Читать книгу Dumps – A Plain Girl - Meade L. T. - Страница 6

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?”