Kitabı oku: «Dumps – A Plain Girl», sayfa 11
Part 2, Chapter III
Christmas in the Country
After all, Christmas Eve was jolly. You may cherish a feud against the most innocent and good-natured person in the world with all your might and main; but unless you are specially wicked you cannot bring it into prominence when every one else around you is in the best of good spirits.
It was altogether a very merry party which started off by train from Liverpool Street en route for Hedgerow House. We seemed to have left cares of every sort behind us. The boys were absolutely unruly in their mirth. As to father, he elected to go in a smoking carriage. This was a very keen disappointment to Augusta. I saw her start from her seat as though she would accompany him; but not being invited – indeed, the Professor did not even see her – she sank back again and solaced herself by eating chocolates and reading a German book the whole way down.
“Don’t you ever want to watch the scenery?” said Von Marlo in his slow Dutch fashion.
“Yes, when it is worth looking at,” she responded. She glanced at him. “You are a foreigner?”
“Yes, a Dutchman.”
“I don’t approve of Dutchmen.”
She lapsed back into her German. Von Marlo thought it well to change his seat. He came nearer to me.
Oh, I forgot to say that Hannah was also of the party. Now, she had not wished to come; she had objected very strongly; but my step-mother, there was no doubt, was beginning to win Hannah over. Hannah came to my room that very morning when I was dressing to go, and said, “Miss Dumps, I do hope you won’t take it amiss, but – ”
“Why, what is it, Hannah?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going too.”
“I’m very glad,” I said.
“’Tain’t that I like her a bit better than I did,” said Hannah – “not a bit. She’s a step-mother, and what’s a step-mother but a sort of person who is in league against the children of the first wife? I’ve sworn to be a friend to the first wife’s children. Didn’t the poor lady come to visit me in a dream the very night I heard of your pa’s marriage, and didn’t I promise that I’d never leave you? And didn’t she come again last night in another dream and tell me to go down to Hedgerow House – not for my own enjoyment, but to be close to you, Miss Dumps, and the two dear boys? So I’m going. Those new servants can look after this place. ’Tain’t what it was.”
“Indeed it isn’t, Hannah. I am very glad you are going with us. And to be honest, Hannah, isn’t it now, frankly, very much nicer than it was?”
“Not to my way of thinking,” said Hannah. “The house now is at that work what I ’ates.”
“The house?” I said. “What is the poor house doing?”
“Pushing out old memories; that’s what this ’ere house is busy over. Every room that gets decked up new is pushing out the old memories – the memories of the time when that poor, dear shadow walked from room to room trying to get a glimpse of sunshine. She’ll soon be gone, poor dear! That’s what I call the behaviour of the house, so don’t ask me if I like it better, for I don’t, and that’s flat.”
Had I been at all wise I should have talked sensibly to Hannah; but in my heart of hearts, although knowing that she spoke the most absolute nonsense, I could not help partly agreeing with her.
The very last thing I did before leaving was to take mother’s miniature and stuff it into the bottom of the little old horse-hair trunk which had been unearthed from a distant garret for me. Nothing would induce me to take my step-mother’s new trunk on this special journey. I was not too well dressed, either, for I could not possibly buy the smart, warm costume which my step-mother had set her heart on, and up to the present I had given her no reason for this. But then I had endless ribbons – sky-blue, pink, mauve, even green; and I had quantities of chiffon bows and chiffon ties, and good gloves and good stockings, and lovely handkerchiefs. I felt that I would pass muster, and turned a deaf ear when Mrs Grant came somewhat anxiously to my room to know if I did not want a corner of her trunk for some of my prettiest dresses. I told her that the horse-hair trunk held all I required, and she went away.
Well, at last we got off, and we were in the train. Good-bye, dull care! This was Christmas-time – the time of presents, of fun and hilarity. I had taken good care to bring all my Christmas-boxes with me.
When we arrived at Chelmsford Station there was a great wagonette waiting for us, drawn by a pair of brown horses. My step-mother immediately took the reins. We all scrambled in; father was huddled in one corner occupied with his Greek Testament. When he had nothing else to do he always read his Greek Testament.
Augusta pushed herself into the seat exactly opposite to him; she bent forward and stared fixedly into his face; but he never once looked at her. I am certain he did not see her. Occasionally she said “Oh!” in quite an audible tone. I felt that Augusta would be quite enough to keep any one from perfect bliss if she went on in such an idiotic fashion.
“What is she doing?” whispered Charley to me.
“Oh, let her alone,” I said; “she is worshipping him.”
“Worshipping him?” he cried.
“Yes; don’t you know?”
“I’ll prick her with a pin,” he said.
“Oh, you mustn’t – you really mustn’t! Do let her alone, poor thing! You see, she sees a kind of glory round father which we don’t.”
“My word, I should think not!” said Charley. “Poor, dear old Professor! Of course, he’s a jolly old dad and all that sort of thing, but – ” Charley gave a low whistle.
Augusta’s voice was now heard.
“You were reading that passage aloud; I heard it,” she said. “Would you greatly mind raising your voice a little?”
The Professor lowered his book.
“Eh?” he said.
Then he dropped his glasses. They were pince-nez, and as he dropped them one of the glasses fell out. The wagonette had to be stopped, and we had all to search for the missing glass; and so Augusta’s question was never answered, for when the glass was found it was slipped into its case, and father readjusted his pince-nez on his nose, and went on reading as though nothing had happened.
Augusta looked round at me.
“It would have been such a valuable help,” she said, “and so very little extra exertion to him.”
“Oh, don’t talk to him while he’s reading,” I said. “I’ll get you a chance if you’re good; but do just make an effort to keep your feelings to yourself.”
We had now reached the house, and we all tumbled out of the wagonette. I do think there is no other way of describing the manner in which we left that vehicle. Mrs Grant immediately assumed the manners of hostess. She gave directions to the groom who had brought the carriage, flung him the reins, and then spoke to a man who was waiting. This man disposed of what luggage had been brought in the carriage; the rest was to follow in a cart. Then we entered the house.
Its smallness, its bewitching appearance, the little drawing-room with the stuffed birds and stuffed animals, the dear little dining-room, the pretty bedrooms upstairs, were invaded as though by a horde of ants. Nancy was curtsying and bobbing at the hall door. She welcomed me as though I were a very dear friend, and personally took me up herself to the identical room where I had slept before. It was just as sweet and fresh and fragrant, and the brightest of fires burned in the grate; but there was an extra bed in one corner, which in itself was disconcerting.
Then Augusta appeared and flung down an ugly leather valise, which she had brought her clothes in, on the snowy white counterpane, and said, with a sigh, “Oh, wonderful – wonderful! Marvellous beyond words to express! I am here! I am here!”
“Augusta,” I said stoutly, “if you go on in that fashion you’ll be a raving lunatic before Christmas Day is over. Now pull yourself together and be sensible. You’ll never get father to talk to you if you keep on staring at him and interrupting him. We are going to have a jolly time, and to forget heroics and ‘high strikes’ and all the rest. Oh, there’s the luncheon-bell, and I’m ever so hungry!”
That was a very happy evening notwithstanding the fact that the Miss Grace Donnithorne of less than a couple of months ago was now Mrs Grant and our step-mother. In her own house, surrounded by her own things, she was more difficult than ever to resist. Indeed, I think no one tried to do so, for she was the very soul of tact, and managed to make us all feel that we were her guests, and as guests ought to be particularly nice. Alex said to me, “She is quite charming! She is good! She is a dear! I’m beginning to love her. I don’t care what you say to the contrary.”
“I like her for herself,” I said.
“Then for goodness’ sake prove it, Dumps, and don’t wear that horridly starched, proper face. It’s enough to drive any one cracked even to look at you. You were always plain, but now that you are both plain and affected, you will be too offensive to live with before long.”
“Thank you,” I answered. “I never did come to my family for compliments, and I certainly am not getting them.”
“You won’t get them from me, or from Charley, or from Von Marlo while you behave like that. Why, I declare I’d rather be that poor, demented Augusta Moore than go on as you are doing.”
“But what am I doing?” I asked. “What do you mean? I’m doing nothing.”
“Nothing, Dumps? Be truthful with yourself. Try and get over that horrid feeling, and let us be really happy this Christmas.”
“But there was our mother – ”
“She wasn’t with us last Christmas, was she?”
“She was in spirit.”
“Well, if she was with us in spirit last Christmas – when we were so jolly miserable, and I had that bad influenza, and Charley sprained his foot, and we had hardly any Christmas dinner and no Christmas-boxes at all except the things we managed to make with the old carpenter’s tools, and when father forgot to come home till the evening, and you began to cry and said that he had been run over by an omnibus – if mother was with us in spirit when we were all really wretched, don’t you think she will be twenty times more in spirit with us now when we are all jolly and good and good-humoured? If our mother is an angel in heaven – and I suppose you believe she is – she must be blessing that sweet woman Grace Donnithorne, as you used to call her, every moment of the time. Oh, there! I needn’t say any more. I’ll let Von Marlo have a talk with you.”
“But he sha’n’t – I won’t be talked to,” I said.
I rushed away up to my own room. In spite of myself, my feelings were arrested by Alex’s words. For a moment I knelt down and said to God, “Please let me feel kindly towards my step-mother; please let me have a really nice Christmas Day.”
After that it was wonderful how my spirits were soothed and how much happier I felt. Christmas Eve ended in fun and games and all sorts of preparations for the merriest Christmas which was to follow, and we all went to bed in high good-humour.
Part 2, Chapter IV
Christmas Day
My presents were much appreciated, although it is true that father looked somewhat dubiously at his inkpot. He asked me how it was opened. I described the exact method by which he was to press the spring, and he remarked then that it would take time.
“But,” I said, “you see there is a kind of sponge with a leather cover to it, which presses down into the bottle and prevents every scrap of air from getting in, so that the ink keeps much longer.”
“Yes; but the period it takes from one’s existence!” remarked father. Then he glanced at me. “Never mind,” he said; “you meant well. I am always willing to admit it when any one means well.”
Now, I had actually spent a pound of my money on this inkstand of father’s – one-tenth of my quarter’s allowance – and all the praise I got was that I meant well.
Von Marlo came up to me and said, “It is a most wonderful and cleverly constructed inkstand. I tell you what – whenever I come over to your house I’ll see that it’s dusted and kept in order. I’ll look after it myself. I think it’s quite lovely.”
I had given Von Marlo a nice little tablet for notes, which he professed to be delighted with; and I had given my step-mother a new sort of diary with a lock and key. There was no one whom I had forgotten. Even Augusta was in raptures with the very driest book on mathematics that I could pick up. She said that for once she believed I was a thoroughly sensible girl.
Then there were the gifts from the others to me. My step-mother gave me a lovely little narrow gold chain with a locket attached to it; and father, for the first time since I could remember, gave me a present simply as a present. It consisted of a row of very curious, sweet-scented beads, which were mounted now in gold, and could be worn either as a necklace or as a bracelet.
“But you have had these for ages,” I said.
“Yes; but my wife thought that they could be set very prettily for you,” he said.
I was delighted, and thanked him heartily. I had often coveted those blue beads, for they were a wonderful greenish blue, and in some lights looked quite opalescent.
The boys, too, gave me things very suitable and very useful. No one had forgotten me. Even Augusta gave me a pin-cushion stuck full of pins that I scratched myself with the first thing. That was very likely, for she had put them in so badly that several stuck out underneath, and I had inflicted a wound before I was aware of this fact.
But the presents, after all, were nothing compared to the festive air which pervaded the place.
We went to church, and we knelt before God’s altar, and joined in the great and glorious Festival of Divine Love.
After church we were all to go to the Aldyces’ for dinner. This invitation had been vouchsafed to us on the occasion of my father’s marriage, and Mrs Grant said that it was quite impossible not to accept it.
“You will like Hermione,” I said to Augusta. I thought she would. I thought Hermione’s precise ways would rather please Augusta. The carriage, however, did not meet us at the church, for it was arranged that we were to go home first and have lunch at Hedgerow House, and then were to walk in a body the two miles which separated us from The Grange, Squire Aldyce’s beautiful old residence.
We went there in high spirits. Everything was joyful that day. Here more and more presents awaited us. Really it was marvellous. Alex managed to whisper to me, “Have you no eye for contrasts?”
“Contrasts?” I asked, turning round and giving him a flashing glance.
“Between this Christmas and last,” he said.
I felt annoyed. I had been trying so very hard to keep in the best of humours – to be good, if I, poor naughty Dumps, could really and truly be good – and now the spirit of naughtiness was once more awakened. Oh, of course, this was a glorious time, and I ought to be delighted; but the ache had returned to my heart, the longing to be in my own little room looking at my mother’s miniature, the wish for the old desolation when she, as I said to myself, had been honoured and her memory respected.
I stood in a brown study for a minute or two, and as I stood thus Hermione came up to me and asked me if I would not like to go away with her to her room. I was very glad of the reprieve. She took my hand and we ran upstairs. When we found ourselves in her pretty room she made me sit down in the cosiest chair she could find, poked the fire, and squatted herself on the hearth-rug. She wore a lovely dress of very pale Liberty green silk, and looked, with her aristocratic small face and beautiful hair, like a picture.
“Well, Dumps,” she said, “and so you have solved the mystery?”
“You knew it at that time?” I said.
“Knew it? Of course I did! It was the greatest amazement to me when Miss Donnithorne said, ‘You are not to tell her; her father doesn’t wish it to be known.’”
“Then she did not want to have it kept a secret?”
“She?” said Hermione. “Poor darling! it was her greatest desire to tell you – in fact, she had quite made up her mind to do so – but she received a most urgent letter from your father saying that he would infinitely prefer none of you to know until after the ceremony. You mustn’t blame her.”
“I think it was exceedingly wrong to deceive me,” I said.
“It was not her fault; you must not blame her.”
I was silent. On the whole, my step-mother’s conduct could not seem quite so black if she herself had been forced to act as she did. Nevertheless, I felt uncomfortable.
Hermione glanced at me.
“You look very much better,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Not that you are dressed so wonderfully well – of course, I shouldn’t dream of making any comments with regard to your dress; but then you were quite exquisitely attired the last time you came here. Mother said she had never seen anything so chic in all her life as that little dark-blue costume with the grey fur; and it suited you so well.”
I was wearing one of my summer dresses which my step-mother had altered for me shortly after she came to us. It was made of pale-blue crepon, which had been rather ugly, but she had put on a beautiful lace tucker, and had arranged the skirt so that my growing length of limb was not so discernible.
“It isn’t your dress,” continued Hermione – “never mind about it – nobody cares what any one else wears on Christmas Day – but it is your face.”
“And what about that?” I said.
“You are so much better-looking.”
I felt myself flushing.
“I wish you wouldn’t laugh at me, Hermione. It isn’t kind. I can’t help being plain.”
“No,” said Hermione, putting her head a little on one side. “Nothing will ever give you remarkably good eyes, or much of a nose, or anything special of a mouth; but you have got a complexion now, and your cheeks have filled out.”
“Oh, I was always fat,” I said.
“Well, but they look different,” she said; “I can’t tell why.”
I knew, but I would not enlighten her. I knew that it was the excellent food that I now had, and the warm rooms to live in, and the good influence of a comfortable home. I was not going to betray myself, however.
“You must be having a jolly time,” said Hermione. “Oh! if anything were to give me a step-mother, I should pine and long for a sort of Grace Donnithorne.”
“She is a dear,” I said.
Hermione looked at me very gravely.
“Dumps,” she said, “you don’t like her in your heart.”
“Hermione, how dare you say it?”
“You know you don’t. The moment I saw you I was certain of it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t read people like that,” I said.
“I saw it, and I was sorry; for the fact is, you have only known Grace for a little – a very little – time.”
“For two months,” I said.
“And I have known her ever since I have known anybody at all.”
“Then, of course, it is natural that you should be fond of her.”
“Not at all. There are other people I have known, so to speak, from my birth. There is old Mr Chatterton, and there is Mrs Frazer. Now, I detest fussy Mrs Frazer, and I run away a mile from Mr Chatterton. It isn’t the time I have known Grace, but because she is what she is.”
“Well, I suppose,” I said, “you are going to give me a lecture about her?”
“No, I am not; but I am simply going to say this – that you are in rare luck to have got the most amiable woman in the whole of Essex to be your step-mother. And then, Dumps dear, she is so jolly rich! She can give you all sorts of comforts. And what is more, she is awfully fond of you; she said so.”
“Fond of me? She couldn’t be!”
“She is, poor darling! She said so in such a loving and sad way just now. I know why she is sad; it is because you won’t return her love.”
“Never mind,” I said, jumping to my feet. I went over to the window and looked out.
“Hermione,” I said, “let us talk of something else.”
“Of course. For instance, how will you like your new school?”
“What new school?”
I sprang towards her; I took her by her shoulders; I turned her round.
“Oh! have I let the cat out of the bag?” said Hermione. “Didn’t you know you were going?”
“There!” I said; “and yet you tell me to like her. Has she been planning this?”
“It is awfully wrong of me to speak of it; but I thought, of course, you knew.”
“But I don’t want to go.”
“Oh, won’t you, though? Now look here, Dumps. You mustn’t make a fuss; you must be patient; you must – you really must – for I am going with you. It’s to a jolly, jolly school in Paris. We’ll have a nice time – I know we shall.”
“Paris?” I said.
Now, what London girl doesn’t own to a secret hankering for Paris – Paris the gay, the fascinating, the beautiful? Nevertheless, after my first shock of pleasure I was very wary. I said after a pause, “Perhaps you had better not say any more.”
“No, I won’t, as you didn’t know. It’s very odd; you’ll be told probably to-morrow.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
There came a knock at the door. Hermione said, “Come in;” and Augusta intruded her face.
“It seems a great pity you should be here,” she said. “I thought I’d tell you.”
“Come in, Miss Moore; make yourself at home,” said Hermione.
“Thank you so much,” said Augusta, “but I couldn’t come in.”
“And why not?” asked Hermione.
“Because he is talking – he is lecturing downstairs. We are all listening. – I thought it would be such a frightful deprivation for you, Dumps, not to hear him. I rushed upstairs; he was blowing his nose – I think he has a cold. I must go back at once. Do come down, if you don’t want to miss it. It’s about the time of Herodotus; it’s most fascinating – fascinating!” She banged the door after her and rushed away.
“Is that poor girl mad?” said Hermione slowly.
“I think so,” I answered. “She has conceived a violent worshipping attachment to father. She thinks he is the soul of genius.”
“Well, he is, you know. You, as his daughter, can really hold a most distinguished position; and now that you have got such a step-mother as Miss Donnithorne, and you yourself are to be sent to – oh, I forgot, that subject is taboo. Well, never mind; when you come out you will have quite a good time, Dumps, I can tell you. Your step-mother means to do the right thing both by you and the boys. You will have a splendid time, so just do cheer up and be thankful for the blessings which Providence has showered upon your head.”
