Part 1, Chapter VI.At Hedgerow House.We took a long walk. We went right through Chelmsford, and I was enchanted with the appearance of that gay little country town. Then we got out into the country, where the snow lay in all its virgin purity. We walked fast, and I felt the cold, delicious air stinging my cheeks. I felt a sense of exhilaration, which Miss Donnithorne told me the snow generally gives to people.“It makes the air lighter,” she said; “and besides, there is so much ammonia in it.”I did not understand what she meant, but then I did not want to understand. I was happy; I was having a good time. I liked her better each moment.We got back to the little cottage in time for tea, which we had cosily in the sitting-room with the stuffed birds and animals.After tea Miss Donnithorne showed me some of her treasures—vast collections of shells, which she had been gathering in different parts of the world ever since she was a small child. I was fascinated by them; she told me that I might help to arrange them for her, and I spent a very blissful time in this fashion until it was time for supper. Supper was a simple meal, which consisted of milk and bread-and-butter and different sorts of stewed fruit.“I don’t approve of late dinners,” said Miss Donnithorne. “That is,” she added, “not for myself. Now, Dumps, do tell me what sort of meal the Professor eats before he goes to bed at night.”“Oh, anything that is handy,” I answered.“But doesn’t he have a good nourishing meal, the sort to sustain a brain like his?”“I don’t know,” I replied. “Hannah sees to it.”“But don’t you?” said Miss Donnithorne, looking rather severe, and the laugh going out of her eyes. “Don’t you attend to your father’s wants?”“As much as I can, Miss Donnithorne. You see, I am still supposed to be nothing but a child, and Hannah has the management of things.”“You are supposed to be nothing but a child?” said Miss Donnithorne, and she looked me all up and down.How I did hate the length of leg that I showed in my very short skirt! She fixed her eyes in a very obstinate manner on those said legs, clothed as they were in coarse stockings, which, alack and alas! were darned in more places than one. Then her eyes travelled lower and rested on my feet. I had taken off my huge boots now; but what was the good of that when my feet were enveloped in shoes quite as large, and of the very ugliest possible make?Miss Donnithorne heaved a profound sigh.“I wish—” I said impulsively.“You wish what, Rachel?”“That you would let me wear the brown skirt.”“And why, child? It is absolutely hideous.”“But it is long,” I cried. “You would not see my legs nor my ugly feet.”“Rachel, you want a great deal of attention; you are being sadly neglected.”“Am I?” I said. Then I added, “Why do you say so?”“It is but to look at you. You are not such a child that you could not do hundreds of things which at present never enter into your head.”“How do you know, Miss Donnithorne?”“I know,” she answered. “A little bird has told me.” Now, all my life I had hated women who spoke about having confidences with little birds; and I now said impulsively, “Please don’t say that. I am so inclined to like you just awfully! But if you wouldn’t speak about that bird—”“You have heard of it before?” she asked, and the sparkle came back into her eyes. “Well, never mind how I know. I suppose I know because I have got observation. But, to begin with, tell me how old you are.”“I’ll be sixteen in a little less than six months.”“Bless us!” said Miss Donnithorne, “why can’t the child say she is fifteen and a half?”“Oh, that’s because of the birthdays,” I replied.“The birthdays?” she asked, raising her brows.“Miss Donnithorne,” I said impulsively, “a birthday istheday in the whole year. A birthday makes up for many very dismal days. On a birthday, when it comes, the sun shines and the world is beautiful. Oh, Miss Donnithorne, what would life be without birthdays?”I spoke with such emotion and earnestness that the little lady’s face was quite impressed; there even came a sort of dimness over her eyes.“Then most of your days are dull, little Rachel?” she said.“They are lonely,” I replied.“And yet you go to school; you have heaps of companions.”“But no friends,” I replied.“I wonder if Hermione Aldyce will suit you?” was her next remark.“Hermione Aldyce! What a queer name! And who is she?”“You will see her to-morrow. She is different from you, but there is no reason why you should not be friends. She is much the same age.”“Is she coming here to-morrow?”“No; you are going to her. Her father and mother have invited us both to dine with them.”“Oh!” I said.I looked down at my length of leg and at my ugly feet, and felt a little shiver going through my frame. Miss Donnithorne laid her hand on my arm.“I wonder, Dumps,” she said, “if you are a very proud girl?”“Yes,” I said, “I think I have plenty of pride.”“But there are all sorts,” said Miss Donnithorne. “I hate a girl who has none. I want a girl to be reasonable. I don’t want her to eat the dust and to do absurd things, or to lower herself in her own eyes. I want a girl to be dignified, to hold her head high, to look straight out at the world with all the confidence and sweetness and fearlessness that a good girl ought to feel; but at the same time I want her to have the courage to take a kindness from one who means well without being angry or absurd.”“What does all this mean?” I asked.“It means, my dear Dumps, that I have in my possession at the present moment a very pretty costume which you might exchange for the red blouse and brown skirt. I know a person in Chelmsford who would be charmed to possess that red blouse and brown skirt, and if you wore the costume I have now in my mind, why, you would look quite nice in it—in fact, very nice indeed. Will you wear it?”“What!” I answered; “give away the clothes father bought for me, and take yours?”“I could make it right with your father. Don’t be a goose, Dumps. Your father only bought them because he didn’t know what was suitable. Now, will you let me give you the costume that I have upstairs?”“But when did you get it?”“The fact is, I didn’t get it. I have some clothes by me which belonged to a girl I was once very fond of. I will tell you about her another time.”“A girl you were fond of—and you have her clothes, and would like me to wear them?”“Some of them would not fit you, but this costume would. Will you put it on to-morrow? Will you at least wear it to-morrow for my sake?”Of course there are all sorts of prides, and it did seem wrong to hurt Miss Donnithorne, and the temptation to look nice was great. So I said softly, “I will wear it to-morrow—yes, I will wear it to-morrow—because you wish me to.”“Then you are a darling child,” said Miss Donnithorne.She gave a great sigh of relief, jumped up from her seat, and kissed me.Soon after that, being very tired with the adventures of the day, I went to bed. How delicious that bed was—so warm, so white, so inviting! How gaily the fire blazed in the grate, sending up little jets of flame, and filling the room with a sense of comfort! Miss Donnithorne came in, and saw that I had hot water and everything I required, and left me.I undressed slowly, in the midst of my unwonted luxury. Perhaps if I lived always with Miss Donnithorne I should be a different sort of girl; I might even grow up less of a Dumps. But of course not. Nothing could lengthen my nose, or shorten my upper lip, or make me big. I must make up my mind to be quite the plainest girl it had ever been my own misfortune to meet. For I had met myself at last in the looking-glass in Miss Donnithorne’s bedroom; myselfandmyself had come face to face.In the midst of my pleasure a scalding tear rolled down one of my cheeks at the memory of that poor reflection. I had been proud to be called Rachel, but now I was almost glad that most of my world knew me as Dumps.Notwithstanding these small worries, however, I slept like a top, and woke in the morning to see Nancy busy lighting the fire.“Oh dear!” I said, “I don’t want a fire to dress by.”“Yes, you do, miss, to-day, for it’s bitter cold,” said Nancy.She soon had a nice fire blazing; she then brought me in a comfortable hot bath, and finally a little tray with a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread-and-butter.“Now, miss,” she said, “you can get up and dress slowly. Missis said she won’t have breakfast until a quarter to nine this morning, and it is only a quarter to eight now. And, miss, them are the clothes. They’re all beautifully aired, and ready to put on, and missis says that you’ll understand.”Really it was exciting. It seemed to me that I had been wafted into Fairyland. I sipped my tea and ate my bread-and-butter, and thought what a delightful place Fairyland was, and that, after all, none of the children’s books had half described its glories. I then got up and dressed luxuriously, and at last turned to the chair on which lay the costume I was to wear that day. There was a very pretty skirt of a rich dark-blue; it was trimmed all round the edge with grey fur, and I did not think that in all my life I had ever seen anything quite so lovely. It had even further advantages, for when I walked it made a swishing sound, and raising the skirt, I saw that it was lined with silk.Now, Hannah had once described to me the wonderful glories of a dress which had belonged to her mother, and which was lined with silk. She said she had bought it at a pawnbroker’s, and she knew quite well the last owner had been a duchess, for only duchesses could afford to wear such an expensive thing as silk hidden away under the skirt.The bodice of this costume was as pretty as the skirt; it was also silk-lined, and full of little quaint puffings, and there was fur round the neck and on the cuffs. It fitted me to perfection, and I do think that even Dumps looked better in that dark-blue dress, with its grey fur, than I had believed it possible for her to appear in anything.But there were even further delights; for the dark-blue dress had a beautiful dark-blue coat to match, and there was a little grey fur cap to be worn with it, and a grey fur muff. Oh dear, dear, I was made! And yet there were further treasures to be revealed. I had not seen them before, but I had to put them on before I went down to breakfast—neat stockings of the very finest cashmere, and little shoes with rosettes and buckles. There were also walking shoes of the most refined and delicate make. And, wonder of wonders! they fitted me. I felt indeed that I had come to Fairyland!Miss Donnithorne was far too much of a lady to make any remark when I came into the room in my dark-blue costume for breakfast. She hardly glanced at me, but went deliberately to the sideboard and began to carve some delicate slices of rosy ham.I sat down facing the fire. I felt almost self-conscious in the glories of that wonderful costume, and Miss Donnithorne must have guessed that I would have such feelings. She therefore began to talk in her most matter-of-fact style.“We shall have a very busy day, Rachel,” she said. “There is not much time even for us to finish breakfast, for I have a class in the Sunday-school, and you, if you like, can come with me. Of course, if you prefer it, you can come to church later with Nancy.”“Oh, I should much prefer to go with you,” I replied.“That’s right—that’s right,” said Miss Donnithorne. “After church we go straight to the Aldyces’; they’ll take us in their carriage. We shall dine with them, and I think you might like Hermione to come back to have tea with us.”“You are good,” I said. “It does sound wonderful.”Then I added, as I broke a piece of crisp toast in two, “I have never ridden in a carriage in all my life.”“Oh, you are not at all remarkable in that,” replied Miss Donnithorne in her frank way. “London girls, unless their fathers happen to be very rich, don’t have carriages to drive in. But there is one thing I would bid you remember, Dumps.”“What is that?” I asked, raising my eyes to her face.“You will meet, my dear, in your way through life, all sorts and conditions of men and women, rich and poor, lowly and haughty, and you will have to remember distinctions. One man may be better than his neighbour; one man may be lower than his neighbour; but the thing that makes the difference between man and man is not what he possesses, but what he is in himself. Now, your father, my dear Rachel, happens to be a much greater and much more distinguished man than Squire Aldyce.”I wondered why she spoke so. Her laughing eyes were not laughing now; they were wonderfully serious; and her lips wore a remarkable expression of great firmness and yet of great sweetness.“I am proud to know Professor Grant,” she said, “and you ought to be an exceedingly proud girl to be his daughter.”“Oh, I love him very much,” I said; but then I added a little tremblingly, “My brother Alex has sometimes told me that father is a great scholar, but I didn’t know—I didn’t understand that all the world—I mean that other people knew about him.”“Bless the child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “She has been brought up, so to speak, in the dark. You are a little mole, Dumps. You have kept your eyes shut. Some day you will realise what the Professor really is. He has a bigger brain than any other man I happen to know about. He is the foremost man in a most advanced realm of thought; his powers of imagination are great. Did he live in another age, he might have been a second Milton. You ought to be very, very proud indeed to be his daughter.”It was thus she spoke to me, and so I quite forgot about the dark-blue costume, and accompanied her to Sunday-school, feeling composed and at the same time proud.The Sunday-school was a very nice one, and the children were the ordinary sort of children one meets in the country. The superintendent of the school came up and shook hands with me. He said he was very proud to meet Professor Grant’s daughter. It was quite amazing—Fairyland was growing more dazzling each moment. It was not only that I was lifted right out of my ugly surroundings, but that I, plain as I was, was turned into a sort of princess. Surely no princess had ever worn a more lovely dress; and surely no princess could hold her head higher, if what Miss Donnithorne said about my father was true.In church I regret to say that I more than once stroked the grey fur muff and softly felt the texture of my dress. But after church was over fresh excitement was in store for me.Hermione Aldyce was waiting in the church porch for us. She was alone. I don’t in the least remember what she wore. She was very tall and very slim, and I am sure she was very young, for she wore her hair in two great plaits down her back. Her hair was dark-brown, and her eyes were exactly the same colour. She had a face with a pale, creamy complexion, and when she smiled she showed two rows of little even teeth, white as pearls.“Dear Miss Donnithorne,” she said. “And is this Dumps?”I could not feel indignant, even though I resented being called Dumps by a total stranger, for Hermione’s eyes had a sort of pleading expression in them, and she seemed sorry the moment she had said the word.“Of course I ought to call you Miss Grant,” she said.“No, no,” I answered; “I am Rachel Grant. Nobody in all the world ever yet called me Miss Grant.”“Is the carriage waiting, Hermione?” said Miss Donnithorne. “It is cold here in the porch.”“Yes,” replied Hermione. “And father and mother have not come. Father would have had to walk back, for we could not all go in the carriage, and so mother decided to stay with him. Father has a cough—not much—nothing to speak of.”“Come then, dear, we will go at once,” said Miss Donnithorne.She got into the carriage first; then I was desired to step in, and notwithstanding my smart dress, I am afraid I was very awkward as I got into that carriage. Miss Donnithorne and I had the seat facing the horses, and Hermione sat opposite to us. It seemed to me as though we flew over the country; the whole feeling was too delicious—the softly padded cushions, the rhythmic beat of the horses’ feet. The girl who was not fortunate enough to possess a father like Professor Grant had some compensations! Such a carriage! Such a nice face! The girl herself impressed me in the most marvellous way. As to the dreadful Swans, I am afraid I gave them anything but kind thoughts at that moment.By-and-by we got to the house. Then Hermione took possession of me.“You are my guest,” she said. “Come up and I’ll show you my room.”We ran upstairs together. I was feeling so very good that I did not think for a moment that anything but good could befall me during that delightful visit. Hermione took me first to her bedroom, and then into a little sitting-room which opened out of it.“I do my lessons here,” she said, “and read here, and entertain my friends. I haven’t many friends. I cannot tell you how interested I was at the thought of your coming to-day.”“Were you indeed?” I answered.I wondered what she would have thought if I had come to visit her in the brown skirt and red blouse.“You must take off your pretty jacket,” she said.“What a sweet frock that is! In what shop did you buy it?”“I didn’t buy it at all,” I said.I felt my cheeks crimsoning. There was a kind of naughty pride in me that would not tell her the truth that Miss Donnithorne had given it to me.“I suppose your governess, or whoever takes care of you, arranges your clothes,” said Hermione in a careless tone. “Well, it is sweetly pretty, and so becoming! And what nice hair you have!”“Nice hair?” I responded.“Why, of course it is nice; it is so thick and such a good colour. It will look very handsome when you have it arranged in the grown-up style.”“I don’t want to be grown-up,” I said. “I’d like to be a child always—that is, if I could have birthdays all the same.”“Do you think so much of your birthdays?” said Hermione, leaning up against the window-sill as she spoke, and twiddling with a paper-knife. “I think they’re rather tiresome. I think birthdays are overdone.”“You wouldn’t if you knew what my birthday was like,” I said.“Oh, then,” she exclaimed, “you must tell me all about it.”I was just about to explain, wondering if I could get her to see the vivid picture of the bright day, the presents, the anxious little girl, whose heart had been aching for so many long months just because of this glorious time, when a great gong sounded through the house, and Hermione said, “Oh! we can’t talk at present; it is dinner-time. Come along, Rachel; come downstairs.”Squire Aldyce was a very aristocratic-looking old gentleman, and his wife was the sort that one would describe as a very fine lady indeed. I did not like her half as much as I liked him. He was quite sweet. He congratulated me on being my father’s daughter, and asked when the Professor was going to bring out another pamphlet on some appallingly learned subject, the name of which I could not possibly pronounce. I said I did not know, and a minute or two later we found ourselves sitting round the dinner-table.There were a few other guests, and I was introduced to them as Miss Rachel Grant.“The daughter of the well-known Professor,” said the Squire after each of these formalities.The ladies did not take much notice of me, but the gentlemen stared at me for a minute or two, and one man said, “I congratulate you, little girl. To be so closely related to so great a man is an honour, and I hope you appreciate it.”Dear old father! I did not know that the glories and laurels he had won were to follow me, such a very plain little girl, to such a grand house.When dinner came to an end we again went upstairs, and Hermione showed me her treasures, and forgot to ask me about my birthdays. We were having a long and very serious talk, in which she spoke of books and music and the delights of the higher sort of education, when I broke in by saying suddenly, “You don’t understand me a bit.”“What in the world do you mean? What is the matter?” she exclaimed.“Because I don’t love study, or books, or anything of that sort. I think,” I added, my eyes filling with tears, “that I have come here as a sham, for I am not the least morsel like father—not the least.”“Perhaps you resemble your mother,” said Hermione in her very calm way.I had quite loved her up to now, for she had such beautiful manners and such a nice face; but now when she made this reply I looked at her steadily, and saw that, just because of her wealth and high birth and fine clothes, her knowledge of life was limited. She could not see things from my point of view.“I don’t think I am the least like my darling mother,” I said, “for she was beautiful.”“And don’t you remember her?”“I don’t remember her. If she were alive I should be quite a different sort of girl. But oh, Hermione! sometimes at night I think of her just when I am dropping off to sleep. She comes to me when I am asleep. To think of any girl having a mother! Oh, it must be the height of bliss and of joy!”Hermione stared at me for a minute; then she said, “I don’t understand. I love my father best.”“Do you?” I said, a little shocked.“Of course you cannot possibly love your mother’s memory as you do your father, for he is such a great man—a man whom all the world is proud of.”“But he is only a teacher in a school,” I could not help saying.“He could be anything; but he will not leave the school. He loves to instruct the boys. But it isn’t for his scholastic work he is known; it is because he is himself, and—and because of those wonderful lectures, so many of which are published. He lectures also at the Royal Society, and he writes pamphlets which set the greatest thinkers all agog. Oh, I should be proud of him if I were you!”“I am glad,” I said. I knew that I loved the Professor dearly. Had I not all my life sacrificed myself for his sake, as every one else had also done?Hermione said after a pause, “Miss Donnithorne told me that you were—”“What?” I asked.“A little bit—don’t be offended—a little bit neglected.”“She had no right to say so; I am not.”As I spoke I laid my hand on the dark-blue dress, and all of a sudden I grew to hate it. I disliked Hermione also.“What is the matter?” she said. “Have I hurt you in any way? I wouldn’t for all the world. I am so truly glad to make your acquaintance.”“You didn’t mean to,” I said, recovering my temper; “but the fact is, Hermione, I live one life and you live another. You are rich, and we are poor; I am not ashamed to say it.”“It must be rather exciting to be poor,” said Hermione. “I mean it must be interesting to know the value of money. But you don’t look poor, Dumps—or—I mean Rachel. That dress—”“Oh! don’t talk of my dress, please.”“I know it’s bad form,” she replied, and she seemed to shrink into her shell.After a minute she spoke on a different subject, and just then a stately but somewhat withered-looking lady entered the room.“Hermione, Miss Donnithorne says that you and Miss Grant must put on your things now in order to return to Hedgerow House, otherwise you won’t be in time to receive the Professor.”“The Professor?” I cried, jumping to my feet. Hermione laughed.“You don’t mean to say that Miss Donnithorne hasn’t told you that your father is coming to have tea with you both?”“I didn’t know anything about it. My father? But he never leaves London.”“He has managed to leave it to-day. How queer that you shouldn’t know!”“I had better get dressed; I shouldn’t like to be late,” I said.I felt all of a flutter; I was nervous. Would he remark my dark-blue costume, and be angry with me for not wearing my brown skirt and red blouse?“I’ll get dressed in a twinkling,” said Hermione. “Come along, Dumps; this is interesting.”I wondered why she was so pleased, and why a sort of inward mirth began to consume her. Her eyes were twinkling all the time. I began to like her a little less and a little less; and yet, of course, she was a most charming and well-bred and nice-looking girl.We went downstairs a few minutes later. We said good-bye to the Squire and his wife. The Squire said he hoped he would have the honour of entertaining Professor’s Grant’s daughter again, and the Squire’s lady made some remark which I presumed signified the same. Then we went away, driving as fast as ever we could in the direction of Hedgerow House.
We took a long walk. We went right through Chelmsford, and I was enchanted with the appearance of that gay little country town. Then we got out into the country, where the snow lay in all its virgin purity. We walked fast, and I felt the cold, delicious air stinging my cheeks. I felt a sense of exhilaration, which Miss Donnithorne told me the snow generally gives to people.
“It makes the air lighter,” she said; “and besides, there is so much ammonia in it.”
I did not understand what she meant, but then I did not want to understand. I was happy; I was having a good time. I liked her better each moment.
We got back to the little cottage in time for tea, which we had cosily in the sitting-room with the stuffed birds and animals.
After tea Miss Donnithorne showed me some of her treasures—vast collections of shells, which she had been gathering in different parts of the world ever since she was a small child. I was fascinated by them; she told me that I might help to arrange them for her, and I spent a very blissful time in this fashion until it was time for supper. Supper was a simple meal, which consisted of milk and bread-and-butter and different sorts of stewed fruit.
“I don’t approve of late dinners,” said Miss Donnithorne. “That is,” she added, “not for myself. Now, Dumps, do tell me what sort of meal the Professor eats before he goes to bed at night.”
“Oh, anything that is handy,” I answered.
“But doesn’t he have a good nourishing meal, the sort to sustain a brain like his?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Hannah sees to it.”
“But don’t you?” said Miss Donnithorne, looking rather severe, and the laugh going out of her eyes. “Don’t you attend to your father’s wants?”
“As much as I can, Miss Donnithorne. You see, I am still supposed to be nothing but a child, and Hannah has the management of things.”
“You are supposed to be nothing but a child?” said Miss Donnithorne, and she looked me all up and down.
How I did hate the length of leg that I showed in my very short skirt! She fixed her eyes in a very obstinate manner on those said legs, clothed as they were in coarse stockings, which, alack and alas! were darned in more places than one. Then her eyes travelled lower and rested on my feet. I had taken off my huge boots now; but what was the good of that when my feet were enveloped in shoes quite as large, and of the very ugliest possible make?
Miss Donnithorne heaved a profound sigh.
“I wish—” I said impulsively.
“You wish what, Rachel?”
“That you would let me wear the brown skirt.”
“And why, child? It is absolutely hideous.”
“But it is long,” I cried. “You would not see my legs nor my ugly feet.”
“Rachel, you want a great deal of attention; you are being sadly neglected.”
“Am I?” I said. Then I added, “Why do you say so?”
“It is but to look at you. You are not such a child that you could not do hundreds of things which at present never enter into your head.”
“How do you know, Miss Donnithorne?”
“I know,” she answered. “A little bird has told me.” Now, all my life I had hated women who spoke about having confidences with little birds; and I now said impulsively, “Please don’t say that. I am so inclined to like you just awfully! But if you wouldn’t speak about that bird—”
“You have heard of it before?” she asked, and the sparkle came back into her eyes. “Well, never mind how I know. I suppose I know because I have got observation. But, to begin with, tell me how old you are.”
“I’ll be sixteen in a little less than six months.”
“Bless us!” said Miss Donnithorne, “why can’t the child say she is fifteen and a half?”
“Oh, that’s because of the birthdays,” I replied.
“The birthdays?” she asked, raising her brows.
“Miss Donnithorne,” I said impulsively, “a birthday istheday in the whole year. A birthday makes up for many very dismal days. On a birthday, when it comes, the sun shines and the world is beautiful. Oh, Miss Donnithorne, what would life be without birthdays?”
I spoke with such emotion and earnestness that the little lady’s face was quite impressed; there even came a sort of dimness over her eyes.
“Then most of your days are dull, little Rachel?” she said.
“They are lonely,” I replied.
“And yet you go to school; you have heaps of companions.”
“But no friends,” I replied.
“I wonder if Hermione Aldyce will suit you?” was her next remark.
“Hermione Aldyce! What a queer name! And who is she?”
“You will see her to-morrow. She is different from you, but there is no reason why you should not be friends. She is much the same age.”
“Is she coming here to-morrow?”
“No; you are going to her. Her father and mother have invited us both to dine with them.”
“Oh!” I said.
I looked down at my length of leg and at my ugly feet, and felt a little shiver going through my frame. Miss Donnithorne laid her hand on my arm.
“I wonder, Dumps,” she said, “if you are a very proud girl?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think I have plenty of pride.”
“But there are all sorts,” said Miss Donnithorne. “I hate a girl who has none. I want a girl to be reasonable. I don’t want her to eat the dust and to do absurd things, or to lower herself in her own eyes. I want a girl to be dignified, to hold her head high, to look straight out at the world with all the confidence and sweetness and fearlessness that a good girl ought to feel; but at the same time I want her to have the courage to take a kindness from one who means well without being angry or absurd.”
“What does all this mean?” I asked.
“It means, my dear Dumps, that I have in my possession at the present moment a very pretty costume which you might exchange for the red blouse and brown skirt. I know a person in Chelmsford who would be charmed to possess that red blouse and brown skirt, and if you wore the costume I have now in my mind, why, you would look quite nice in it—in fact, very nice indeed. Will you wear it?”
“What!” I answered; “give away the clothes father bought for me, and take yours?”
“I could make it right with your father. Don’t be a goose, Dumps. Your father only bought them because he didn’t know what was suitable. Now, will you let me give you the costume that I have upstairs?”
“But when did you get it?”
“The fact is, I didn’t get it. I have some clothes by me which belonged to a girl I was once very fond of. I will tell you about her another time.”
“A girl you were fond of—and you have her clothes, and would like me to wear them?”
“Some of them would not fit you, but this costume would. Will you put it on to-morrow? Will you at least wear it to-morrow for my sake?”
Of course there are all sorts of prides, and it did seem wrong to hurt Miss Donnithorne, and the temptation to look nice was great. So I said softly, “I will wear it to-morrow—yes, I will wear it to-morrow—because you wish me to.”
“Then you are a darling child,” said Miss Donnithorne.
She gave a great sigh of relief, jumped up from her seat, and kissed me.
Soon after that, being very tired with the adventures of the day, I went to bed. How delicious that bed was—so warm, so white, so inviting! How gaily the fire blazed in the grate, sending up little jets of flame, and filling the room with a sense of comfort! Miss Donnithorne came in, and saw that I had hot water and everything I required, and left me.
I undressed slowly, in the midst of my unwonted luxury. Perhaps if I lived always with Miss Donnithorne I should be a different sort of girl; I might even grow up less of a Dumps. But of course not. Nothing could lengthen my nose, or shorten my upper lip, or make me big. I must make up my mind to be quite the plainest girl it had ever been my own misfortune to meet. For I had met myself at last in the looking-glass in Miss Donnithorne’s bedroom; myselfandmyself had come face to face.
In the midst of my pleasure a scalding tear rolled down one of my cheeks at the memory of that poor reflection. I had been proud to be called Rachel, but now I was almost glad that most of my world knew me as Dumps.
Notwithstanding these small worries, however, I slept like a top, and woke in the morning to see Nancy busy lighting the fire.
“Oh dear!” I said, “I don’t want a fire to dress by.”
“Yes, you do, miss, to-day, for it’s bitter cold,” said Nancy.
She soon had a nice fire blazing; she then brought me in a comfortable hot bath, and finally a little tray with a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread-and-butter.
“Now, miss,” she said, “you can get up and dress slowly. Missis said she won’t have breakfast until a quarter to nine this morning, and it is only a quarter to eight now. And, miss, them are the clothes. They’re all beautifully aired, and ready to put on, and missis says that you’ll understand.”
Really it was exciting. It seemed to me that I had been wafted into Fairyland. I sipped my tea and ate my bread-and-butter, and thought what a delightful place Fairyland was, and that, after all, none of the children’s books had half described its glories. I then got up and dressed luxuriously, and at last turned to the chair on which lay the costume I was to wear that day. There was a very pretty skirt of a rich dark-blue; it was trimmed all round the edge with grey fur, and I did not think that in all my life I had ever seen anything quite so lovely. It had even further advantages, for when I walked it made a swishing sound, and raising the skirt, I saw that it was lined with silk.
Now, Hannah had once described to me the wonderful glories of a dress which had belonged to her mother, and which was lined with silk. She said she had bought it at a pawnbroker’s, and she knew quite well the last owner had been a duchess, for only duchesses could afford to wear such an expensive thing as silk hidden away under the skirt.
The bodice of this costume was as pretty as the skirt; it was also silk-lined, and full of little quaint puffings, and there was fur round the neck and on the cuffs. It fitted me to perfection, and I do think that even Dumps looked better in that dark-blue dress, with its grey fur, than I had believed it possible for her to appear in anything.
But there were even further delights; for the dark-blue dress had a beautiful dark-blue coat to match, and there was a little grey fur cap to be worn with it, and a grey fur muff. Oh dear, dear, I was made! And yet there were further treasures to be revealed. I had not seen them before, but I had to put them on before I went down to breakfast—neat stockings of the very finest cashmere, and little shoes with rosettes and buckles. There were also walking shoes of the most refined and delicate make. And, wonder of wonders! they fitted me. I felt indeed that I had come to Fairyland!
Miss Donnithorne was far too much of a lady to make any remark when I came into the room in my dark-blue costume for breakfast. She hardly glanced at me, but went deliberately to the sideboard and began to carve some delicate slices of rosy ham.
I sat down facing the fire. I felt almost self-conscious in the glories of that wonderful costume, and Miss Donnithorne must have guessed that I would have such feelings. She therefore began to talk in her most matter-of-fact style.
“We shall have a very busy day, Rachel,” she said. “There is not much time even for us to finish breakfast, for I have a class in the Sunday-school, and you, if you like, can come with me. Of course, if you prefer it, you can come to church later with Nancy.”
“Oh, I should much prefer to go with you,” I replied.
“That’s right—that’s right,” said Miss Donnithorne. “After church we go straight to the Aldyces’; they’ll take us in their carriage. We shall dine with them, and I think you might like Hermione to come back to have tea with us.”
“You are good,” I said. “It does sound wonderful.”
Then I added, as I broke a piece of crisp toast in two, “I have never ridden in a carriage in all my life.”
“Oh, you are not at all remarkable in that,” replied Miss Donnithorne in her frank way. “London girls, unless their fathers happen to be very rich, don’t have carriages to drive in. But there is one thing I would bid you remember, Dumps.”
“What is that?” I asked, raising my eyes to her face.
“You will meet, my dear, in your way through life, all sorts and conditions of men and women, rich and poor, lowly and haughty, and you will have to remember distinctions. One man may be better than his neighbour; one man may be lower than his neighbour; but the thing that makes the difference between man and man is not what he possesses, but what he is in himself. Now, your father, my dear Rachel, happens to be a much greater and much more distinguished man than Squire Aldyce.”
I wondered why she spoke so. Her laughing eyes were not laughing now; they were wonderfully serious; and her lips wore a remarkable expression of great firmness and yet of great sweetness.
“I am proud to know Professor Grant,” she said, “and you ought to be an exceedingly proud girl to be his daughter.”
“Oh, I love him very much,” I said; but then I added a little tremblingly, “My brother Alex has sometimes told me that father is a great scholar, but I didn’t know—I didn’t understand that all the world—I mean that other people knew about him.”
“Bless the child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “She has been brought up, so to speak, in the dark. You are a little mole, Dumps. You have kept your eyes shut. Some day you will realise what the Professor really is. He has a bigger brain than any other man I happen to know about. He is the foremost man in a most advanced realm of thought; his powers of imagination are great. Did he live in another age, he might have been a second Milton. You ought to be very, very proud indeed to be his daughter.”
It was thus she spoke to me, and so I quite forgot about the dark-blue costume, and accompanied her to Sunday-school, feeling composed and at the same time proud.
The Sunday-school was a very nice one, and the children were the ordinary sort of children one meets in the country. The superintendent of the school came up and shook hands with me. He said he was very proud to meet Professor Grant’s daughter. It was quite amazing—Fairyland was growing more dazzling each moment. It was not only that I was lifted right out of my ugly surroundings, but that I, plain as I was, was turned into a sort of princess. Surely no princess had ever worn a more lovely dress; and surely no princess could hold her head higher, if what Miss Donnithorne said about my father was true.
In church I regret to say that I more than once stroked the grey fur muff and softly felt the texture of my dress. But after church was over fresh excitement was in store for me.
Hermione Aldyce was waiting in the church porch for us. She was alone. I don’t in the least remember what she wore. She was very tall and very slim, and I am sure she was very young, for she wore her hair in two great plaits down her back. Her hair was dark-brown, and her eyes were exactly the same colour. She had a face with a pale, creamy complexion, and when she smiled she showed two rows of little even teeth, white as pearls.
“Dear Miss Donnithorne,” she said. “And is this Dumps?”
I could not feel indignant, even though I resented being called Dumps by a total stranger, for Hermione’s eyes had a sort of pleading expression in them, and she seemed sorry the moment she had said the word.
“Of course I ought to call you Miss Grant,” she said.
“No, no,” I answered; “I am Rachel Grant. Nobody in all the world ever yet called me Miss Grant.”
“Is the carriage waiting, Hermione?” said Miss Donnithorne. “It is cold here in the porch.”
“Yes,” replied Hermione. “And father and mother have not come. Father would have had to walk back, for we could not all go in the carriage, and so mother decided to stay with him. Father has a cough—not much—nothing to speak of.”
“Come then, dear, we will go at once,” said Miss Donnithorne.
She got into the carriage first; then I was desired to step in, and notwithstanding my smart dress, I am afraid I was very awkward as I got into that carriage. Miss Donnithorne and I had the seat facing the horses, and Hermione sat opposite to us. It seemed to me as though we flew over the country; the whole feeling was too delicious—the softly padded cushions, the rhythmic beat of the horses’ feet. The girl who was not fortunate enough to possess a father like Professor Grant had some compensations! Such a carriage! Such a nice face! The girl herself impressed me in the most marvellous way. As to the dreadful Swans, I am afraid I gave them anything but kind thoughts at that moment.
By-and-by we got to the house. Then Hermione took possession of me.
“You are my guest,” she said. “Come up and I’ll show you my room.”
We ran upstairs together. I was feeling so very good that I did not think for a moment that anything but good could befall me during that delightful visit. Hermione took me first to her bedroom, and then into a little sitting-room which opened out of it.
“I do my lessons here,” she said, “and read here, and entertain my friends. I haven’t many friends. I cannot tell you how interested I was at the thought of your coming to-day.”
“Were you indeed?” I answered.
I wondered what she would have thought if I had come to visit her in the brown skirt and red blouse.
“You must take off your pretty jacket,” she said.
“What a sweet frock that is! In what shop did you buy it?”
“I didn’t buy it at all,” I said.
I felt my cheeks crimsoning. There was a kind of naughty pride in me that would not tell her the truth that Miss Donnithorne had given it to me.
“I suppose your governess, or whoever takes care of you, arranges your clothes,” said Hermione in a careless tone. “Well, it is sweetly pretty, and so becoming! And what nice hair you have!”
“Nice hair?” I responded.
“Why, of course it is nice; it is so thick and such a good colour. It will look very handsome when you have it arranged in the grown-up style.”
“I don’t want to be grown-up,” I said. “I’d like to be a child always—that is, if I could have birthdays all the same.”
“Do you think so much of your birthdays?” said Hermione, leaning up against the window-sill as she spoke, and twiddling with a paper-knife. “I think they’re rather tiresome. I think birthdays are overdone.”
“You wouldn’t if you knew what my birthday was like,” I said.
“Oh, then,” she exclaimed, “you must tell me all about it.”
I was just about to explain, wondering if I could get her to see the vivid picture of the bright day, the presents, the anxious little girl, whose heart had been aching for so many long months just because of this glorious time, when a great gong sounded through the house, and Hermione said, “Oh! we can’t talk at present; it is dinner-time. Come along, Rachel; come downstairs.”
Squire Aldyce was a very aristocratic-looking old gentleman, and his wife was the sort that one would describe as a very fine lady indeed. I did not like her half as much as I liked him. He was quite sweet. He congratulated me on being my father’s daughter, and asked when the Professor was going to bring out another pamphlet on some appallingly learned subject, the name of which I could not possibly pronounce. I said I did not know, and a minute or two later we found ourselves sitting round the dinner-table.
There were a few other guests, and I was introduced to them as Miss Rachel Grant.
“The daughter of the well-known Professor,” said the Squire after each of these formalities.
The ladies did not take much notice of me, but the gentlemen stared at me for a minute or two, and one man said, “I congratulate you, little girl. To be so closely related to so great a man is an honour, and I hope you appreciate it.”
Dear old father! I did not know that the glories and laurels he had won were to follow me, such a very plain little girl, to such a grand house.
When dinner came to an end we again went upstairs, and Hermione showed me her treasures, and forgot to ask me about my birthdays. We were having a long and very serious talk, in which she spoke of books and music and the delights of the higher sort of education, when I broke in by saying suddenly, “You don’t understand me a bit.”
“What in the world do you mean? What is the matter?” she exclaimed.
“Because I don’t love study, or books, or anything of that sort. I think,” I added, my eyes filling with tears, “that I have come here as a sham, for I am not the least morsel like father—not the least.”
“Perhaps you resemble your mother,” said Hermione in her very calm way.
I had quite loved her up to now, for she had such beautiful manners and such a nice face; but now when she made this reply I looked at her steadily, and saw that, just because of her wealth and high birth and fine clothes, her knowledge of life was limited. She could not see things from my point of view.
“I don’t think I am the least like my darling mother,” I said, “for she was beautiful.”
“And don’t you remember her?”
“I don’t remember her. If she were alive I should be quite a different sort of girl. But oh, Hermione! sometimes at night I think of her just when I am dropping off to sleep. She comes to me when I am asleep. To think of any girl having a mother! Oh, it must be the height of bliss and of joy!”
Hermione stared at me for a minute; then she said, “I don’t understand. I love my father best.”
“Do you?” I said, a little shocked.
“Of course you cannot possibly love your mother’s memory as you do your father, for he is such a great man—a man whom all the world is proud of.”
“But he is only a teacher in a school,” I could not help saying.
“He could be anything; but he will not leave the school. He loves to instruct the boys. But it isn’t for his scholastic work he is known; it is because he is himself, and—and because of those wonderful lectures, so many of which are published. He lectures also at the Royal Society, and he writes pamphlets which set the greatest thinkers all agog. Oh, I should be proud of him if I were you!”
“I am glad,” I said. I knew that I loved the Professor dearly. Had I not all my life sacrificed myself for his sake, as every one else had also done?
Hermione said after a pause, “Miss Donnithorne told me that you were—”
“What?” I asked.
“A little bit—don’t be offended—a little bit neglected.”
“She had no right to say so; I am not.”
As I spoke I laid my hand on the dark-blue dress, and all of a sudden I grew to hate it. I disliked Hermione also.
“What is the matter?” she said. “Have I hurt you in any way? I wouldn’t for all the world. I am so truly glad to make your acquaintance.”
“You didn’t mean to,” I said, recovering my temper; “but the fact is, Hermione, I live one life and you live another. You are rich, and we are poor; I am not ashamed to say it.”
“It must be rather exciting to be poor,” said Hermione. “I mean it must be interesting to know the value of money. But you don’t look poor, Dumps—or—I mean Rachel. That dress—”
“Oh! don’t talk of my dress, please.”
“I know it’s bad form,” she replied, and she seemed to shrink into her shell.
After a minute she spoke on a different subject, and just then a stately but somewhat withered-looking lady entered the room.
“Hermione, Miss Donnithorne says that you and Miss Grant must put on your things now in order to return to Hedgerow House, otherwise you won’t be in time to receive the Professor.”
“The Professor?” I cried, jumping to my feet. Hermione laughed.
“You don’t mean to say that Miss Donnithorne hasn’t told you that your father is coming to have tea with you both?”
“I didn’t know anything about it. My father? But he never leaves London.”
“He has managed to leave it to-day. How queer that you shouldn’t know!”
“I had better get dressed; I shouldn’t like to be late,” I said.
I felt all of a flutter; I was nervous. Would he remark my dark-blue costume, and be angry with me for not wearing my brown skirt and red blouse?
“I’ll get dressed in a twinkling,” said Hermione. “Come along, Dumps; this is interesting.”
I wondered why she was so pleased, and why a sort of inward mirth began to consume her. Her eyes were twinkling all the time. I began to like her a little less and a little less; and yet, of course, she was a most charming and well-bred and nice-looking girl.
We went downstairs a few minutes later. We said good-bye to the Squire and his wife. The Squire said he hoped he would have the honour of entertaining Professor’s Grant’s daughter again, and the Squire’s lady made some remark which I presumed signified the same. Then we went away, driving as fast as ever we could in the direction of Hedgerow House.
Part 1, Chapter VII.A Surprise Tea.We were a little late after all, for the Professor was standing on the steps. It does seem so ridiculous to call your own father the Professor, but after all I had heard of him that day I really felt that I could not even think of him under any other title. He was dressed just as carelessly and with as little regard to outward appearances as though he had been giving a lecture to the Sixth Form boys in the college. His hair was rumpled and pushed back from his lofty forehead. His eyes had that somewhat vacant stare which, notwithstanding his genius, I could not help constantly noticing in them. His adorers—and it struck me that the Professor had many adorers—called that his “far-away” or his “abstracted” or his “marvellous thinking” look, but to me it seemed that it was his vacant look. But there! it was very wrong of me to think such a thing about father.“He has come,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Rachel, your father is here. I am more vexed than I can say not to have been ready to welcome him. I hope Nancy saw to his comfort. Jump out, child, and run up the path. Be the first to greet him. I will follow you immediately.”I was almost pushed by Miss Donnithorne out of the carriage, and I ran up the little path which led to Hedgerow House. I felt that Miss Donnithorne and Hermione were following me a few steps behind. I wondered if father would notice the dark-blue dress and the grey fur. If he did he would be sure to say something which would let the cat out of the bag—something which would lower me for ever in the eyes of Hermione. As I had not chosen to tell Hermione at the time that Miss Donnithorne had requested me to wear the dress that day, I should dislike beyond anything to have father blazoning the whole secret abroad. But he did nothing of the kind; he merely said, “Well, Dumps, you look flourishing.”He held out his hand and gave me the tips of his fingers. Then he shook hands with Miss Donnithorne, and Miss Donnithorne presented Hermione to him. I observed that Miss Donnithorne’s cheeks were brighter than their wont. She began to speak in a very apologetic way, but father cut her short.“It doesn’t matter,” he said; “pray don’t apologise.” They both went into the house, and it seemed to me that they forgot all about Hermione and me as completely as though we did not exist.“How queer!” I could not help saying.“Queer?” said Hermione. “It isn’t a bit queer; it’s what we ought to expect.”“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.She looked at me. I observed then that her soft brown eyes could be quizzical at times. The lids became slightly narrow, and a smile, not the sweetest, trembled on her lips; then it vanished.“Have you seen Miss Donnithorne’s garden?” she asked.“Yes,” I replied; “and I am cold; I want to go into the house. Let us go in, Hermione. I want, now father is with us, to be as much with him as I can.”“Oh, you little goose!” said Hermione. “For goodness’ sake leave them alone. Come upstairs and show me your room.”“Why should I leave them alone?” I said.“You are a baby!” said Hermione. She spoke almost crossly.I certainly absolutely failed to understand her. I said after a minute, “I suppose that I understand father better than you do, and better than Miss Donnithorne does.”“Better than Miss Donnithorne understands him?” cried Hermione. “Oh Dumps! I must call you Dumps, for you are quite delicious. Never, never since I was born did I meet a little girl quite so much the colour of—the colour of—”“The colour of what?” I said.She had her umbrella in her hand. It was very neatly folded. I really don’t know why she brought it, as we had driven in a covered carriage; but now she poked and poked in the snow with it until she came to the grass beneath.“The colour of that,” she said.I am sure I turned scarlet; and I can assure you, readers, that I was not at all pretty when I turned that colour, for my complexion was somewhat muddy, and I had none of those delicate pinks and whites in my skin which make people think you so absolutely charming.“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I think you are very rude.”She laughed and patted me on the arm.“You are a very nice girl,” she said. “I know that; but you will forgive me. I perceive that Miss Grace Donnithorne is right and you know nothing of the world.”“I don’t know anything whatever of the world you live in,” I answered. “I know nothing whatever of the world which suddenly declares that a person whom I scarcely know at all knows more of the heart of the one person whom I have been brought up with all my life than I do myself. I positively declare that Miss Grace Donnithorne does not know as much about father as I do.”“And I defy you to prove it. If I were a boy I’d make a bet on it,” said Hermione. “But there I never mind; don’t let us talk on the subject any longer. Come and show me your room, and afterwards you can tell me about yourself.”I had to crush down my gathering wrath, and we went upstairs. Hermione was restless; I tried to talk in a matter-of-fact and yet haughty sort of way, but she hardly replied.“It is so amusing,” she said.“What is the matter with you?”“Oh, to be in the house withthem, you know.”“The house with whom?”“Why, the Professor and Miss Grace Donnithorne.”“I don’t see that it is the least remarkable,” I answered.“But it is—very. And dear old Grace, too—dear old Grace—whom I have known ever since I was a baby. I suppose I am glad, but perhaps I am sorry too; I am really not sure. You see, I have hardly looked at your Professor, but I’ll study him tremendously when tea is ready. Now do come downstairs, Dumps, and don’t look so bewildered. You would be quite nice-looking if your hair was properly arranged. Here, let me arrange it for you. Why should it sag in that hideous way over your forehead? Give me your comb.”Hermione could be very masterful. She folded back my hair in some marvellous fashion, which made my forehead look much broader, and then she plaited it in two thick plaits which hung down my back. Those plaits kept the front quite tidy and in complete order; and then she brought a little hand-glass and made me look at my reflection behind.“You look quite a nice girl,” she said. “I grant that you have not the most perfect features in the world, but a great many girls who have better features would give up everything for your hair.”Yes, my hair was very thick, and it was very bright, and somewhat tawny in shade, and the two plaits were massive and very long, for they hung far below my waist.“I have such a little screw of hair,” said Hermione, “that I shall be delighted when I am allowed to put it up; but mother won’t hear of it until I am seventeen. She says that, as my hair is so rat’s-taily, I may as well put it up when I am seventeen, but that won’t be for a whole year and three months.”“Then you are not sixteen yet?”“No.”“I am three months younger than you,” I replied, “and I am not a bit anxious to be grown-up; I want to remain a child.”“Perhaps so; with your sort of figure and your thick hair—it won’t look nearly so well when it is coiled round your head—I am not surprised. Oh, delightful sound! There’s the tinkle of dear Grace’s tea-bell. Now come along down; I do want to store at the Professor.”We did go down. There was a very cosy tea; it was laid in the pretty parlour. Father sat at one end of the table and Miss Donnithorne at the other, while Hermione occupied the central position at the side near the fire, and I the opposite one. The Professor kept talking all the time. It did not matter in the very least whether he was answered or not. He was explaining the peculiarities of a fossil which he had discovered by the merest chance a month ago. He was telling the exact age which had produced this fossil, and using most unintelligible names. Miss Donnithorne was listening, and now and then putting in a remark, but neither Hermione nor I uttered a word. I began to day-dream. The Professor was just as he always was. He always talked like that—always. He was a little less interesting than usual when he got on fossils; they were his very driest subject. The boys and I knew quite well what subjects he was best on: he was best when he alluded to the great Greek tragedians; occasionally then an ordinary personcouldget a glimmering of his meaning. I thought I would show those good ladies, Miss Donnithorne and that precious Hermione, that I understood father a little better than they did. So I said after a pause, “Which of the plays of Sophocles do you like best, father?”It was a very daring remark, and Miss Donnithorne opened her brown, laughing eyes and stared at me as though I had committed sacrilege. Hermione very nearly jumped from her seat. My words had the effect of pulling the Professor up short. He stared at me and said, “Eh, Dumps—eh? What are you talking about, Dumps?”“Which play of Sophocles do you regard as his greatest?” I said, and I felt very proud of myself as I uttered this remark.I had now led father into the stream of conversation in which he could show himself off to the best advantage. He took to the bait, forgot the fossils, and began to talk of that other fossil the old Greek tragedian. I leant back in my chair; I had accomplished my object. Father looked as though he were about to fight the whole world in the cause of Sophocles—as though any human being wanted to take any of his laurels from the poor old dead and gone tragedian.But I was watching my chance. I saw that the ladies were impressed, and by-and-by I swept father once more off his feet into another direction by asking him to explain one of the greatest passages in the works of Milton. Father turned on me almost with fury. Miss Donnithorne muttered something. Hermione said, “Oh, I am so hot with my back to the fire!”But again father rose to the bait and burst forth in a panegyric on Milton which I suppose a scholar, if he knew shorthand, would have taken down on the spot, for I know it was marvellously clever. But Miss Donnithorne was a little pale when father had finished. Then he and she got up and went into the garden, and walked up and down; and Hermione took my hand and dragged me into the room with the stuffed birds, and flung herself on the sofa and burst into a peal of laughter.“How rude you are!” I said. “What is the matter?”“Oh, you are a genius, you greenest of green Dumps!” was her remark. “To think of your daring to oppose that stream of eloquence!”“Well, you see, I know father, and I know that there are two subjects on which he can be wonderful; one is Sophocles and the other Milton.”“I never heard of Sophocles,” said Hermione in her calmest tone.“You never heard of Sophocles?” I said, for the temptation to crow over her was too great to be resisted. “Why, he was the greatest writer of the tragic muse that ever existed.”“For goodness’ sake, Dumps—” Hermione pressed her hands to her ears. “If you talk like that I shall fly.”“I don’t know him,” I said; “and what is more,” I added, “I never mean to. If you had a father like the Professor you’d hate the classics. But after Sophocles,” I continued, “the person he loves best is Milton. I haven’t read Milton, and I don’t mean to.”“Oh, I suppose I shall have to read him,” said Hermione. “But poor, poor dear Grace! Does he always talk like that, Dumps?”“He was particularly lucid to-day,” I said. “As a rule he is much more difficult to understand.”“And do you always have your meals with that sort of stream of learning pouring down you?”“Oh no; most times he is silent.”“That must be much better,” said Hermione, with a profound sigh.“I don’t know; it’s rather dull. We aren’t allowed to talk when the Professor is silent.”“Bless him! And Grace is such a chatterbox, you know.”“She is very, very nice,” I said.Just then the Professor came in.“Where is Dumps?” he said.I jumped to my feet.“Good-bye, child,” he said, holding out his hand limply. Then he drew me to him and pressed a very light kiss on my forehead.“Glad you are with Grace—Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Hope you are enjoying yourself. I’ll expect you back on the evening of Tuesday. School begins on Wednesday. You mustn’t neglect your books. As glorious Milton says—”He rhapsodised for two minutes, then stopped, glanced at Hermione, and said abruptly, “Don’t know this young lady.”“Oh yes, you do, Professor,” said Miss Donnithorne. “This is my great friend, Miss Hermione Aldyce.”“My father is a great admirer of yours, sir,” said Hermione, colouring slightly and looking very pretty.“Eh—eh?” said the Professor. “Don’t like people to admire me. Good-bye, good-bye.—Good-bye, Miss Donnithorne—Grace, I mean—no, Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Good-bye, good-bye!”He was out of the house and down the path before we had hardly time to breathe. Hermione went away a few minutes afterwards, and Miss Donnithorne and I had the evening to ourselves. We had supper almost in silence. There was a sort of constraint over us. I looked at Miss Donnithorne, and saw that she was very pale. I said to myself, “No wonder, poor thing! She has had some of father’s eloquence dinned into her ears; it is enough to scare any one.”After a long period of silence, during which I was scraping more and more apple off the core of the baked one I had been eating, and trying to fiddle with my bread and get it to last as long as possible, she said abruptly, “One’s duty is sometimes difficult, is it not, little Rachel?”“Is it?” I answered. “Yes, I suppose so.”She looked at me again.“You are the index-finger which points to the path of duty,” was her next remarkable speech.This was too much!“I hate being called an index-finger!” was my answer. “I don’t know what it means.”She got up, put her arm round me, and kissed me.“I would be good to you,” she said in her softest voice.It really was difficult to resist her. She was a very sweet woman. I knew it then by the way she kissed me, and I don’t think in all my life I ever felt anything softer than the soft, soft cheek which was pressed against mine. Had she been a girl of my own age, she could not have had a more delicate complexion.“You are good to me—you are very good to me,” I said with gratitude.“I like you and even love you, and I hope you will like me and not misunderstand me.”“But why should I?” I asked.“Come into the other room, child,” was her remark.We went into the room where the stuffed birds were, and Miss Donnithorne sat down and poked up the fire.Then she said gently, “Does he always talk as much as he did at tea?”“Who, Miss Donnithorne?”“Your father, my dear.”“Not always,” I answered.She gave a sigh of profound thankfulness.“But does he at most times?”“Most times he is silent,” I said, “and we are all silent too. It’s the rule at home for none of us to speak when the Professor is eating. If he likes he speaks, but none of us does.”“What do you mean by ‘none of us’?”“The boys and I. We sit very still. It isn’t difficult for me, because I am accustomed to it; but Alex—he sometimes moves his legs, for they are so long. Father is annoyed then. Father suffers from headache.”“No wonder, with such a brain. His learning is colossal!”“It is,” I said wearily.“You admire him very much, don’t you, Dumps?”“Naturally, because he is my father.” But then I added, “I only wish he wasn’t so learned. I hate learning, you know. I never mean to be learned.”Miss Donnithorne laughed, and her favourite expression, “Bless the child!” burst from her lips.
We were a little late after all, for the Professor was standing on the steps. It does seem so ridiculous to call your own father the Professor, but after all I had heard of him that day I really felt that I could not even think of him under any other title. He was dressed just as carelessly and with as little regard to outward appearances as though he had been giving a lecture to the Sixth Form boys in the college. His hair was rumpled and pushed back from his lofty forehead. His eyes had that somewhat vacant stare which, notwithstanding his genius, I could not help constantly noticing in them. His adorers—and it struck me that the Professor had many adorers—called that his “far-away” or his “abstracted” or his “marvellous thinking” look, but to me it seemed that it was his vacant look. But there! it was very wrong of me to think such a thing about father.
“He has come,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Rachel, your father is here. I am more vexed than I can say not to have been ready to welcome him. I hope Nancy saw to his comfort. Jump out, child, and run up the path. Be the first to greet him. I will follow you immediately.”
I was almost pushed by Miss Donnithorne out of the carriage, and I ran up the little path which led to Hedgerow House. I felt that Miss Donnithorne and Hermione were following me a few steps behind. I wondered if father would notice the dark-blue dress and the grey fur. If he did he would be sure to say something which would let the cat out of the bag—something which would lower me for ever in the eyes of Hermione. As I had not chosen to tell Hermione at the time that Miss Donnithorne had requested me to wear the dress that day, I should dislike beyond anything to have father blazoning the whole secret abroad. But he did nothing of the kind; he merely said, “Well, Dumps, you look flourishing.”
He held out his hand and gave me the tips of his fingers. Then he shook hands with Miss Donnithorne, and Miss Donnithorne presented Hermione to him. I observed that Miss Donnithorne’s cheeks were brighter than their wont. She began to speak in a very apologetic way, but father cut her short.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said; “pray don’t apologise.” They both went into the house, and it seemed to me that they forgot all about Hermione and me as completely as though we did not exist.
“How queer!” I could not help saying.
“Queer?” said Hermione. “It isn’t a bit queer; it’s what we ought to expect.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
She looked at me. I observed then that her soft brown eyes could be quizzical at times. The lids became slightly narrow, and a smile, not the sweetest, trembled on her lips; then it vanished.
“Have you seen Miss Donnithorne’s garden?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied; “and I am cold; I want to go into the house. Let us go in, Hermione. I want, now father is with us, to be as much with him as I can.”
“Oh, you little goose!” said Hermione. “For goodness’ sake leave them alone. Come upstairs and show me your room.”
“Why should I leave them alone?” I said.
“You are a baby!” said Hermione. She spoke almost crossly.
I certainly absolutely failed to understand her. I said after a minute, “I suppose that I understand father better than you do, and better than Miss Donnithorne does.”
“Better than Miss Donnithorne understands him?” cried Hermione. “Oh Dumps! I must call you Dumps, for you are quite delicious. Never, never since I was born did I meet a little girl quite so much the colour of—the colour of—”
“The colour of what?” I said.
She had her umbrella in her hand. It was very neatly folded. I really don’t know why she brought it, as we had driven in a covered carriage; but now she poked and poked in the snow with it until she came to the grass beneath.
“The colour of that,” she said.
I am sure I turned scarlet; and I can assure you, readers, that I was not at all pretty when I turned that colour, for my complexion was somewhat muddy, and I had none of those delicate pinks and whites in my skin which make people think you so absolutely charming.
“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I think you are very rude.”
She laughed and patted me on the arm.
“You are a very nice girl,” she said. “I know that; but you will forgive me. I perceive that Miss Grace Donnithorne is right and you know nothing of the world.”
“I don’t know anything whatever of the world you live in,” I answered. “I know nothing whatever of the world which suddenly declares that a person whom I scarcely know at all knows more of the heart of the one person whom I have been brought up with all my life than I do myself. I positively declare that Miss Grace Donnithorne does not know as much about father as I do.”
“And I defy you to prove it. If I were a boy I’d make a bet on it,” said Hermione. “But there I never mind; don’t let us talk on the subject any longer. Come and show me your room, and afterwards you can tell me about yourself.”
I had to crush down my gathering wrath, and we went upstairs. Hermione was restless; I tried to talk in a matter-of-fact and yet haughty sort of way, but she hardly replied.
“It is so amusing,” she said.
“What is the matter with you?”
“Oh, to be in the house withthem, you know.”
“The house with whom?”
“Why, the Professor and Miss Grace Donnithorne.”
“I don’t see that it is the least remarkable,” I answered.
“But it is—very. And dear old Grace, too—dear old Grace—whom I have known ever since I was a baby. I suppose I am glad, but perhaps I am sorry too; I am really not sure. You see, I have hardly looked at your Professor, but I’ll study him tremendously when tea is ready. Now do come downstairs, Dumps, and don’t look so bewildered. You would be quite nice-looking if your hair was properly arranged. Here, let me arrange it for you. Why should it sag in that hideous way over your forehead? Give me your comb.”
Hermione could be very masterful. She folded back my hair in some marvellous fashion, which made my forehead look much broader, and then she plaited it in two thick plaits which hung down my back. Those plaits kept the front quite tidy and in complete order; and then she brought a little hand-glass and made me look at my reflection behind.
“You look quite a nice girl,” she said. “I grant that you have not the most perfect features in the world, but a great many girls who have better features would give up everything for your hair.”
Yes, my hair was very thick, and it was very bright, and somewhat tawny in shade, and the two plaits were massive and very long, for they hung far below my waist.
“I have such a little screw of hair,” said Hermione, “that I shall be delighted when I am allowed to put it up; but mother won’t hear of it until I am seventeen. She says that, as my hair is so rat’s-taily, I may as well put it up when I am seventeen, but that won’t be for a whole year and three months.”
“Then you are not sixteen yet?”
“No.”
“I am three months younger than you,” I replied, “and I am not a bit anxious to be grown-up; I want to remain a child.”
“Perhaps so; with your sort of figure and your thick hair—it won’t look nearly so well when it is coiled round your head—I am not surprised. Oh, delightful sound! There’s the tinkle of dear Grace’s tea-bell. Now come along down; I do want to store at the Professor.”
We did go down. There was a very cosy tea; it was laid in the pretty parlour. Father sat at one end of the table and Miss Donnithorne at the other, while Hermione occupied the central position at the side near the fire, and I the opposite one. The Professor kept talking all the time. It did not matter in the very least whether he was answered or not. He was explaining the peculiarities of a fossil which he had discovered by the merest chance a month ago. He was telling the exact age which had produced this fossil, and using most unintelligible names. Miss Donnithorne was listening, and now and then putting in a remark, but neither Hermione nor I uttered a word. I began to day-dream. The Professor was just as he always was. He always talked like that—always. He was a little less interesting than usual when he got on fossils; they were his very driest subject. The boys and I knew quite well what subjects he was best on: he was best when he alluded to the great Greek tragedians; occasionally then an ordinary personcouldget a glimmering of his meaning. I thought I would show those good ladies, Miss Donnithorne and that precious Hermione, that I understood father a little better than they did. So I said after a pause, “Which of the plays of Sophocles do you like best, father?”
It was a very daring remark, and Miss Donnithorne opened her brown, laughing eyes and stared at me as though I had committed sacrilege. Hermione very nearly jumped from her seat. My words had the effect of pulling the Professor up short. He stared at me and said, “Eh, Dumps—eh? What are you talking about, Dumps?”
“Which play of Sophocles do you regard as his greatest?” I said, and I felt very proud of myself as I uttered this remark.
I had now led father into the stream of conversation in which he could show himself off to the best advantage. He took to the bait, forgot the fossils, and began to talk of that other fossil the old Greek tragedian. I leant back in my chair; I had accomplished my object. Father looked as though he were about to fight the whole world in the cause of Sophocles—as though any human being wanted to take any of his laurels from the poor old dead and gone tragedian.
But I was watching my chance. I saw that the ladies were impressed, and by-and-by I swept father once more off his feet into another direction by asking him to explain one of the greatest passages in the works of Milton. Father turned on me almost with fury. Miss Donnithorne muttered something. Hermione said, “Oh, I am so hot with my back to the fire!”
But again father rose to the bait and burst forth in a panegyric on Milton which I suppose a scholar, if he knew shorthand, would have taken down on the spot, for I know it was marvellously clever. But Miss Donnithorne was a little pale when father had finished. Then he and she got up and went into the garden, and walked up and down; and Hermione took my hand and dragged me into the room with the stuffed birds, and flung herself on the sofa and burst into a peal of laughter.
“How rude you are!” I said. “What is the matter?”
“Oh, you are a genius, you greenest of green Dumps!” was her remark. “To think of your daring to oppose that stream of eloquence!”
“Well, you see, I know father, and I know that there are two subjects on which he can be wonderful; one is Sophocles and the other Milton.”
“I never heard of Sophocles,” said Hermione in her calmest tone.
“You never heard of Sophocles?” I said, for the temptation to crow over her was too great to be resisted. “Why, he was the greatest writer of the tragic muse that ever existed.”
“For goodness’ sake, Dumps—” Hermione pressed her hands to her ears. “If you talk like that I shall fly.”
“I don’t know him,” I said; “and what is more,” I added, “I never mean to. If you had a father like the Professor you’d hate the classics. But after Sophocles,” I continued, “the person he loves best is Milton. I haven’t read Milton, and I don’t mean to.”
“Oh, I suppose I shall have to read him,” said Hermione. “But poor, poor dear Grace! Does he always talk like that, Dumps?”
“He was particularly lucid to-day,” I said. “As a rule he is much more difficult to understand.”
“And do you always have your meals with that sort of stream of learning pouring down you?”
“Oh no; most times he is silent.”
“That must be much better,” said Hermione, with a profound sigh.
“I don’t know; it’s rather dull. We aren’t allowed to talk when the Professor is silent.”
“Bless him! And Grace is such a chatterbox, you know.”
“She is very, very nice,” I said.
Just then the Professor came in.
“Where is Dumps?” he said.
I jumped to my feet.
“Good-bye, child,” he said, holding out his hand limply. Then he drew me to him and pressed a very light kiss on my forehead.
“Glad you are with Grace—Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Hope you are enjoying yourself. I’ll expect you back on the evening of Tuesday. School begins on Wednesday. You mustn’t neglect your books. As glorious Milton says—”
He rhapsodised for two minutes, then stopped, glanced at Hermione, and said abruptly, “Don’t know this young lady.”
“Oh yes, you do, Professor,” said Miss Donnithorne. “This is my great friend, Miss Hermione Aldyce.”
“My father is a great admirer of yours, sir,” said Hermione, colouring slightly and looking very pretty.
“Eh—eh?” said the Professor. “Don’t like people to admire me. Good-bye, good-bye.—Good-bye, Miss Donnithorne—Grace, I mean—no, Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Good-bye, good-bye!”
He was out of the house and down the path before we had hardly time to breathe. Hermione went away a few minutes afterwards, and Miss Donnithorne and I had the evening to ourselves. We had supper almost in silence. There was a sort of constraint over us. I looked at Miss Donnithorne, and saw that she was very pale. I said to myself, “No wonder, poor thing! She has had some of father’s eloquence dinned into her ears; it is enough to scare any one.”
After a long period of silence, during which I was scraping more and more apple off the core of the baked one I had been eating, and trying to fiddle with my bread and get it to last as long as possible, she said abruptly, “One’s duty is sometimes difficult, is it not, little Rachel?”
“Is it?” I answered. “Yes, I suppose so.”
She looked at me again.
“You are the index-finger which points to the path of duty,” was her next remarkable speech.
This was too much!
“I hate being called an index-finger!” was my answer. “I don’t know what it means.”
She got up, put her arm round me, and kissed me.
“I would be good to you,” she said in her softest voice.
It really was difficult to resist her. She was a very sweet woman. I knew it then by the way she kissed me, and I don’t think in all my life I ever felt anything softer than the soft, soft cheek which was pressed against mine. Had she been a girl of my own age, she could not have had a more delicate complexion.
“You are good to me—you are very good to me,” I said with gratitude.
“I like you and even love you, and I hope you will like me and not misunderstand me.”
“But why should I?” I asked.
“Come into the other room, child,” was her remark.
We went into the room where the stuffed birds were, and Miss Donnithorne sat down and poked up the fire.
Then she said gently, “Does he always talk as much as he did at tea?”
“Who, Miss Donnithorne?”
“Your father, my dear.”
“Not always,” I answered.
She gave a sigh of profound thankfulness.
“But does he at most times?”
“Most times he is silent,” I said, “and we are all silent too. It’s the rule at home for none of us to speak when the Professor is eating. If he likes he speaks, but none of us does.”
“What do you mean by ‘none of us’?”
“The boys and I. We sit very still. It isn’t difficult for me, because I am accustomed to it; but Alex—he sometimes moves his legs, for they are so long. Father is annoyed then. Father suffers from headache.”
“No wonder, with such a brain. His learning is colossal!”
“It is,” I said wearily.
“You admire him very much, don’t you, Dumps?”
“Naturally, because he is my father.” But then I added, “I only wish he wasn’t so learned. I hate learning, you know. I never mean to be learned.”
Miss Donnithorne laughed, and her favourite expression, “Bless the child!” burst from her lips.
Part 1, Chapter VIII.Home Again.I went home on Tuesday evening. I had no more very specially interesting conversations with Miss Donnithorne; but she gave me during the whole of Monday and all Tuesday, until it was time to put me into the train for my return journey, a right royal time. I can speak of it in no other way. I lived for the first time in my whole existence. She managed to open up the world for me. She did not tell me about the dead and gone great people, who to me were very musty and mouldy and impossible; but she talked of living things—of birds and beasts and flowers. She was great on flowers. She said the country was the right place to live in, and the town was a very melancholy abode, and not specially good for any one. But then she added, “It is the lot of some girls and some men and women to live in the town, and when it is they must make the best of it.”I began to consider her not only a most agreeable woman, but also a very noble woman.“Now, if you lived in our house, would you make things different?” I said.“I shall—” she began, and then she stopped.“Oh yes, Dumps—yes. Your house isn’t at all what it ought to be; it isn’t well ordered.”“How would you manage things? I wish you would tell me, Miss Donnithorne—I really do—for now I have been with you, and eaten such delicious meals, and been in such a pretty, very clean house, I see the difference.”“It would be difficult for you to make much change,” she said; “but of course there are always things to be done. Your house wants—”She paused to consider. There came a frown between her brows.“Dumps dear,” she said after a pause, “I cannot explain just now. Your house wants—well, I will say it—to be turned topsy-turvy, inside out, round about; to be—to be made as different from what it is now as the sun is different from the moon.”“If that is the case I needn’t trouble,” I said in a sort of desponding tone, “for Hannah won’t work any harder, and I don’t think I can; and father likes his meals anyhow, and the boys and I—well, I suppose we are poor; I’m sure I don’t know, but there doesn’t seem to be much money. It will feel so strange when I go home.”“Trust to better times coming,” said Miss Donnithorne. “The house can be altered. I will write to you about it.”We were sitting by the fire on the last evening when she said this. I turned to her.“Why don’t you tell me now?”But she said, “No; it will be best to write. The fact is, I could not tell you now; it will be best to write.”“What a darling little house this is!” was my next remark. “If only we could have a sweet little house like this to live in in town, how happy I should be!”“It is a nice house,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll give it up. In fact,” she added, “I have made up my mind not to.”“Were you thinking of moving?” I asked.“I have made up my mind that the house shall remain—I mean that I shall keep the house,” was her unintelligible remark; and then she got very red—quite scarlet—all over, and she walked to one of the bookcases, opened it, and took out two volumes ofThe Daisy Chainand two more ofThe Heir of Redclyffe, and flung them into my lap.“You haven’t read those, have you?” she asked.“Oh no,” I replied, opening the first volume that came handy, and dipping into its contents.“I think you will like them,” she said. “Take them back with you; put them into your brown-paper parcel. I mean—” She stopped.She was a funny woman, after all. Why did she draw herself up each moment? It became almost irritating.Well, the precious, darling, joyful time came to an end, and I was once more in the train. I was in the train, but on the rack above me there was no longer a brown-paper parcel—a hideous, humiliating brown-paper parcel. On the contrary, there was a neat little trunk in the luggage-van, and the only thing I had with me was my umbrella, which I held in my hand. I was wearing the dark-blue dress with the grey fur, so my hands were warm with my little grey muff, and altogether I was a totally different creature from the girl who had travelled down to Chelmsford on the Saturday before.Hannah was waiting for me on one of the big platforms at Liverpool Street Station. I was amused at the way she stared at me.“Sakes!” she cried, “who’s that?”I went up to her and clapped her on the shoulder.“It’s I. I am smart, am I not, Hannah?”“Sakes!” said Hannah again, “I wouldn’t ha’ known you. Here, come along—do. Where in the name of fortune did you get them things from?”“I’ll tell you presently.”“And where’s your brown-paper parcel? My word, if it’s lost there’ll be a fuss! I don’t think I dare take you home if the parcel is lost; all your best linen in it, and your night-dress with the frills, and the handkerchiefs, and the stockings, and the dress you went down in, and the new skirt and blouse as the Professor gave you. Wherever be the parcel?”I felt very dignified and grand. I called a porter.“My luggage is in the van behind that carriage,” I said—“the van at the end of the train.”“You ain’t never put a brown-paper parcel in the van, child?” said Hannah, in high dudgeon.“Oh, come along, Hannah,” I said.I swept her with me. She was quite neatly dressed, but I saw the cotton-wool sticking in her right ear, and somehow the depression of all that was before me in the ugly house swept over my mind with renewed force. The trunk was small and wonderfully neat. It had my initials, R.G., on it. Hannah gave a snort.“I suppose the person as togged you up in all that finery give you the trunk as well,” she said.“You may suppose anything you like, Hannah; the trunk holds my clothes. Ladies cannot go about with brown-paper parcels. Now then!”The trunk was put on the top of a four-wheeler—nothing would induce Hannah to go in a hansom—and we drove back to the old house belonging to the college. It was dark and dismal, for the dim light of one gas-jet in the hall only made the shadows look the deeper. The parlour, too, was quite hideous to behold. It was more than usually untidy, for there had been no one to put the books in order or keep confusion at bay since Dumps had gone. Not that Dumps was in herself in the very least of the tidy sort, but she was a few shades tidier than the boys, Alex and Charley.Alex was sitting by the fire with his shoulders hitched up to his ears; he was conning a Latin treatise, muttering the words aloud. I came in, stole softly up to him, and gave him a slap on the back.“Goodness gracious! who’s that?”Alex sprang to his feet. He saw a smartly dressed girl. Alex secretly adored girls. He became immediately his most polite self.“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I—”He approached in the direction of the nearest gas-jet in order to turn it up higher. Then he recognised me. He recoiled at once; he was angry with me for misleading him.“Oh, it’s you, Dumps! What in the name of fortune did you steal in like that for, like a thief in the night, and slap me on the back to make me—”“Oh, you didn’t know me!” I said, catching his hands and jumping softly up and down. “Don’t I look nice in my new dress? Tell me I look nice—tell me—tell me, Alex!”But Alex was really angry.“I don’t know anything about it,” he said.I had counted much on the impression that I should make on Alex with my dress. I thought he would be respectful and treat me as a lady. I thought he would begin to see that even Dumps, with her hair neatly arranged and in a pretty costume, could look nearly as nice as other girls.But if Alex failed me, Charley did not. Charley came in at that moment, and he was in raptures. On his heels came Von Marlo. And as to Von Marlo, he said quite openly that Miss Rachel was a most charmingly pretty young lady.“You shut up!” said Alex. “It isn’t the custom here to praise girls to their faces. Sit down, Von, or go away, but don’t stand there looking like a foolish owl.” Nothing could put Von Marlo out of countenance. He sank down on the nearest chair, hitched up his great, square shoulders, and gazed at me from under his penthouse of inky-black hair.“Very, very nice indeed,” he said. “And where did you get the dress, Miss—Miss Dumps?”I was inclined to be friendly with Von Marlo and with Charley, but I would be quite cold to Alex.Just at that moment Hannah bustled in with the supper. I did think she might have made a little struggle to have something appetising for me to-night; but no, there was the invariable cold mutton bone and potatoes, boiled this time, and not too well boiled at that. There was a dear little dish of something fried, which smelt very good, for father.Then the Professor came in without his glasses. He could never see much without them. He called out to me, as though I had never left the house, “Go and hunt for my spectacles, Dumps.”Away I went, and of course I found them and brought them to him. He put them on his nose, and his eyes fell on Von Marlo.“Is that you, Von Marlo?” he said. “Sit down, my dear fellow, and have some supper.—Alex, help Von Marlo to whatever there is.”He pulled the contents of the hot dish towards himself and began to eat ravenously. There was not even a welcome for me. He had evidently quite forgotten that I had been away. After a time I said, “Father, I have come back.”“Eh?” said the Professor. “By-the-bye, Von Marlo, did you notice the grand passage you and the other fellows were construing this afternoon? There was a fellow in the form inclined to mock at the magnificent words, but that could not have been you.”“Oh no, sir,” replied Von Marlo.“Father, I have come back,” I repeated. “I have come back from Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”“Ah!” he said. The fact that I had come back did not move him, but the words “Miss Grace Donnithorne” seemed to rouse him, for he got up, came straight towards me, and put a hand on my right shoulder and a hand on my left, and drew me towards him.“How is Grace Donnithorne?” he said.“She seems quite well, father.”“Then that is all right.”“Aren’t you glad I am back?” I said.The Professor returned to his seat. “Alex, I shall be obliged to stay up until the small hours. That paper for the Royal Society must be finished to-night. I shall send it to be typed the first thing in the morning. You must get up half-an-hour earlier than usual, and come to my room for copy, and take it to the typewriting office in Chancery Lane.”Not a word about me. I felt a sense of pain at the back of my eyes. What was the good of having a learned Professor for a father when he hardly noticed you? I had been so hoping that my pretty dress would be seen and admired in the home circle.I went to bed that night in my comfortless and hideous room. It was so cold that I could not sleep for some time, and as I pressed and pressed the bedclothes round me I could not help thinking of the jolly life some girls had, and even a few tears rolled down my cheeks. To be very ugly, to be in no way endowed with any special talent, and to have a great father who simply forgot your existence, was not the most enviable lot in all the world for a girl.“If only mother had lived!” I could not help saying to myself.Then in my dreams mother seemed to come to me; she took me in her arms and kissed me and called me her little darling; and when she did this it seemed to me that looks mattered nothing and love mattered everything. I was her child; I was with her; she was all my own.When I went down to breakfast I was surprised to find that the only person in the parlour was father. He was not eating; he was standing on the hearth-rug. His hair was ruffled up, but his face looked calmer than usual. He was evidently in one of those moods in which he could be approached. I had on, of course, my everyday school dress, and I must start almost immediately for school. I went up to him and took one of his long hands.“Father,” I said, “may I ask you something?”He looked down at me with quite a gentle expression.“What is it my little Rachel wants?”“Father, have you got anywhere a picture of my mother?”He dropped my hands as though they hurt him.“You want it?” he said.“I should love to have it.”“You have missed your mother’s care?”“Yes.”“If I—” He stopped.“Why do you stop?” I said. “You are just like Miss Donnithorne. She is always beginning sentences and stopping. But oh! please,”—for he seemed to be going off into one of his Demosthenes or Sophocles monologues—“please, if you have a picture of my mother, give it to me.”For answer he went out of the room. He was gone two or three minutes. When he returned he put a little case into my hand.“You can keep it; it is yours now by every right. I treasured it. Understand that I have not forgotten her; but you can keep it. It is yours by every right.” Before I could reply he had left the room. I heard him bang the door, and I heard Hannah’s step on the stairs. I could not stand the thought of Hannah seeing the little case in my hands. She was the sort of woman who could be devoured by curiosity. This was more than I could bear. I flew to my room and put the dear little case into one of my drawers. I forbore to open it just then. My heart was warm and full of bliss. I possessed it; I would look at it to-night. It should lie in my arms when I slept; I could kiss it in the morning. It was next best to having mother to have a picture of mother. I was happy.A few minutes later I was on my way to school. There I met the Swan girls. They came up to me.“Well, well,” they said, “how are you? How do you like her?”“What do you mean?” I said.“Why, all the world knows that you have been staying with Miss Donnithorne. Do tell us about her. We are dying with curiosity. It is no secret, you know.”“What is no secret?”“Why, that you have been staying there,” said Rita Swan, giving her sister a nudge at the moment.“I don’t want it to be a secret,” I said. “I have had a very happy time. I’ll tell you about her and her nice house later on.”“Oh dear! we are likely to know plenty of her in the near future,” said Agnes. “But there’s the bell; we must go in. Come along, Dumps. Why, to be sure, you do look smartened up! But you will be twice as smart as this in the future.”
I went home on Tuesday evening. I had no more very specially interesting conversations with Miss Donnithorne; but she gave me during the whole of Monday and all Tuesday, until it was time to put me into the train for my return journey, a right royal time. I can speak of it in no other way. I lived for the first time in my whole existence. She managed to open up the world for me. She did not tell me about the dead and gone great people, who to me were very musty and mouldy and impossible; but she talked of living things—of birds and beasts and flowers. She was great on flowers. She said the country was the right place to live in, and the town was a very melancholy abode, and not specially good for any one. But then she added, “It is the lot of some girls and some men and women to live in the town, and when it is they must make the best of it.”
I began to consider her not only a most agreeable woman, but also a very noble woman.
“Now, if you lived in our house, would you make things different?” I said.
“I shall—” she began, and then she stopped.
“Oh yes, Dumps—yes. Your house isn’t at all what it ought to be; it isn’t well ordered.”
“How would you manage things? I wish you would tell me, Miss Donnithorne—I really do—for now I have been with you, and eaten such delicious meals, and been in such a pretty, very clean house, I see the difference.”
“It would be difficult for you to make much change,” she said; “but of course there are always things to be done. Your house wants—”
She paused to consider. There came a frown between her brows.
“Dumps dear,” she said after a pause, “I cannot explain just now. Your house wants—well, I will say it—to be turned topsy-turvy, inside out, round about; to be—to be made as different from what it is now as the sun is different from the moon.”
“If that is the case I needn’t trouble,” I said in a sort of desponding tone, “for Hannah won’t work any harder, and I don’t think I can; and father likes his meals anyhow, and the boys and I—well, I suppose we are poor; I’m sure I don’t know, but there doesn’t seem to be much money. It will feel so strange when I go home.”
“Trust to better times coming,” said Miss Donnithorne. “The house can be altered. I will write to you about it.”
We were sitting by the fire on the last evening when she said this. I turned to her.
“Why don’t you tell me now?”
But she said, “No; it will be best to write. The fact is, I could not tell you now; it will be best to write.”
“What a darling little house this is!” was my next remark. “If only we could have a sweet little house like this to live in in town, how happy I should be!”
“It is a nice house,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll give it up. In fact,” she added, “I have made up my mind not to.”
“Were you thinking of moving?” I asked.
“I have made up my mind that the house shall remain—I mean that I shall keep the house,” was her unintelligible remark; and then she got very red—quite scarlet—all over, and she walked to one of the bookcases, opened it, and took out two volumes ofThe Daisy Chainand two more ofThe Heir of Redclyffe, and flung them into my lap.
“You haven’t read those, have you?” she asked.
“Oh no,” I replied, opening the first volume that came handy, and dipping into its contents.
“I think you will like them,” she said. “Take them back with you; put them into your brown-paper parcel. I mean—” She stopped.
She was a funny woman, after all. Why did she draw herself up each moment? It became almost irritating.
Well, the precious, darling, joyful time came to an end, and I was once more in the train. I was in the train, but on the rack above me there was no longer a brown-paper parcel—a hideous, humiliating brown-paper parcel. On the contrary, there was a neat little trunk in the luggage-van, and the only thing I had with me was my umbrella, which I held in my hand. I was wearing the dark-blue dress with the grey fur, so my hands were warm with my little grey muff, and altogether I was a totally different creature from the girl who had travelled down to Chelmsford on the Saturday before.
Hannah was waiting for me on one of the big platforms at Liverpool Street Station. I was amused at the way she stared at me.
“Sakes!” she cried, “who’s that?”
I went up to her and clapped her on the shoulder.
“It’s I. I am smart, am I not, Hannah?”
“Sakes!” said Hannah again, “I wouldn’t ha’ known you. Here, come along—do. Where in the name of fortune did you get them things from?”
“I’ll tell you presently.”
“And where’s your brown-paper parcel? My word, if it’s lost there’ll be a fuss! I don’t think I dare take you home if the parcel is lost; all your best linen in it, and your night-dress with the frills, and the handkerchiefs, and the stockings, and the dress you went down in, and the new skirt and blouse as the Professor gave you. Wherever be the parcel?”
I felt very dignified and grand. I called a porter.
“My luggage is in the van behind that carriage,” I said—“the van at the end of the train.”
“You ain’t never put a brown-paper parcel in the van, child?” said Hannah, in high dudgeon.
“Oh, come along, Hannah,” I said.
I swept her with me. She was quite neatly dressed, but I saw the cotton-wool sticking in her right ear, and somehow the depression of all that was before me in the ugly house swept over my mind with renewed force. The trunk was small and wonderfully neat. It had my initials, R.G., on it. Hannah gave a snort.
“I suppose the person as togged you up in all that finery give you the trunk as well,” she said.
“You may suppose anything you like, Hannah; the trunk holds my clothes. Ladies cannot go about with brown-paper parcels. Now then!”
The trunk was put on the top of a four-wheeler—nothing would induce Hannah to go in a hansom—and we drove back to the old house belonging to the college. It was dark and dismal, for the dim light of one gas-jet in the hall only made the shadows look the deeper. The parlour, too, was quite hideous to behold. It was more than usually untidy, for there had been no one to put the books in order or keep confusion at bay since Dumps had gone. Not that Dumps was in herself in the very least of the tidy sort, but she was a few shades tidier than the boys, Alex and Charley.
Alex was sitting by the fire with his shoulders hitched up to his ears; he was conning a Latin treatise, muttering the words aloud. I came in, stole softly up to him, and gave him a slap on the back.
“Goodness gracious! who’s that?”
Alex sprang to his feet. He saw a smartly dressed girl. Alex secretly adored girls. He became immediately his most polite self.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I—”
He approached in the direction of the nearest gas-jet in order to turn it up higher. Then he recognised me. He recoiled at once; he was angry with me for misleading him.
“Oh, it’s you, Dumps! What in the name of fortune did you steal in like that for, like a thief in the night, and slap me on the back to make me—”
“Oh, you didn’t know me!” I said, catching his hands and jumping softly up and down. “Don’t I look nice in my new dress? Tell me I look nice—tell me—tell me, Alex!”
But Alex was really angry.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said.
I had counted much on the impression that I should make on Alex with my dress. I thought he would be respectful and treat me as a lady. I thought he would begin to see that even Dumps, with her hair neatly arranged and in a pretty costume, could look nearly as nice as other girls.
But if Alex failed me, Charley did not. Charley came in at that moment, and he was in raptures. On his heels came Von Marlo. And as to Von Marlo, he said quite openly that Miss Rachel was a most charmingly pretty young lady.
“You shut up!” said Alex. “It isn’t the custom here to praise girls to their faces. Sit down, Von, or go away, but don’t stand there looking like a foolish owl.” Nothing could put Von Marlo out of countenance. He sank down on the nearest chair, hitched up his great, square shoulders, and gazed at me from under his penthouse of inky-black hair.
“Very, very nice indeed,” he said. “And where did you get the dress, Miss—Miss Dumps?”
I was inclined to be friendly with Von Marlo and with Charley, but I would be quite cold to Alex.
Just at that moment Hannah bustled in with the supper. I did think she might have made a little struggle to have something appetising for me to-night; but no, there was the invariable cold mutton bone and potatoes, boiled this time, and not too well boiled at that. There was a dear little dish of something fried, which smelt very good, for father.
Then the Professor came in without his glasses. He could never see much without them. He called out to me, as though I had never left the house, “Go and hunt for my spectacles, Dumps.”
Away I went, and of course I found them and brought them to him. He put them on his nose, and his eyes fell on Von Marlo.
“Is that you, Von Marlo?” he said. “Sit down, my dear fellow, and have some supper.—Alex, help Von Marlo to whatever there is.”
He pulled the contents of the hot dish towards himself and began to eat ravenously. There was not even a welcome for me. He had evidently quite forgotten that I had been away. After a time I said, “Father, I have come back.”
“Eh?” said the Professor. “By-the-bye, Von Marlo, did you notice the grand passage you and the other fellows were construing this afternoon? There was a fellow in the form inclined to mock at the magnificent words, but that could not have been you.”
“Oh no, sir,” replied Von Marlo.
“Father, I have come back,” I repeated. “I have come back from Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
“Ah!” he said. The fact that I had come back did not move him, but the words “Miss Grace Donnithorne” seemed to rouse him, for he got up, came straight towards me, and put a hand on my right shoulder and a hand on my left, and drew me towards him.
“How is Grace Donnithorne?” he said.
“She seems quite well, father.”
“Then that is all right.”
“Aren’t you glad I am back?” I said.
The Professor returned to his seat. “Alex, I shall be obliged to stay up until the small hours. That paper for the Royal Society must be finished to-night. I shall send it to be typed the first thing in the morning. You must get up half-an-hour earlier than usual, and come to my room for copy, and take it to the typewriting office in Chancery Lane.”
Not a word about me. I felt a sense of pain at the back of my eyes. What was the good of having a learned Professor for a father when he hardly noticed you? I had been so hoping that my pretty dress would be seen and admired in the home circle.
I went to bed that night in my comfortless and hideous room. It was so cold that I could not sleep for some time, and as I pressed and pressed the bedclothes round me I could not help thinking of the jolly life some girls had, and even a few tears rolled down my cheeks. To be very ugly, to be in no way endowed with any special talent, and to have a great father who simply forgot your existence, was not the most enviable lot in all the world for a girl.
“If only mother had lived!” I could not help saying to myself.
Then in my dreams mother seemed to come to me; she took me in her arms and kissed me and called me her little darling; and when she did this it seemed to me that looks mattered nothing and love mattered everything. I was her child; I was with her; she was all my own.
When I went down to breakfast I was surprised to find that the only person in the parlour was father. He was not eating; he was standing on the hearth-rug. His hair was ruffled up, but his face looked calmer than usual. He was evidently in one of those moods in which he could be approached. I had on, of course, my everyday school dress, and I must start almost immediately for school. I went up to him and took one of his long hands.
“Father,” I said, “may I ask you something?”
He looked down at me with quite a gentle expression.
“What is it my little Rachel wants?”
“Father, have you got anywhere a picture of my mother?”
He dropped my hands as though they hurt him.
“You want it?” he said.
“I should love to have it.”
“You have missed your mother’s care?”
“Yes.”
“If I—” He stopped.
“Why do you stop?” I said. “You are just like Miss Donnithorne. She is always beginning sentences and stopping. But oh! please,”—for he seemed to be going off into one of his Demosthenes or Sophocles monologues—“please, if you have a picture of my mother, give it to me.”
For answer he went out of the room. He was gone two or three minutes. When he returned he put a little case into my hand.
“You can keep it; it is yours now by every right. I treasured it. Understand that I have not forgotten her; but you can keep it. It is yours by every right.” Before I could reply he had left the room. I heard him bang the door, and I heard Hannah’s step on the stairs. I could not stand the thought of Hannah seeing the little case in my hands. She was the sort of woman who could be devoured by curiosity. This was more than I could bear. I flew to my room and put the dear little case into one of my drawers. I forbore to open it just then. My heart was warm and full of bliss. I possessed it; I would look at it to-night. It should lie in my arms when I slept; I could kiss it in the morning. It was next best to having mother to have a picture of mother. I was happy.
A few minutes later I was on my way to school. There I met the Swan girls. They came up to me.
“Well, well,” they said, “how are you? How do you like her?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Why, all the world knows that you have been staying with Miss Donnithorne. Do tell us about her. We are dying with curiosity. It is no secret, you know.”
“What is no secret?”
“Why, that you have been staying there,” said Rita Swan, giving her sister a nudge at the moment.
“I don’t want it to be a secret,” I said. “I have had a very happy time. I’ll tell you about her and her nice house later on.”
“Oh dear! we are likely to know plenty of her in the near future,” said Agnes. “But there’s the bell; we must go in. Come along, Dumps. Why, to be sure, you do look smartened up! But you will be twice as smart as this in the future.”