Miss Donnithorne says so.”“Don’t you mention the name of that hussy to me!”“Hannah, you have no right to call her that. She is a most sweet, dear, charming woman.”“Get you out of my kitchen, Dumps!”“Hannah, what do you mean?”“Mean? I don’t want that woman coming fussing round the place, making up to you, dressing you up—I know what it means. Don’t you talk to me. Get along, Dumps, or I’ll say something angry. Now then, out you go!”Hannah pushed the cotton-wool well into her ear with her thumb, and after that I knew that I might as well talk to a deaf and dumb image.
As I took my place in class I observed that all the girls stared at me; and after staring, one whispered to another, and then they stared again. It was really very confusing. After a time I did not like it. I thought they were impertinent. I could have borne with the stares and all the nudges and the whispers if I had been wearing my dark-blue dress with the grey fur, for I should have put down the curious behaviour of my schoolfellows to the fact of the dress: they were admiring the dress; they were jealous of the dress. But I had gone to school that morning just the ordinary Dumps—Dumps in clothes she had grown out of, Dumps with a somewhat untidy head, Dumps with her plain face. Why should the girls look at me? It was not possible that the good food I had eaten and the happy life I had led at Miss Donnithorne’s could have made such a marvellous difference in so short a time—just about three days and a half.
But my lessons were more absorbing than usual, and I forgot the girls. In the playground I resolved to avoid the Swans, and in order to do this I went up to Augusta Moore and slipped my hand through her arm.
“Do let us walk about,” I said, “and let us be chums, if you don’t mind.”
“Chums?” said Augusta, turning her dreamy, wonderful eyes upon my face.
“Yes,” I said.
“But chums have tastes in common,” was her next remark.
“Well, you are very fond of books, are you not?” I said.
“Fond of books!” cried Augusta. “Fond of books! I love them. But that is not the right word: I reverence them; I have a passion for them.”
She looked hurriedly round her. “I shall never marry,” she continued in a low whisper, “but I shall surround myself with books—the books of the great departed; their words, their thoughts, shall fill my brain and my heart. I shall be satisfied; nothing else will satisfy me but books, books, books!”
“Do come to this corner of the playground,” I said. “You speak as though you were reciting, and if you raise your voice the least bit in the world some one will hear you, and we shall have a crowd round us.”
She obeyed me. She was in a world of her own. As I looked at her I thought she was marvellously like the Professor in her mind.
“It is a dreadful pity,” I said.
“What is a pity?” she asked.
“That you are not me, and I am not you.”
“Oh dear,” she said, “how you do mix things up! How could I be you?”
“Well, if you lived with the Professor—if you were his child—you’d have books; you’d live in the world you love.”
Her eyes lit up then. They really were fine eyes, although she was—I could not help feeling it—a most provoking girl.
“That would be paradise,” she said. “But that can never happen. It never does happen. Men like your marvellous, your wonderful father have commonplace children like you. Now I, who have all the instincts and all that soul within me that just burns for books, and books alone, have a painfully commonplace mother. It is a mixed world. It is painfully mixed.”
“Well, at any rate let us be chums,” I said, for the Swans were getting nearer and nearer.
“Oh, as you please, Dumps. But you mustn’t interrupt my work; I always avoid having a girl chum, because she is sure to interrupt. If you like to walk with me in recess you may.”
“Oh, I should, Augusta—I should! I find the other girls so chattery and so queer. I don’t understand them.”
“Well, naturally, to-day they’re excited,” said Augusta.
She looked full at me.
“What about?” I said.
“Why, about you.”
“But why in the world about me? What has happened to me? Have I grown—grown beautiful?”
I coloured as I said the words. Another girl would have laughed, but Augusta did not; it was not her way.
“You are very plain indeed,” she said calmly; “you have not one feature which could possibly, at any time, grow into a beautiful feature. But that doesn’t matter. You have privileges. Every evening you can look at the Professor and think how marvellous is his brain and how beautiful is his face. Oh, do you think there is any chance of my being able to get a ticket for the next meeting of the Royal Society? He is going to speak. I could listen to him; I could hang on his words.”
I made no answer; but I made a special resolution. It was quite impossible for me to be friends with Augusta Moore. She was looking at me at that moment, however, with great attention.
“I tell you what it is,” she said; “if you are inclined to be friends with me, you might now and then get me tickets for your father’s lectures. I mean, of course,” she added, colouring very much, “that is, when you do not want them yourself.”
“I never go to them,” I said fervently. “I would not go to them for all the world.”
“How queer of you!”
“I think I can promise to get you two tickets for the next meeting of the Royal Society,” I said, “if it will make you really happy. Father was busy over his lecture last night. It has gone to be typed this morning.”
“Oh, don’t!” said Augusta, with a shudder.
“Don’t what?”
“Make the thing so realistic. Leave it, I beseech of you, leave it in the clouds. Don’t show me the ropes, but get me the tickets. Do! I shall worship you. I will even think you beautiful if you can get me tickets for your father’s lectures.”
“I’ll see; I’ll speak to him to-day.”
Augusta glanced nervously round.
“Do you think it would be possible for you to bring them to our house? We live just outside Inverness Terrace, Bayswater. You could come by the Tube. I would meet you, and I’d bring you home. We have only three rooms, mother and I—a sort of flat at the top of the house. I come every day to this school because it is thought quite the best in London. It doesn’t take long by the Twopenny Tube. You have a station not far from your house. You could come, could you not?”
“I could come, of course.”
“Well then, let me see. Shall I meet you at four o’clock to-day just outside the Bayswater Station? I’ll be there when you come.”
The bell rang for us to return to school.
“I’ll come,” I said.
“I’ll have quite a nice tea for you—that is, if you care for food.”
“I do—I love it,” I said in a stout voice. Augusta did not smile. She went very gravely back to the school. She had forgotten me; she was a sort of female Professor. I certainly did not like her, and yet I would get her the tickets and go to her house. She was better than the Swans.
Agnes Swan came up to me when school was over.
“You have been nasty in your ways to-day, Dumps,” she said. “Can’t you stay a minute now?”
“No,” I said, “I cannot I must run all the way home; I am late.”
“Nonsense! Well, will you come to tea with us to-night?”
“No, thank you,” I replied; “I have an engagement.”
“Oh, she’ll have heaps of engagements from this out!” said Rita. “Don’t worry her. She’ll be much too grand to speak to us by-and-by.”
“I have an engagement,” I replied. “I am going to tea with Augusta Moore.”
“Oh, with that old frump!”
“She is an exceedingly clever girl.”
“But you and she have nothing in common, Dumps.”
“Yes, we have,” I replied. “Have we not a Professor in common?” I murmured to myself; and then I left the Swans standing discomfited, their faces all agog with longing to tell me something which I would on no account hear from their lips.
I hurried back to the house. To my joy, father was in. He was very neatly dressed. I had not seen him so smart for a long time. “Why, father!” I said.
“I am leaving home to-night,” was his remark. “I shall be away for a little. I shall be back presently. You will get a letter from me.”
“But, father, the lecture at the Royal Society?” I said.
“That is not until next Wednesday, this day week. I shall be back again by then. I shall return probably on Sunday, or Monday morning. My dear child, don’t gape. Another man is taking my place at the school. Here, Dumps, here; you’d like five shillings, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh yes, father.”
It did not really greatly matter to me whether my dear father was in the house or not. I was bewildered at his going; it was quite amazing that he should get any one else to take his boys in the middle of term, but it did not seriously affect my interests or my peace. “You have a very smart coat on,” I said.
“Have I?” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, if it pleases you it will please other women. Can’t understand why people look so much at the exterior. Exterior matters nothing. It is how the brain is worked, how the mind tells on the body, how the soul is moved. Those are the things that matter.”
“Father, have you had any food?”
“Yes; Hannah gave me a chop.”
There was a bone from a mutton-chop on a plate near by, but there seemed to be no appearance of a meal for me, and I was very hungry.
“The boys are dining at the school to-day,” said my father. “Now, my child, it is time for me to be off.”
“But one minute first. There is a girl at school—”
“There are two hundred girls at your school. Which special one do you now allude to?”
“Her name is Augusta Moore. She has a love for books, somewhat as you have a love for books.”
The Professor raised one hand.
“I beseech of you, Dumps,” he said, “don’t speak of any girl’s immature admiration for the great works of the mighty dead. Don’t! Your words will get on my nerves.”
“Well, I won’t; but she wants to learn, and I suppose she has a right to,” I said in a somewhat dogged tone. “She has begged of me to ask you to give her two tickets for next Wednesday when you are lecturing at the Royal Society. She wants two, for she would not be allowed to go alone.”
For answer my father stalked across the room. He crossed the wide hall and entered his own study, a room he seldom used, for he did most of his home work in his bedroom. He came back presently with a couple of tickets and threw them on the table.
“There,” he said; “don’t say anything more about her. Don’t worry me on the subject. Good-bye, my little girl.”
He stooped and kissed me; his kiss was more affectionate than usual.
“Be a good girl, Dumps. What I do I do for my children’s sake.”
“Of course, father;” I said, touched by the feeling which seemed to be in the kiss he had just bestowed upon me.
“By the way, Dumps, I gave you that picture of your mother?”
“Oh yes, father; but I have not looked at it yet.”
“It is a good likeness,” he said. “She was a pretty woman, and a good wife to me; I never forget that. I don’t forget it now. Good-bye, Dumps.”
“You will write, father?”
“Yes, yes; anyhow you will hear. Good-bye, child; good-bye.”
I followed him into the hall. There was a neat little Gladstone bag on a chair. It really was brand-new, and it had his initials on it.
“Why,” I said, taking it up in my hand, “this is exactly the same sort of bag as my trunk—I mean it is such very new-looking leather. How pretty! When did you get it?”
“Don’t be inquisitive, child. Is it new? Upon my word! Well, that’s all right. Good-bye, good-bye, Dumps.”
He snatched up the bag and went out, banging the hall door. I went straight back to the parlour and pulled the bell. I pulled it twice in desperation. There was no response of any sort.
“Hannah gets worse and worse,” I thought. I was ravenously hungry. There was not a scrap of preparation for a meal on the table, only the glass out of which father had drunk his accustomed quantity of beer, and the bone of the mutton-chop, and a small piece of bread. Hannah was certainly in her deafest and worst humour, and the cotton-wool was sticking firmly into her right ear.
I ran downstairs. I entered the kitchen.
“Sakes!” said Hannah.
I went close to her and dexterously put out my hand and removed the cotton-wool from her ear.
“Miss Dumps, how dare you?”
“I want my dinner,” I said.
“Sakes! What with frying chops for the Professor, and him going off in a hurry, why, my head is in a moil.”
“Hannah,” I said, “I must have some food. I am awfully hungry.”
“Well, set down right there by the kitchen table and I’ll give you another chop,” said Hannah. “I hear the Professor’s not coming back to-night. It’s the very queerest thing I remember happening since your poor mother died. But you set there and I’ll grill a chop for you, and you shall have it piping hot, and potatoes as well. There, now, what do you say to that?”
I thought I would oblige Hannah to any extent with the prospect of such a meal in front of me, and accordingly I sat down while she prepared the chop and potatoes. Presently she brought them to me, and I ate them with the satisfaction which only a hungry schoolgirl can feel when she is seldom given a satisfying meal.
“Master said to me just before he left, ‘Tidy up the house a bit, Hannah.’ Never heard him make such a remark before in all my life since your poor mother were took.”
“You remember mother very well, don’t you, Hannah?”
“Bless her! yes, I have memories.”
Hannah looked very thoughtful.
“Do sit down,” I said. “You and I are alone in the house.”
“You are her mortal image,” said Hannah as she sank into her chair.
“I like mother?”
“Not in face, but in ways. You have a sort of coaxing way with you, and your temper is good—I will say that. But God only knows who you hark back with regard to face, for you are plain, Dumps, there’s no doubt of that.”
“So every one says—that is, every one except Mr Von Marlo.”
“That queer Dutch boy—that foreigner? Nobody minds what foreigners say.”
“Still, it is nice sometimes, by somebody, to be called even fairly good-looking,” I responded.
“Maybe you’re in Dutch style,” said Hannah. “I always was told they had flattened-out faces, same as the Dutch dolls, you know.”
This remark was scarcely flattering; but then Hannah, on principle, never did flatter.
“Tell me about mother,” I said. “What was she really like?”
“Mr Alex takes after her. Eyes blue as the sky, a tender, gentle face, rather tall, rather slim, the sweetest of voices.”
“Why did she die?” I asked.
My own voice trembled.
“Killed, child—killed.”
“Killed?” I exclaimed. “I never heard that.”
“Oh, there are ways of doing the job! She weren’t killed by any accident—not by fire, nor by water, nor by a street accident—but just she wanted what she couldn’t get.”
“And what was that?”
“Why, the understanding of the sort of man she had married. He is real good is the Professor, downright good at heart, but he wanted a different sort of wife from your mother, some one as could rouse him and take him by the shoulders and shake him. That’s the sort he wanted, and she weren’t the kind. So, you see, she hadn’t enough sunshine, and by-and-by the want of sunshine killed her. Yes, she were killed if ever a woman were killed; yes, that’s it—killed.”
I started to my feet.
“You really are very melancholy, Hannah.”
“And why in the name of fortune should I be merry? What’s to make me merry?”
“Well, we all have to make the best of things. Miss Donnithorne says so.”
“Don’t you mention the name of that hussy to me!”
“Hannah, you have no right to call her that. She is a most sweet, dear, charming woman.”
“Get you out of my kitchen, Dumps!”
“Hannah, what do you mean?”
“Mean? I don’t want that woman coming fussing round the place, making up to you, dressing you up—I know what it means. Don’t you talk to me. Get along, Dumps, or I’ll say something angry. Now then, out you go!”
Hannah pushed the cotton-wool well into her ear with her thumb, and after that I knew that I might as well talk to a deaf and dumb image.
Part 1, Chapter X.A Very Queer Chum.I went to tea with Augusta Moore. She was full of raptures with regard to the tickets which I had brought her. She turned in the street and kissed me quite demonstratively; but the next moment she lapsed into one of her brown studies.“Do look out,” I said; “you will be run over.”“As if that mattered,” said Augusta.“As if what mattered?” I asked.“Why, what you said just now. Don’t interrupt me. I am puzzling out a thought which will lead to—oh! it has gone—don’t speak; it will come back if you keep quiet. There, I’ve nearly caught it!”“Oh Augusta!” I said, “you mustn’t talk in that way while we are walking in this street.”I clutched her by the arm.“Guide me, Dumps; guide me, commonplace Dumps; then I shall be able to think in peace.”I guided her then very steadily. We walked up Queen’s Road. Queen’s Road is a long street.“I thought,” I said, “that you lived somewhere near Inverness Terrace, close to the Twopenny Tube.” Augusta pulled up short.“What have you been doing?” she said.“What have I been doing?” I answered.“Why, you’ve led me more than half a mile away from home, and mother will be very much annoyed.”“Well, you must wake up and get me there in some sort of fashion,” I said, “for I cannot possibly guide myself when I don’t know where you live.”Thus adjured, and by dint of constant pokes, and even pinches, I did manage to take Augusta to her own home. There was a lift which would take us to her mother’s flat at the top of the great house; but she was a quarter way up the stairs before I was able to remind her of the fact. She then said it didn’t matter, and began to quote fromThe Ancient Mariner, saying the words aloud. People looked at her as they came downstairs. One lady said, “How do you do, Miss Moore?” but Augusta did not make any reply.At last we arrived at the very top of the house, and as there were no more stairs of any sort to go up, we had to pause here.“Now, which door are we to knock at?” I said. Augusta pointed to one.“We’re awfully late,” she said. “Mother will be terrible I shall go into my own room until she subsides. You won’t mind listening to her; you will probably agree with her. You are fearfully commonplace yourself. Two commonplaces together make—oh! I ought to be able to say something very smart and witty on that subject, but I can’t. I am going to cultivate smart sayings. I believe it is possible to cultivate them. The spirit of repartee can be produced with care. I have read about it; it is possible. A person who can make good repartees is much appreciated, don’t you know?”“Oh yes, yes; but do knock at the door, or let me.” She approached the door, but before she could raise her hand to ring the bell she turned to me again.“What is the subject of your father’s next lecture?”“I’m sure I don’t know from Adam,” I replied.“What a vulgar way of expressing it! How terrible to think you are his child!”“Augusta,” I said, “there is one thing that puzzles me. I am the Professor’s child, and doubtless I am commonplace; but I am glad of it, for I wouldn’t be like you for all the world.”“I don’t want you to envy me,” she said. “I never ask any one to envy me. Those who are geniuses are above anything of that sort.”“But I should like to ask you a question.”“What is it? Has it something to do with the great departed, or—”“It has not,” I said. “It is, how do you ever manage to get to school in the morning? Are you awake? Can you get along the streets? Are you always in a dream as you are now?”“Mary Roberts, who also comes to the school, but who is in a very inferior class, calls for me. She has done that ever since I lost my way in a distant part of Regent’s Park and was very much scolded by my teacher. I forgot the school; I forgot everything that day. I was puzzling out a problem. Your father could reply to it.”I made no answer to this, except to pull the bell vigorously myself. This brought Mrs Moore on to the scene. It was a great relief to see a placid-looking, blue-eyed little lady, neatly and nicely dressed, who said, “Augusta, late as usual! And this is your dear little friend.—How do you do, Miss Grant? Come in, dear—come in.”“Mother,” said Augusta, “while you are on the scold, you may as well scold Miss Grant, or Dumps, as we call her. I am going to my room. I have received two tickets for the next great meeting of the Royal Society. I shall live in bliss with the thought of those tickets until that night. You are to come with me.”“What night is your father’s lecture?” asked Mrs Moore, glancing at me.“Next Wednesday,” I answered.“We cannot possibly go on Wednesday; you know that, Augusta. It is your uncle Charles’s birthday, and we have both been invited to dine with him; he would never forgive us if we did not go.”“Just as you please, mother, as far as you are concerned. I shall go,” said Augusta; and she went into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.Mrs Moore gave one patient sigh. “Would you like to take your jacket off?” she said.I hastily removed it. She began to pour boiling water into the teapot. The little room was very neat and clean, and there was quite a cosy, appetising tea spread on the board.“I have heard a great deal about your father, my dear,” said Mrs Moore after a pause. “And now I also hear about you. I am glad to welcome you here. You are Augusta’s special friend, are you not?”“Oh, I know her very well,” I said.“She told me to-day at dinner that you wished to be a chum of hers. She said she was willing. I felt quite relieved, for I think it would be very good for Augusta to have a sort of human influence; she needs human influence so badly.”“But can’t she get it, Mrs Moore?” I asked. “Surely it is all round her?”“Well, dear, the fact is, she always stays amongst the dry bones; that’s what I call that terrible sort of learning which she so clings to. Not a word when she comes out, my love. I assure you it is quite a comfort to confide in you.”She motioned to me to draw my chair to the table. I sat down.“You look quite an interesting person,” said Mrs Moore.“Oh no, I am not at all interesting,” I replied.“Here is a cup of tea, love.” She handed me one.“Ought I not,” I said, “to wait for Augusta?”“Dear me, no! on no account. She will probably not come in at all. Doubtless by now she has forgotten that you are in the house.”I could not help laughing.“But doesn’t she ever eat?”“I bring her her food. She takes it then without knowing what she is taking. She is a very strange child.”“Well,” I said as I helped myself to a very nice piece of hot cake, “I don’t think I should have got her here to-day without pinching and poking her. She took me quite a long way round. I believe,” I added, “that I shall not be able to get back, for I don’t know this part of London well.”“I will take you to the Twopenny Tube myself, dear. Don’t imagine for a single instant that you will see anything more of Augusta.”When I discovered that this was really the case I gave myself up to the enjoyment of Mrs Moore’s pleasant society. She was a very nice woman, not at all commonplace—at least, if that meant commonplace, it was a very good thing to be. She was practical, and had a great deal of sense. She talked to me about my life, and about my father, and said she wished we lived a little nearer.“You must sadly want a lady friend, my dear,” she said.Then she stared at me very hard, and I saw a curious change come over her face.“Perhaps you will have one in the future,” was her next remark.“Oh yes,” I answered briskly, “I have one now—a most dear, sweet lady. She came to see me quite a short time ago, and I went to stay with her last Saturday, and came home only last night. I love her dearly; her name is Miss Grace Donnithorne.”“Then that is excellent—excellent,” said Mrs Moore. She looked at me wistfully, as though she meant to say something, but her next remark was, “It is a very nice, suitable arrangement.”When tea was over I said I thought I ought to be going home. I had a hunger which was filling my heart. My body had been well fed—surprisingly well fed for me—that day. Had not Hannah supplied me with mutton-chops and potatoes, and Mrs Moore with hot cakes and fragrant tea? But I was hungry in another sort of way. I wanted to look at my mother’s picture. I wanted to gaze at the face of my very own mother. I meant to do so when I was quite alone in my bedroom that night. So I said hastily, “I must go back now;” and Mrs Moore went to put on her bonnet.While she was away I knocked at Augusta’s door.“Who’s there?” she called out.“It’s I. I want to say good-bye.”“Don’t come in, I beg of you. Good-bye.”“Good-bye,” I answered, feeling somewhat offended. I heard her muttering words inside the room. They became louder:“And like a dying lady, lone and pale,Who totters forth wrapped in a gauzy veil.”Mrs Moore opened her door.“What is the matter with Augusta?” I said.“Nothing; she is only reciting. She is mad on Shelley at present.—Good-bye, Gussie; I am going to see your friend, Miss Grant, to the Twopenny Tube.”Augusta replied in a still louder rendering of the words:“Art thou pale from wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth—”We went into the street. Mrs Moore took me to the station, and saying she had something to do in another part of the street, she bade me on affectionate good-bye.I returned to our own house, and when I got there I found Alex and Charley and Von Marlo, as we always called him, waiting for me.“Then it’s quite true,” said Alex, “that we are to have the whole evening to ourselves? I have brought some grub in, and we are going to cook it ourselves in the parlour. You must help us, Dumps. It doesn’t matter how shabby your frock is; you have got to be the cook.”“Oh, how scrumptious!” I cried. I felt just in the humour.“And we can be as noisy as ever we like,” said Charley.“Only we won’t do anything to hurt your feelings, Miss Rachel,” said Von Marlo.“The main thing of all is,” said Charley, “that Hannah isn’t to know.”“Oh, we can easily manage that,” I said. “She won’t come upstairs unless we ring for her. She never does.”“I’ve taken precious good care that she doesn’t come upstairs,” said Alex, “for I’ve locked the door at the top of the kitchen stairs;” and he produced the key in triumph from his pocket.“Oh Alex, suppose by any sort of manner or means she wanted to come! Why, she would never forgive us.”“Serve her right. She won’t answer our rings of late, so now we’ll keep her downstairs in that sweet spot in which she so loves to dwell.”“But,” I said, “our dinner?”“Oh, here it is—a mutton bone, barer than usual, and a few potatoes. I thought we’d have a real feast. Did father give you any of the needful when he was going away to-day, Dumps?”“Why, yes,” I said, “he gave me five shillings.”“And he gave me the same.”“And me the same,” said Charley.“You’ll have to pay us back your share of the grub to-morrow,” said Alex; “but we bought it beforehand.”“Well, we can’t cook without cooking things,” I said.“Sakes!” replied Alex; “do you suppose that while you were wandering about London by yourself—highly improper for any young lady, I call it—that we were idle? Charley and Von Marlo and I went down into the kitchen and purloined a frying-pan, a saucepan, a kettle, cups and saucers, glasses, knives and forks galore, and plates. Table-cloths don’t matter. Now then, to see the array of eatables.”Alex produced out of his bag first of all, in a dirty piece of paper, a skinned rabbit, next a pound of sausages, next a parcel of onions.“These will make a jolly good fry,” said Alex, smacking his lips as he spoke.From Charley’s pockets came a great piece of butter, while Von Marlo rid himself of a huge incubus in the shape of a loaf of very fresh bread.“There are lots of things beside,” said Charley: “potatoes—we’re going to fry them after the rabbit and sausages—and fruit and cakes. We thought if we had a good, big, monstrous fry, and then satisfied the rest of our appetites with cake and fruit, as much as ever we can eat, that we’d do.”“What about tea or coffee?” I said.“Bother tea or coffee!” said Alex. “We’ll have ginger-beer. We brought in a whole dozen bottles. It was that that nearly killed us. If it hadn’t been for Von Marlo we’d never have done it. Now then, Dumps, who’ll cut up the rabbit, and who’ll put it into the pan with the sausages? They ought to be done in a jiffy. We’ll cut up the onions and strew them over the rabbit and sausages. I want our fry to be real tasty.”I became quite interested. What girl would not? To have the whole of the great house to ourselves, to have three lively, hungry boys gloating greedily over the food, and to think that I alone knew how to cook it!But, alas and alack! my pride was soon doomed to be humiliated; for Von Marlo, who had poached the egg so beautifully, now came forward and told me that I was not cutting up the rabbit with any sense of its anatomical proportions. He took a sharp clasp-knife out of his pocket, and in a minute or two the deed was done. He then objected to my mode of preparing the sausages, declaring that they ought to be pricked and the skins slightly opened. In the end he said it would be much better for him to prepare the fry, and I left it to him.“Yes, yes,” I said; “and I’ll put on the table-cloth. Oh, but there isn’t a table-cloth!”“Who wants a table-cloth?” said Alex. “Let’s have newspapers. Here’s a pile.”We then proceeded to spread them on the centre table, and placed the knives and forks and glasses upon them. The sausages popped and frizzled, the rabbit shrank into tiny proportions, the onions filled the air with their odorous scent, and by-and-by the fry was considered done. When we had each been helped to a goodly portion, Von Marlo began to fry the potatoes, and these turned out to be more delicious than the rabbit and sausages. What a meal it was! How we laughed and joked and made merry!“Three cheers for father’s absence!” shouted Alex, holding his glass high, as he prepared to pour the foaming contents down his throat.There came a knocking—a violent and furious knocking—in a part of the house which was not the front door.“It’s Hannah! Hannah!” I cried. “She wants to come out. Oh Alex, we must let her out!”“Nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Charley. “Let her knock until she’s tired of knocking.”The door was shaken violently. We heard a woman’s voice calling and calling.“Charley, I must go,” I said. “I cannot eat anything. Poor old Hannah! Oh, do let me open the door!”“When the feast is over we’ll cook a little supper for her, and bring her in and set her down in front of the fire, and make her eat it,” said Von Marlo. “Now, that will do, won’t it? Sit down and eat your nice, hot supper,” he continued, looking attentively at me with his honest brown eyes.I coloured and looked at him. It was so pleasant to have eyes glancing at you that did not disapprove of you all the time.Von Marlo drew a chair close to the table for me, and placed another near it for himself, and we ate heartily—yes, heartily—to the accompaniment of Hannah’s knocks and shrieks and screams to us to let her out of her prison.By-and-by the meal came to an end, and then it was Von Marlo himself who went to the door. We three, we Grants, were sufficiently cowardly to remain in the parlour. By-and-by Von Marlo reappeared, leading Hannah. Hannah had been reduced to tears. He had her hand on his arm, and was conducting her into the parlour with all the grace with which he would conduct a duchess or any other person of title.“Here’s your supper,” he said. “Sit here; you must be very cold. Sit near the fire and eat, eat.”She sat down, but she did not eat.“Come, come,” he said, and he placed an appetising plate of food close to her. She went on sobbing, but her sobs were not quite so frequent.“It smells good, doesn’t it?” said Von Marlo; and now he put a tender piece of rabbit on the end of a fork and held it within an inch of her mouth.“You will be much better after you have eaten,” he said in a coaxing tone.He had managed to place himself in such a position that when she did stop crying she could only see him; and after a time the smell of the delicious stew, and something about the comfort of her present position close to the fire, caused her to open her eyes, and then she opened her mouth, and in was popped the piece of tender rabbit. She ate it, and then Von Marlo fed her by popping piece after piece into her mouth; and he gave her ginger-beer to drink; and when the supper was quite ended and the platter clean, he stepped back and said, “You must forgive the Grants; it was rather mischievous of them. But it was not Miss Rachel; it was Alex and Charley, and in especial it was Von Marlo’s fault. Now you will forgive Von Marlo?”He dropped on one knee, and put on the most comical face I had ever seen; then he looked up at her, wiping one of his eyes, and winking and blinking with the other. Hannah absolutely laughed.“Oh, you children, you children!” she exclaimed.It was a most wonderful victory. We knew now she would not scold, and it had a marvellous effect upon us. I rushed to her and flung my arms round her neck and kissed and hugged her. Alex said, “Good old Hannah!” and Charley crouched down by her side and said, “Rub my hair the wrong way; you know how I like it, Hannah.”Then Von Marlo said, “I’m not going to be out of it,” and he planted himself with his broad back firmly against her knees; and thus we all sat, with Hannah in the centre, making a sort of queen in the midst. She had ceased to weep, and was smiling.“Dear, dear!” she said; “but I never was too hard on real mischievousness; it’s naughtiness as angers me. Oh, my sakes! Charley, my lamb, I remember you when you were nothing more than a baby.”“But I was your pet, Hannah,” I said. “Tell me that I was your pet.”“But you were nothing of the sort,” said Hannah. “I will own that I was always took with looks. Now, Alex has looks.”“And I. I have looks too,” said Charley. “I was gazing at my face in the glass this morning, and I saw that I had beautiful, dark, greyey-blue eyes.”“It’s very wrong to encourage vanity,” said Hannah. “Well, Dumps will always be spared that temptation. But sakes! I must take away the things. What a mess you have made of the place! And whoever in the name of fortune fried up that rabbit? It was the most appetising morsel I ever ate in the whole course of my life.”“I shall have much pleasure in writing out the recipe and giving it to you,” said Von Marlo, dropping again on one knee, and now placing his hand across his heart. “Fairest of women, beloved Hannah, queen of my heart, I shall write out that recipe and give it to you.”“Oh my!” said Hannah, “you are worse than the Dutch dolls; but you do make me laugh like anything.”
I went to tea with Augusta Moore. She was full of raptures with regard to the tickets which I had brought her. She turned in the street and kissed me quite demonstratively; but the next moment she lapsed into one of her brown studies.
“Do look out,” I said; “you will be run over.”
“As if that mattered,” said Augusta.
“As if what mattered?” I asked.
“Why, what you said just now. Don’t interrupt me. I am puzzling out a thought which will lead to—oh! it has gone—don’t speak; it will come back if you keep quiet. There, I’ve nearly caught it!”
“Oh Augusta!” I said, “you mustn’t talk in that way while we are walking in this street.”
I clutched her by the arm.
“Guide me, Dumps; guide me, commonplace Dumps; then I shall be able to think in peace.”
I guided her then very steadily. We walked up Queen’s Road. Queen’s Road is a long street.
“I thought,” I said, “that you lived somewhere near Inverness Terrace, close to the Twopenny Tube.” Augusta pulled up short.
“What have you been doing?” she said.
“What have I been doing?” I answered.
“Why, you’ve led me more than half a mile away from home, and mother will be very much annoyed.”
“Well, you must wake up and get me there in some sort of fashion,” I said, “for I cannot possibly guide myself when I don’t know where you live.”
Thus adjured, and by dint of constant pokes, and even pinches, I did manage to take Augusta to her own home. There was a lift which would take us to her mother’s flat at the top of the great house; but she was a quarter way up the stairs before I was able to remind her of the fact. She then said it didn’t matter, and began to quote fromThe Ancient Mariner, saying the words aloud. People looked at her as they came downstairs. One lady said, “How do you do, Miss Moore?” but Augusta did not make any reply.
At last we arrived at the very top of the house, and as there were no more stairs of any sort to go up, we had to pause here.
“Now, which door are we to knock at?” I said. Augusta pointed to one.
“We’re awfully late,” she said. “Mother will be terrible I shall go into my own room until she subsides. You won’t mind listening to her; you will probably agree with her. You are fearfully commonplace yourself. Two commonplaces together make—oh! I ought to be able to say something very smart and witty on that subject, but I can’t. I am going to cultivate smart sayings. I believe it is possible to cultivate them. The spirit of repartee can be produced with care. I have read about it; it is possible. A person who can make good repartees is much appreciated, don’t you know?”
“Oh yes, yes; but do knock at the door, or let me.” She approached the door, but before she could raise her hand to ring the bell she turned to me again.
“What is the subject of your father’s next lecture?”
“I’m sure I don’t know from Adam,” I replied.
“What a vulgar way of expressing it! How terrible to think you are his child!”
“Augusta,” I said, “there is one thing that puzzles me. I am the Professor’s child, and doubtless I am commonplace; but I am glad of it, for I wouldn’t be like you for all the world.”
“I don’t want you to envy me,” she said. “I never ask any one to envy me. Those who are geniuses are above anything of that sort.”
“But I should like to ask you a question.”
“What is it? Has it something to do with the great departed, or—”
“It has not,” I said. “It is, how do you ever manage to get to school in the morning? Are you awake? Can you get along the streets? Are you always in a dream as you are now?”
“Mary Roberts, who also comes to the school, but who is in a very inferior class, calls for me. She has done that ever since I lost my way in a distant part of Regent’s Park and was very much scolded by my teacher. I forgot the school; I forgot everything that day. I was puzzling out a problem. Your father could reply to it.”
I made no answer to this, except to pull the bell vigorously myself. This brought Mrs Moore on to the scene. It was a great relief to see a placid-looking, blue-eyed little lady, neatly and nicely dressed, who said, “Augusta, late as usual! And this is your dear little friend.—How do you do, Miss Grant? Come in, dear—come in.”
“Mother,” said Augusta, “while you are on the scold, you may as well scold Miss Grant, or Dumps, as we call her. I am going to my room. I have received two tickets for the next great meeting of the Royal Society. I shall live in bliss with the thought of those tickets until that night. You are to come with me.”
“What night is your father’s lecture?” asked Mrs Moore, glancing at me.
“Next Wednesday,” I answered.
“We cannot possibly go on Wednesday; you know that, Augusta. It is your uncle Charles’s birthday, and we have both been invited to dine with him; he would never forgive us if we did not go.”
“Just as you please, mother, as far as you are concerned. I shall go,” said Augusta; and she went into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
Mrs Moore gave one patient sigh. “Would you like to take your jacket off?” she said.
I hastily removed it. She began to pour boiling water into the teapot. The little room was very neat and clean, and there was quite a cosy, appetising tea spread on the board.
“I have heard a great deal about your father, my dear,” said Mrs Moore after a pause. “And now I also hear about you. I am glad to welcome you here. You are Augusta’s special friend, are you not?”
“Oh, I know her very well,” I said.
“She told me to-day at dinner that you wished to be a chum of hers. She said she was willing. I felt quite relieved, for I think it would be very good for Augusta to have a sort of human influence; she needs human influence so badly.”
“But can’t she get it, Mrs Moore?” I asked. “Surely it is all round her?”
“Well, dear, the fact is, she always stays amongst the dry bones; that’s what I call that terrible sort of learning which she so clings to. Not a word when she comes out, my love. I assure you it is quite a comfort to confide in you.”
She motioned to me to draw my chair to the table. I sat down.
“You look quite an interesting person,” said Mrs Moore.
“Oh no, I am not at all interesting,” I replied.
“Here is a cup of tea, love.” She handed me one.
“Ought I not,” I said, “to wait for Augusta?”
“Dear me, no! on no account. She will probably not come in at all. Doubtless by now she has forgotten that you are in the house.”
I could not help laughing.
“But doesn’t she ever eat?”
“I bring her her food. She takes it then without knowing what she is taking. She is a very strange child.”
“Well,” I said as I helped myself to a very nice piece of hot cake, “I don’t think I should have got her here to-day without pinching and poking her. She took me quite a long way round. I believe,” I added, “that I shall not be able to get back, for I don’t know this part of London well.”
“I will take you to the Twopenny Tube myself, dear. Don’t imagine for a single instant that you will see anything more of Augusta.”
When I discovered that this was really the case I gave myself up to the enjoyment of Mrs Moore’s pleasant society. She was a very nice woman, not at all commonplace—at least, if that meant commonplace, it was a very good thing to be. She was practical, and had a great deal of sense. She talked to me about my life, and about my father, and said she wished we lived a little nearer.
“You must sadly want a lady friend, my dear,” she said.
Then she stared at me very hard, and I saw a curious change come over her face.
“Perhaps you will have one in the future,” was her next remark.
“Oh yes,” I answered briskly, “I have one now—a most dear, sweet lady. She came to see me quite a short time ago, and I went to stay with her last Saturday, and came home only last night. I love her dearly; her name is Miss Grace Donnithorne.”
“Then that is excellent—excellent,” said Mrs Moore. She looked at me wistfully, as though she meant to say something, but her next remark was, “It is a very nice, suitable arrangement.”
When tea was over I said I thought I ought to be going home. I had a hunger which was filling my heart. My body had been well fed—surprisingly well fed for me—that day. Had not Hannah supplied me with mutton-chops and potatoes, and Mrs Moore with hot cakes and fragrant tea? But I was hungry in another sort of way. I wanted to look at my mother’s picture. I wanted to gaze at the face of my very own mother. I meant to do so when I was quite alone in my bedroom that night. So I said hastily, “I must go back now;” and Mrs Moore went to put on her bonnet.
While she was away I knocked at Augusta’s door.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“It’s I. I want to say good-bye.”
“Don’t come in, I beg of you. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I answered, feeling somewhat offended. I heard her muttering words inside the room. They became louder:
“And like a dying lady, lone and pale,Who totters forth wrapped in a gauzy veil.”
“And like a dying lady, lone and pale,Who totters forth wrapped in a gauzy veil.”
Mrs Moore opened her door.
“What is the matter with Augusta?” I said.
“Nothing; she is only reciting. She is mad on Shelley at present.—Good-bye, Gussie; I am going to see your friend, Miss Grant, to the Twopenny Tube.”
Augusta replied in a still louder rendering of the words:
“Art thou pale from wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth—”
“Art thou pale from wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth—”
We went into the street. Mrs Moore took me to the station, and saying she had something to do in another part of the street, she bade me on affectionate good-bye.
I returned to our own house, and when I got there I found Alex and Charley and Von Marlo, as we always called him, waiting for me.
“Then it’s quite true,” said Alex, “that we are to have the whole evening to ourselves? I have brought some grub in, and we are going to cook it ourselves in the parlour. You must help us, Dumps. It doesn’t matter how shabby your frock is; you have got to be the cook.”
“Oh, how scrumptious!” I cried. I felt just in the humour.
“And we can be as noisy as ever we like,” said Charley.
“Only we won’t do anything to hurt your feelings, Miss Rachel,” said Von Marlo.
“The main thing of all is,” said Charley, “that Hannah isn’t to know.”
“Oh, we can easily manage that,” I said. “She won’t come upstairs unless we ring for her. She never does.”
“I’ve taken precious good care that she doesn’t come upstairs,” said Alex, “for I’ve locked the door at the top of the kitchen stairs;” and he produced the key in triumph from his pocket.
“Oh Alex, suppose by any sort of manner or means she wanted to come! Why, she would never forgive us.”
“Serve her right. She won’t answer our rings of late, so now we’ll keep her downstairs in that sweet spot in which she so loves to dwell.”
“But,” I said, “our dinner?”
“Oh, here it is—a mutton bone, barer than usual, and a few potatoes. I thought we’d have a real feast. Did father give you any of the needful when he was going away to-day, Dumps?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “he gave me five shillings.”
“And he gave me the same.”
“And me the same,” said Charley.
“You’ll have to pay us back your share of the grub to-morrow,” said Alex; “but we bought it beforehand.”
“Well, we can’t cook without cooking things,” I said.
“Sakes!” replied Alex; “do you suppose that while you were wandering about London by yourself—highly improper for any young lady, I call it—that we were idle? Charley and Von Marlo and I went down into the kitchen and purloined a frying-pan, a saucepan, a kettle, cups and saucers, glasses, knives and forks galore, and plates. Table-cloths don’t matter. Now then, to see the array of eatables.”
Alex produced out of his bag first of all, in a dirty piece of paper, a skinned rabbit, next a pound of sausages, next a parcel of onions.
“These will make a jolly good fry,” said Alex, smacking his lips as he spoke.
From Charley’s pockets came a great piece of butter, while Von Marlo rid himself of a huge incubus in the shape of a loaf of very fresh bread.
“There are lots of things beside,” said Charley: “potatoes—we’re going to fry them after the rabbit and sausages—and fruit and cakes. We thought if we had a good, big, monstrous fry, and then satisfied the rest of our appetites with cake and fruit, as much as ever we can eat, that we’d do.”
“What about tea or coffee?” I said.
“Bother tea or coffee!” said Alex. “We’ll have ginger-beer. We brought in a whole dozen bottles. It was that that nearly killed us. If it hadn’t been for Von Marlo we’d never have done it. Now then, Dumps, who’ll cut up the rabbit, and who’ll put it into the pan with the sausages? They ought to be done in a jiffy. We’ll cut up the onions and strew them over the rabbit and sausages. I want our fry to be real tasty.”
I became quite interested. What girl would not? To have the whole of the great house to ourselves, to have three lively, hungry boys gloating greedily over the food, and to think that I alone knew how to cook it!
But, alas and alack! my pride was soon doomed to be humiliated; for Von Marlo, who had poached the egg so beautifully, now came forward and told me that I was not cutting up the rabbit with any sense of its anatomical proportions. He took a sharp clasp-knife out of his pocket, and in a minute or two the deed was done. He then objected to my mode of preparing the sausages, declaring that they ought to be pricked and the skins slightly opened. In the end he said it would be much better for him to prepare the fry, and I left it to him.
“Yes, yes,” I said; “and I’ll put on the table-cloth. Oh, but there isn’t a table-cloth!”
“Who wants a table-cloth?” said Alex. “Let’s have newspapers. Here’s a pile.”
We then proceeded to spread them on the centre table, and placed the knives and forks and glasses upon them. The sausages popped and frizzled, the rabbit shrank into tiny proportions, the onions filled the air with their odorous scent, and by-and-by the fry was considered done. When we had each been helped to a goodly portion, Von Marlo began to fry the potatoes, and these turned out to be more delicious than the rabbit and sausages. What a meal it was! How we laughed and joked and made merry!
“Three cheers for father’s absence!” shouted Alex, holding his glass high, as he prepared to pour the foaming contents down his throat.
There came a knocking—a violent and furious knocking—in a part of the house which was not the front door.
“It’s Hannah! Hannah!” I cried. “She wants to come out. Oh Alex, we must let her out!”
“Nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Charley. “Let her knock until she’s tired of knocking.”
The door was shaken violently. We heard a woman’s voice calling and calling.
“Charley, I must go,” I said. “I cannot eat anything. Poor old Hannah! Oh, do let me open the door!”
“When the feast is over we’ll cook a little supper for her, and bring her in and set her down in front of the fire, and make her eat it,” said Von Marlo. “Now, that will do, won’t it? Sit down and eat your nice, hot supper,” he continued, looking attentively at me with his honest brown eyes.
I coloured and looked at him. It was so pleasant to have eyes glancing at you that did not disapprove of you all the time.
Von Marlo drew a chair close to the table for me, and placed another near it for himself, and we ate heartily—yes, heartily—to the accompaniment of Hannah’s knocks and shrieks and screams to us to let her out of her prison.
By-and-by the meal came to an end, and then it was Von Marlo himself who went to the door. We three, we Grants, were sufficiently cowardly to remain in the parlour. By-and-by Von Marlo reappeared, leading Hannah. Hannah had been reduced to tears. He had her hand on his arm, and was conducting her into the parlour with all the grace with which he would conduct a duchess or any other person of title.
“Here’s your supper,” he said. “Sit here; you must be very cold. Sit near the fire and eat, eat.”
She sat down, but she did not eat.
“Come, come,” he said, and he placed an appetising plate of food close to her. She went on sobbing, but her sobs were not quite so frequent.
“It smells good, doesn’t it?” said Von Marlo; and now he put a tender piece of rabbit on the end of a fork and held it within an inch of her mouth.
“You will be much better after you have eaten,” he said in a coaxing tone.
He had managed to place himself in such a position that when she did stop crying she could only see him; and after a time the smell of the delicious stew, and something about the comfort of her present position close to the fire, caused her to open her eyes, and then she opened her mouth, and in was popped the piece of tender rabbit. She ate it, and then Von Marlo fed her by popping piece after piece into her mouth; and he gave her ginger-beer to drink; and when the supper was quite ended and the platter clean, he stepped back and said, “You must forgive the Grants; it was rather mischievous of them. But it was not Miss Rachel; it was Alex and Charley, and in especial it was Von Marlo’s fault. Now you will forgive Von Marlo?”
He dropped on one knee, and put on the most comical face I had ever seen; then he looked up at her, wiping one of his eyes, and winking and blinking with the other. Hannah absolutely laughed.
“Oh, you children, you children!” she exclaimed.
It was a most wonderful victory. We knew now she would not scold, and it had a marvellous effect upon us. I rushed to her and flung my arms round her neck and kissed and hugged her. Alex said, “Good old Hannah!” and Charley crouched down by her side and said, “Rub my hair the wrong way; you know how I like it, Hannah.”
Then Von Marlo said, “I’m not going to be out of it,” and he planted himself with his broad back firmly against her knees; and thus we all sat, with Hannah in the centre, making a sort of queen in the midst. She had ceased to weep, and was smiling.
“Dear, dear!” she said; “but I never was too hard on real mischievousness; it’s naughtiness as angers me. Oh, my sakes! Charley, my lamb, I remember you when you were nothing more than a baby.”
“But I was your pet, Hannah,” I said. “Tell me that I was your pet.”
“But you were nothing of the sort,” said Hannah. “I will own that I was always took with looks. Now, Alex has looks.”
“And I. I have looks too,” said Charley. “I was gazing at my face in the glass this morning, and I saw that I had beautiful, dark, greyey-blue eyes.”
“It’s very wrong to encourage vanity,” said Hannah. “Well, Dumps will always be spared that temptation. But sakes! I must take away the things. What a mess you have made of the place! And whoever in the name of fortune fried up that rabbit? It was the most appetising morsel I ever ate in the whole course of my life.”
“I shall have much pleasure in writing out the recipe and giving it to you,” said Von Marlo, dropping again on one knee, and now placing his hand across his heart. “Fairest of women, beloved Hannah, queen of my heart, I shall write out that recipe and give it to you.”
“Oh my!” said Hannah, “you are worse than the Dutch dolls; but you do make me laugh like anything.”
Part 1, Chapter XI.Mother’s Miniature.The supper was at an end. I was in my room.Now was the time to look at mother’s picture. The hunger in my heart was now to be satisfied. For many long years I had wanted to be the possessor of that portrait, which I knew existed, but which I had never seen. How easily I had got possession of it in the end! It was queer, for we had all been afraid to speak of mother to father. He had said once that he could not stand it, and after that we never mentioned her name. But she was my mother. I had envied girls who had mothers, and yet some girls did not appreciate them. There was Augusta, for instance; how rude and insufferable she was to her mother! She called her commonplace. Now, I could have been very happy with Mrs Moore. I could have been quite glad to be kissed by her and fondled by her, and to sit with her and encourage her to tell me stories about herself. And I could have helped her with her needlework, and to keep the place tidy; and I should have enjoyed going with her to dine with Uncle Charles—whoever Uncle Charles might be. But there was Augusta, who did not care a bit about her mother, but wanted to be the daughter of my father. Oh yes, she was right; it was a strange, mixed world.Well, I had the picture of mother, and I was going to look at it to-night. I lit three or four pieces of candle in honour of the great occasion, and then I drew my chair near the ugly little dressing-table, and I took the case and opened it. The picture within had been carefully painted; it was a miniature, and a good one, I am sure, for it looked quite alive. The eyes seemed to speak to me; the gentle mouth looked as though it would open with words of love for me. It was the sort of mouth I should like to kiss. The face was very young. I had imagined that all mothers must be older than that. It was a girlish face.“It was because no one understood her that she died,” I said to myself. “Hannah said she was killed. Hannah spoke nonsense, of course.”Tears filled my eyes.“Darling, I would have loved you,” I murmured. “I’d have made so much of you! You wouldn’t have been a bit angry with Dumps for not resembling you. You’d have let me kiss you and kiss you, and your hungry heart would not have pined and pined. Why didn’t you live just a little longer, darling—just until I grew up, and Alex grew up, and Charley grew up? Why didn’t you, dearest, darling?”My tears flowed. I gazed at the picture many, many times. Finally I put it under my pillow.In the middle of the night I woke, and my first thought was of the picture and of the mother whom it represented. I clasped it tightly to my breast and hugged it. Oh yes, the picture of my mother was better than nothing.The next morning I got up with a sense of relief at knowing that father would be away for at least a couple of days. It was a sadly wrong feeling; but then I held mother’s picture, and father had not understood mother, and mother had died. Killed!—that was what Hannah had said—killed because she had not had enough sunshine.“It was such a pity you didn’t wait for me! I’d have made things sunshiny for you,” I thought.I ran downstairs. The boys had had their breakfast and had already gone to school; but there was a little pot of coffee inside the fender, some bread-and-butter on the table, and a jug of cold milk and some sugar. It was one of Hannah’s unpleasant ways that she never would make the milk hot for the children’s coffee. She said cold milk was good enough for them.But there was something else also on the table. There was a letter—a letter addressed to me. Now, when you hardly ever get letters, you are interested. I had been terribly excited about Miss Donnithorne’s letter; and now here was another, but it was not written by Miss Donnithorne; it was in father’s handwriting. What could father have to say to me? He had never written to me before in the whole course of my life. I took the letter in my hand.“I wonder if he is coming back to-day,” I thought.I felt rather sad at this thought, for there was quite a lot of money left and we could have another good supper to-night.Then I opened the letter and read its contents. They were quite brief. These were the words I read:“My dear Rachel,—I have just done what I trust will contribute much to your happiness. I have been united in marriage with Grace Donnithorne. I will bring your new mother back on Sunday evening. Try and have the house as nice as possible. My dear child, I know well what a great happiness lies before you in the tender care and affection of this admirable woman.—Your affectionate Father.”I read the letter twice, but I could not comprehend it. I read it in a misty sort of way, and then I put it on the table and went to the window and gazed out into the street. There was no fog this morning; there was even a little attempt at watery sunshine. I remembered that if I was not quick I should be late for school; and then it did not seem to matter whether I went to school or not. I took up the letter again. What was the matter with my eyes? I rubbed them. Was I going blind? No, no—of course not. I could see perfectly. I read the words, “I have been united in marriage with Grace Donnithorne.”United in marriage! That meant that father had married Grace Donnithorne, the lady I had stayed with on Saturday and Sunday and Monday and part of Tuesday. She was—oh no, what nonsense!—she was nothing of the sort; I would not even allow my lips to frame the words.I tore the letter up into little fragments and thrust the fragments into the fire. I kept saying to myself, “Nonsense! it isn’t true! Father was in one of his dreams!”I deliberately poured out my coffee and drank it; I cut a hunk of bread, buttered it, and ate it. All the time I was saying fiercely to myself, “It isn’t true; it is a practical joke that father is playing on me.”I was so fiercely, terribly indignant with myself for even allowing the thought of that word, which from ordinary lips would be applied to Miss Donnithorne, to come so near my own lips, that I had no time to remember that father was the very lost man to play a practical joke on any one.Hannah came into the room. I looked at Hannah. Her face was quite unsmiling, quite everyday. If it was true Hannah would know—certainly Hannah would know; she would be the last person to be kept in ignorance.“Why, Miss Dumps—sakes alive, child! You’ll be late for school. Hurry up. Whatever are you pondering about? What’s the matter?”“Nothing. What should be the matter? Hannah, I have got a little money; father left it with me.”“That’s something queer,” said Hannah. “How much did he give you?”“Five shillings.”“My word! Sakes alive! The man must have lost his senses!”When Hannah said this I rushed up to her, and clasped both her hands, and said, “Oh Hannah, Hannah darling, say that again—say it again!”“Whatever am I to say over again? I’ve no time to repeat my words.”“Oh Hannah, do say it once more! Father has lost—”“What little sense he ever had,” said Hannah. “Don’t keep me, Dumps.”She had laid a hideous iron tray on the table, and with a noisy clatter she put the cups and saucers on it.“When people have lost their senses they say and do all sorts of queer things, don’t they?” I asked.“My word, child, they do!”“And other people, when they know that they have lost their senses, don’t believe them?”“Believe ’em? Who’d ever believe what people who have gone crazy say and do?”I rushed up to Hannah and hugged and kissed her.“I’ll be in time for school,” I said, “for I’ll run all the way. Get me a little chop for dinner—please do, Hannah; and—and to-night we’ll have supper, and we’ll ask Von Marlo, and you shall come and have supper with us, dear, darling Hannah!”Hannah grinned.“You’re wonderful coaxing in your ways just now, Dumps. I can’t make out what sort of maggot you’ve got in your head. But there! you shall have your chop; it’s as cheap as anything else.”I always brought my hat and jacket down with me when I came to breakfast; now I put them on and went off to school. I really was very ridiculous; but I always was wanting in common-sense. I forced myself to believe that father’s letter was a sort of practical joke, and I was comfortably conning over the fact that we would have another jolly evening to-night, and that he doubtless would have forgotten all about having ever put pen to paper when he returned home, when I saw a number of my schoolfellows waiting for me just round the corner which led into the great school. Amongst them was Augusta Moore. But Augusta Moore, who might have been a sort of refuge from the ordinary girls, was now flanked on the right hand by Rita Swan and on the left by Agnes Swan; and there were several other girls behind this trio. When they saw me they all shouted, “Here she is! Here she is!” and they made for me in a body.I stood still when I saw them advancing. It wasn’t that they came slowly; they came in a great rush as from a catapult. They drew up when they got within a few inches of me. Then Rita said, “We were making a bet about you.”“A bet?” I said. “What do you mean?”“Augusta said you would come; Agnes and I said you wouldn’t.”“Why should I come?” I said.“Well,” exclaimed Rita, “I know most girls would take a holiday on the day after their father’s wedding. Most girls would—but you!”“What do you mean?” I said.My face was as white as a sheet then, I knew, for I felt very cold, and my eyes were smarting, and that dimness was coming over them again.“Oh, there, there!” said Augusta Moore.She wrenched herself away from the Swans, and came up to me and took my hand. I don’t exactly know what followed next; I only knew that there was a great buzzing, and a number of people were talking, and I knew that Augusta went on saying, “There, there, dear!” Finally I found myself walking away from school, led by Augusta—away from school, and towards home. I was making no protest of any sort whatever.At last we reached our own house, and Augusta looked wistfully at the tall steps which led to the front door; but she said, “I am not coming in with you, for I know you would rather be alone. It must be a fearful trial for you to have that noble, exalted father of yours united in marriage to such a very commonplace woman as Miss Donnithorne. I feel for you, from the bottom of my heart. Kiss me; I am truly sorry for you.”Of course, I could not go to school that day. I allowed Augusta to print a little kiss—a tiny, tiny kiss—on my forehead, and then I waited until Hannah opened the door. I felt so stupid that perhaps I should not have rung the bell at all; but Augusta, roused out of herself for the time being, had performed this office for me, and when Hannah opened the door I crept into the house and sank down on a chair.“Hannah,” I said—“Hannah, it is true, and he hasn’t taken leave of his senses. He was united in marriage yesterday with Grace Donnithorne. Oh Hannah! Oh Hannah!”Perhaps I expected Hannah to show great surprise; but all she really did was to kneel down beside me, and open her arms wide, and say, “Come, then, honey! Come, then, honey!” and she clasped me in her bony arms and drew my head down to rest on her breast. Then I had relief in a burst of tears. I cried long. I cried as I had not cried since I could remember, for no one in the old house had time for tears; tears were not encouraged in that austere, neglected abode.After a time Hannah lifted me up, just as though I were a baby, and conveyed me into the parlour. There she laid me on two chairs, and put cushions under my head, and said, “I have got a drop of strong broth downstairs, and you shall have it.”I enjoyed being coddled and petted by Hannah, and we both, by a sort of tacit consent, agreed not to allude for the present to the terribly painful topic which had at last intruded itself upon us. After I had taken the soup I felt better and was able to sit up. Then Hannah squatted down in front of the fire and looked into it. I observed that her own eyes were red; but all she did was to sway herself backwards and forwards and say, “Dearie me! Oh, my word! Dearie me!”At last the mournful sort of chant got upon my nerves. I jumped up with alacrity.“Hannah, the boys will be in soon. We must tell them, and we must get the place in order, and—”“Miss Dumps!” cried Hannah.She spoke in a loud, shrill voice. “If you think, Miss Dumps, even for a single minute, that I’m going to put up with it, you’ve mistook me, that’s all.”“But what are you going to do, Hannah? You won’t leave us, will you?”“Leave you? Go out of the house into which I came when Master Alex was a baby, bless him! and when you were but a tiny, tiny tot! Leave the house? No, it ain’t me as ’ull do that.”“Then, Hannah, what will you do?”I went up to her and took one of her hands. She gave it unwillingly.“Dumps,” she said. She was still huddled by the fire. I had never seen her so subdued or broken-down before, and it was only when I heard her voice rise in shrill passion that I recognised the old Hannah. “Dumps, is it you who is going to submit tame—you, who had a mother?”“Oh, I must submit,” I said. I sank down again into a chair. “Where’s the good?” I queried.“I always know you had no spirit worth speaking of,” said Hannah. “I’m sorry now as I gave you that drop of soup. It was the stock in which I meant to boil the bits of mutton for the boys’ dinner, but I said you should have it, for you were so took aback, poor child! But there! ’tain’t in you, I expect, to feel things very deep; and yet you had a mother.”“You said yesterday that she had been killed,” I said, and my voice trembled.“And so she were. If ever a woman were pushed out of life—pushed on to the edge of the world and then right over it—it was the Professor’s wife, Alice Grant. Ah! she was too gentle, too sweet; he wanted a different sort.”When Hannah said these words, in a flash I seemed to see Grace Donnithorne in a new position—Grace Donnithorne with her laughing eyes, her firm mouth, her composed and dignified manner. It would be very difficult, I felt certain, to push Grace Donnithorne over the edge of the world. I rose.“Hannah, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell the boys. But please understand that I am very unhappy. I don’t love my mother one bit the less; I am about as unhappy as girl can be. I have been cruelly deceived. I went to see Miss Donnithorne, and she was kind to me, and I thought her kindness meant something.”“I didn’t,” said Hannah. “I felt all along that she was a snake in the grass.”“She was kind, even though she meant to marry father; and perhaps another girl would have guessed.”“Sakes! why should you guess? You ain’t that sort; you’re an innocent child, and don’t know the wicked ways of wicked, knowing, designing females. Why ever should you guess?”“Well, I didn’t; but, now I look back, I see—”“Oh, we all see when the light comes,” said Hannah; “there’s nought in that.”“But, Hannah, she is not bad. She is good, and if she chose to marry father—”“My word, we’ll have no more of that!” said Hannah. “I’m sorry I gave you that drop of soup. The boys will have to eat the mutton boiled up with water from the pump.”“Oh Hannah, will you never understand?”“I don’t understand you, Miss Dumps; but then I never did.”“Well, I am going to tell the boys, and I’m as unhappy as I can be; but I don’t see the use of fighting. I’ll try to do what’s right. I’ll try to. I don’t love her. I might have loved her if she had just remained my friend.”“Friend, indeed! What should make her take up with you—a plain girl like you, with no sort of attraction that any living being ever yet discovered? What should make her pet you, and fondle you, and dress you up if she hadn’t had in her mind the getting of a husband? There I now you know. That’s the long and short of it. She used you for her own purposes, and I say she is a low-down sort of hussy, and she won’t get me a-humouring of her!”“Very well, Hannah. I don’t love her. I would have loved her had she not been father’s wife.”“There’s no use talking about what you would do had certain things not happened; it’s what you will do now that certain things have happened. That’s what you’ve got to face, Dumps.”“Am I to sit up in my room all day and never speak to father and—and his wife?”“Oh, I know you!” said Hannah. “You’ll come down after a day or two and make yourself quite agreeable, and it’ll be ‘mother’ you’ll be calling her before the week’s out I know you—she’ll come round the likes of you pretty fine!”But this last straw was too much. I left Hannah. I went unsteadily—yes, unsteadily—towards the door. I rushed upstairs, entered my own room, bolted myself in. I took my mother’s miniature in my hands. I opened the case and pressed the miniature to my heart, flung myself on the bed face downwards, and sobbed and sobbed. No broken-hearted child in all the world could have sobbed more for her own mother than I did then.
The supper was at an end. I was in my room.
Now was the time to look at mother’s picture. The hunger in my heart was now to be satisfied. For many long years I had wanted to be the possessor of that portrait, which I knew existed, but which I had never seen. How easily I had got possession of it in the end! It was queer, for we had all been afraid to speak of mother to father. He had said once that he could not stand it, and after that we never mentioned her name. But she was my mother. I had envied girls who had mothers, and yet some girls did not appreciate them. There was Augusta, for instance; how rude and insufferable she was to her mother! She called her commonplace. Now, I could have been very happy with Mrs Moore. I could have been quite glad to be kissed by her and fondled by her, and to sit with her and encourage her to tell me stories about herself. And I could have helped her with her needlework, and to keep the place tidy; and I should have enjoyed going with her to dine with Uncle Charles—whoever Uncle Charles might be. But there was Augusta, who did not care a bit about her mother, but wanted to be the daughter of my father. Oh yes, she was right; it was a strange, mixed world.
Well, I had the picture of mother, and I was going to look at it to-night. I lit three or four pieces of candle in honour of the great occasion, and then I drew my chair near the ugly little dressing-table, and I took the case and opened it. The picture within had been carefully painted; it was a miniature, and a good one, I am sure, for it looked quite alive. The eyes seemed to speak to me; the gentle mouth looked as though it would open with words of love for me. It was the sort of mouth I should like to kiss. The face was very young. I had imagined that all mothers must be older than that. It was a girlish face.
“It was because no one understood her that she died,” I said to myself. “Hannah said she was killed. Hannah spoke nonsense, of course.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“Darling, I would have loved you,” I murmured. “I’d have made so much of you! You wouldn’t have been a bit angry with Dumps for not resembling you. You’d have let me kiss you and kiss you, and your hungry heart would not have pined and pined. Why didn’t you live just a little longer, darling—just until I grew up, and Alex grew up, and Charley grew up? Why didn’t you, dearest, darling?”
My tears flowed. I gazed at the picture many, many times. Finally I put it under my pillow.
In the middle of the night I woke, and my first thought was of the picture and of the mother whom it represented. I clasped it tightly to my breast and hugged it. Oh yes, the picture of my mother was better than nothing.
The next morning I got up with a sense of relief at knowing that father would be away for at least a couple of days. It was a sadly wrong feeling; but then I held mother’s picture, and father had not understood mother, and mother had died. Killed!—that was what Hannah had said—killed because she had not had enough sunshine.
“It was such a pity you didn’t wait for me! I’d have made things sunshiny for you,” I thought.
I ran downstairs. The boys had had their breakfast and had already gone to school; but there was a little pot of coffee inside the fender, some bread-and-butter on the table, and a jug of cold milk and some sugar. It was one of Hannah’s unpleasant ways that she never would make the milk hot for the children’s coffee. She said cold milk was good enough for them.
But there was something else also on the table. There was a letter—a letter addressed to me. Now, when you hardly ever get letters, you are interested. I had been terribly excited about Miss Donnithorne’s letter; and now here was another, but it was not written by Miss Donnithorne; it was in father’s handwriting. What could father have to say to me? He had never written to me before in the whole course of my life. I took the letter in my hand.
“I wonder if he is coming back to-day,” I thought.
I felt rather sad at this thought, for there was quite a lot of money left and we could have another good supper to-night.
Then I opened the letter and read its contents. They were quite brief. These were the words I read:
“My dear Rachel,—I have just done what I trust will contribute much to your happiness. I have been united in marriage with Grace Donnithorne. I will bring your new mother back on Sunday evening. Try and have the house as nice as possible. My dear child, I know well what a great happiness lies before you in the tender care and affection of this admirable woman.—Your affectionate Father.”
I read the letter twice, but I could not comprehend it. I read it in a misty sort of way, and then I put it on the table and went to the window and gazed out into the street. There was no fog this morning; there was even a little attempt at watery sunshine. I remembered that if I was not quick I should be late for school; and then it did not seem to matter whether I went to school or not. I took up the letter again. What was the matter with my eyes? I rubbed them. Was I going blind? No, no—of course not. I could see perfectly. I read the words, “I have been united in marriage with Grace Donnithorne.”
United in marriage! That meant that father had married Grace Donnithorne, the lady I had stayed with on Saturday and Sunday and Monday and part of Tuesday. She was—oh no, what nonsense!—she was nothing of the sort; I would not even allow my lips to frame the words.
I tore the letter up into little fragments and thrust the fragments into the fire. I kept saying to myself, “Nonsense! it isn’t true! Father was in one of his dreams!”
I deliberately poured out my coffee and drank it; I cut a hunk of bread, buttered it, and ate it. All the time I was saying fiercely to myself, “It isn’t true; it is a practical joke that father is playing on me.”
I was so fiercely, terribly indignant with myself for even allowing the thought of that word, which from ordinary lips would be applied to Miss Donnithorne, to come so near my own lips, that I had no time to remember that father was the very lost man to play a practical joke on any one.
Hannah came into the room. I looked at Hannah. Her face was quite unsmiling, quite everyday. If it was true Hannah would know—certainly Hannah would know; she would be the last person to be kept in ignorance.
“Why, Miss Dumps—sakes alive, child! You’ll be late for school. Hurry up. Whatever are you pondering about? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. What should be the matter? Hannah, I have got a little money; father left it with me.”
“That’s something queer,” said Hannah. “How much did he give you?”
“Five shillings.”
“My word! Sakes alive! The man must have lost his senses!”
When Hannah said this I rushed up to her, and clasped both her hands, and said, “Oh Hannah, Hannah darling, say that again—say it again!”
“Whatever am I to say over again? I’ve no time to repeat my words.”
“Oh Hannah, do say it once more! Father has lost—”
“What little sense he ever had,” said Hannah. “Don’t keep me, Dumps.”
She had laid a hideous iron tray on the table, and with a noisy clatter she put the cups and saucers on it.
“When people have lost their senses they say and do all sorts of queer things, don’t they?” I asked.
“My word, child, they do!”
“And other people, when they know that they have lost their senses, don’t believe them?”
“Believe ’em? Who’d ever believe what people who have gone crazy say and do?”
I rushed up to Hannah and hugged and kissed her.
“I’ll be in time for school,” I said, “for I’ll run all the way. Get me a little chop for dinner—please do, Hannah; and—and to-night we’ll have supper, and we’ll ask Von Marlo, and you shall come and have supper with us, dear, darling Hannah!”
Hannah grinned.
“You’re wonderful coaxing in your ways just now, Dumps. I can’t make out what sort of maggot you’ve got in your head. But there! you shall have your chop; it’s as cheap as anything else.”
I always brought my hat and jacket down with me when I came to breakfast; now I put them on and went off to school. I really was very ridiculous; but I always was wanting in common-sense. I forced myself to believe that father’s letter was a sort of practical joke, and I was comfortably conning over the fact that we would have another jolly evening to-night, and that he doubtless would have forgotten all about having ever put pen to paper when he returned home, when I saw a number of my schoolfellows waiting for me just round the corner which led into the great school. Amongst them was Augusta Moore. But Augusta Moore, who might have been a sort of refuge from the ordinary girls, was now flanked on the right hand by Rita Swan and on the left by Agnes Swan; and there were several other girls behind this trio. When they saw me they all shouted, “Here she is! Here she is!” and they made for me in a body.
I stood still when I saw them advancing. It wasn’t that they came slowly; they came in a great rush as from a catapult. They drew up when they got within a few inches of me. Then Rita said, “We were making a bet about you.”
“A bet?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Augusta said you would come; Agnes and I said you wouldn’t.”
“Why should I come?” I said.
“Well,” exclaimed Rita, “I know most girls would take a holiday on the day after their father’s wedding. Most girls would—but you!”
“What do you mean?” I said.
My face was as white as a sheet then, I knew, for I felt very cold, and my eyes were smarting, and that dimness was coming over them again.
“Oh, there, there!” said Augusta Moore.
She wrenched herself away from the Swans, and came up to me and took my hand. I don’t exactly know what followed next; I only knew that there was a great buzzing, and a number of people were talking, and I knew that Augusta went on saying, “There, there, dear!” Finally I found myself walking away from school, led by Augusta—away from school, and towards home. I was making no protest of any sort whatever.
At last we reached our own house, and Augusta looked wistfully at the tall steps which led to the front door; but she said, “I am not coming in with you, for I know you would rather be alone. It must be a fearful trial for you to have that noble, exalted father of yours united in marriage to such a very commonplace woman as Miss Donnithorne. I feel for you, from the bottom of my heart. Kiss me; I am truly sorry for you.”
Of course, I could not go to school that day. I allowed Augusta to print a little kiss—a tiny, tiny kiss—on my forehead, and then I waited until Hannah opened the door. I felt so stupid that perhaps I should not have rung the bell at all; but Augusta, roused out of herself for the time being, had performed this office for me, and when Hannah opened the door I crept into the house and sank down on a chair.
“Hannah,” I said—“Hannah, it is true, and he hasn’t taken leave of his senses. He was united in marriage yesterday with Grace Donnithorne. Oh Hannah! Oh Hannah!”
Perhaps I expected Hannah to show great surprise; but all she really did was to kneel down beside me, and open her arms wide, and say, “Come, then, honey! Come, then, honey!” and she clasped me in her bony arms and drew my head down to rest on her breast. Then I had relief in a burst of tears. I cried long. I cried as I had not cried since I could remember, for no one in the old house had time for tears; tears were not encouraged in that austere, neglected abode.
After a time Hannah lifted me up, just as though I were a baby, and conveyed me into the parlour. There she laid me on two chairs, and put cushions under my head, and said, “I have got a drop of strong broth downstairs, and you shall have it.”
I enjoyed being coddled and petted by Hannah, and we both, by a sort of tacit consent, agreed not to allude for the present to the terribly painful topic which had at last intruded itself upon us. After I had taken the soup I felt better and was able to sit up. Then Hannah squatted down in front of the fire and looked into it. I observed that her own eyes were red; but all she did was to sway herself backwards and forwards and say, “Dearie me! Oh, my word! Dearie me!”
At last the mournful sort of chant got upon my nerves. I jumped up with alacrity.
“Hannah, the boys will be in soon. We must tell them, and we must get the place in order, and—”
“Miss Dumps!” cried Hannah.
She spoke in a loud, shrill voice. “If you think, Miss Dumps, even for a single minute, that I’m going to put up with it, you’ve mistook me, that’s all.”
“But what are you going to do, Hannah? You won’t leave us, will you?”
“Leave you? Go out of the house into which I came when Master Alex was a baby, bless him! and when you were but a tiny, tiny tot! Leave the house? No, it ain’t me as ’ull do that.”
“Then, Hannah, what will you do?”
I went up to her and took one of her hands. She gave it unwillingly.
“Dumps,” she said. She was still huddled by the fire. I had never seen her so subdued or broken-down before, and it was only when I heard her voice rise in shrill passion that I recognised the old Hannah. “Dumps, is it you who is going to submit tame—you, who had a mother?”
“Oh, I must submit,” I said. I sank down again into a chair. “Where’s the good?” I queried.
“I always know you had no spirit worth speaking of,” said Hannah. “I’m sorry now as I gave you that drop of soup. It was the stock in which I meant to boil the bits of mutton for the boys’ dinner, but I said you should have it, for you were so took aback, poor child! But there! ’tain’t in you, I expect, to feel things very deep; and yet you had a mother.”
“You said yesterday that she had been killed,” I said, and my voice trembled.
“And so she were. If ever a woman were pushed out of life—pushed on to the edge of the world and then right over it—it was the Professor’s wife, Alice Grant. Ah! she was too gentle, too sweet; he wanted a different sort.”
When Hannah said these words, in a flash I seemed to see Grace Donnithorne in a new position—Grace Donnithorne with her laughing eyes, her firm mouth, her composed and dignified manner. It would be very difficult, I felt certain, to push Grace Donnithorne over the edge of the world. I rose.
“Hannah, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell the boys. But please understand that I am very unhappy. I don’t love my mother one bit the less; I am about as unhappy as girl can be. I have been cruelly deceived. I went to see Miss Donnithorne, and she was kind to me, and I thought her kindness meant something.”
“I didn’t,” said Hannah. “I felt all along that she was a snake in the grass.”
“She was kind, even though she meant to marry father; and perhaps another girl would have guessed.”
“Sakes! why should you guess? You ain’t that sort; you’re an innocent child, and don’t know the wicked ways of wicked, knowing, designing females. Why ever should you guess?”
“Well, I didn’t; but, now I look back, I see—”
“Oh, we all see when the light comes,” said Hannah; “there’s nought in that.”
“But, Hannah, she is not bad. She is good, and if she chose to marry father—”
“My word, we’ll have no more of that!” said Hannah. “I’m sorry I gave you that drop of soup. The boys will have to eat the mutton boiled up with water from the pump.”
“Oh Hannah, will you never understand?”
“I don’t understand you, Miss Dumps; but then I never did.”
“Well, I am going to tell the boys, and I’m as unhappy as I can be; but I don’t see the use of fighting. I’ll try to do what’s right. I’ll try to. I don’t love her. I might have loved her if she had just remained my friend.”
“Friend, indeed! What should make her take up with you—a plain girl like you, with no sort of attraction that any living being ever yet discovered? What should make her pet you, and fondle you, and dress you up if she hadn’t had in her mind the getting of a husband? There I now you know. That’s the long and short of it. She used you for her own purposes, and I say she is a low-down sort of hussy, and she won’t get me a-humouring of her!”
“Very well, Hannah. I don’t love her. I would have loved her had she not been father’s wife.”
“There’s no use talking about what you would do had certain things not happened; it’s what you will do now that certain things have happened. That’s what you’ve got to face, Dumps.”
“Am I to sit up in my room all day and never speak to father and—and his wife?”
“Oh, I know you!” said Hannah. “You’ll come down after a day or two and make yourself quite agreeable, and it’ll be ‘mother’ you’ll be calling her before the week’s out I know you—she’ll come round the likes of you pretty fine!”
But this last straw was too much. I left Hannah. I went unsteadily—yes, unsteadily—towards the door. I rushed upstairs, entered my own room, bolted myself in. I took my mother’s miniature in my hands. I opened the case and pressed the miniature to my heart, flung myself on the bed face downwards, and sobbed and sobbed. No broken-hearted child in all the world could have sobbed more for her own mother than I did then.