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I was delighted to be in my little, worn-out, but well-accustomed-to garments, and I ran down to Miss Donnithorne, feeling as though I, like Christian, had got rid of a heavy burden.
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 is the day 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; myself and myself 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.
