Princess Sarah And Other Stories Part 19

"I believe Miss Nannie is in the garden," was the reply.

So Rosalind led the maestro out into the garden, where they soon espied Nannie curled up in a big chair, with Yummy in her arms. She did not notice their approach; indeed, she was almost asleep, worn out by the violence of her grief at the coming parting with Yummy, and was lying with her eyes closed, her cheek resting against the dog's satin-smooth head.

Rosalind flung herself down upon her knees before the chair, and took child and dog into her arms.

"My own precious little sister, my unselfish darling," she cried; "as if I would let you part with the dear doggy for my sake! I couldn't, Nannie, my dear, I couldn't--I couldn't part with Yummy myself. But I shall never forget it, Nannie--my dear, unselfish Nannie."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "My own precious little sister, my unselfish darling,"

she cried.]

Nannie looked past her sister towards the tall old painter standing behind her.

"Your lessons," she faltered, with quivering lips.

"My little heroine," said the old painter tenderly, "your sister is my favourite among all my pupils. I would rather," he went on, laying his hand on Rosalind's shoulder--"I would rather teach one real worker such as she is for love, than fifty of the usual kind who come to me. She is just the real worker one might expect with such a sister."

"You will go on teaching Rosalind," Nannie cried in a bewildered way, "for nothing?"

"I will, gladly," the maestro answered; "and, in return, you shall come one day, and bring the pug, and let me paint a picture of you both."

And then the old man went away, leaving the sisters, in the fulness of their joy, together.

For him this had been somewhat of a new experience--a pleasant one.

They were young, and he was old; but he went back to his pictures with a heart fresh and young as it had not been for years, asking of himself a question out of the pages of a favourite poet: "Shall I thank G.o.d for the green summer, and the mild air, and the flowers, and the stars, and all that makes the world so beautiful, and not for the good and beautiful beings I have known in it?"

Our Ada Elizabeth

"The sublime mystery of Providence goes on in silence, and gives no explanation of itself, no answer to our impatient questionings."--_Hyperion_.

CHAPTER I

The d.i.c.ki'sons lived in Blankhampton. Not in the fashionable suburb of Greater Gate, for the d.i.c.ki'sons were not fashionable people--far from it, indeed. Nor yet in that exclusive part which immediately surrounds the cathedral, which Blankhampton folk familiarly call "the Parish."

No; they lived in neither of these, but away on the poorer side of the town and in the narrowest of narrow lanes--so narrow, indeed, that if a cart came along the pa.s.ser-by was glad to get into a doorway, and stand there trembling until the danger was past and the road free again.

I must tell you that, although they were always _called_ the d.i.c.ki'sons, their name was spelt in the usual way, with an "n" in the middle and without an apostrophe; but, as their neighbours made an invariable rule of p.r.o.nouncing the word, as they did themselves, in the way in which I have written it, I will take the liberty of continuing the custom in this story.

For their position, they were rather well-to-do. Mr. d.i.c.ki'son, the father of the family, was a plumber and glazier--not in business for himself, but the foreman of a business of some importance in the town; and Mr. d.i.c.ki'son was a plain man of somewhat reserved disposition.

There were ill-natured and rude persons in that neighbourhood who did not hesitate to describe Mr. d.i.c.ki'son as "a sulky beast"; but then the opinion of such was scarcely worth having, and even they had not a word to say against him beyond a general complaint of his unsociable temper.

They were lively people who lived round about Gardener's Lane. The fathers worked hard all the week, and mostly got frightfully drunk on Sat.u.r.day nights, when they went home and knocked their dirty, slipshod wives about, just by way of letting them know their duty to their lords and masters. And after this sort of thing had subsided, the wives generally gave the children a good cuffing all round, just by way of letting them know that they need not hope to take any liberties with their mothers because of their fathers' little ways; and then they all got quieted down for the night, and got up late on Sunday morning with headaches. If the day was fine, the men sat dull and sodden in the sunshine on the pavement in the wide street out of which Gardener's Lane ran, propping their backs against the wall and stretching their legs out, greatly to the danger and annoyance of pa.s.sers-by; and while the men thus smoked the pipe of peace, the women stood in groups at their doorways, scratching their elbows and comparing their bruises; and the children, who had gone to sleep the previous night in tears and tribulation, found keen enjoyment in watching for the parson and the few people who went to the church round the corner, and called names and uncomplimentary terms after them as they turned in at the gates which led thereto.

Now, as Mr. d.i.c.ki'son was a person of a reserved and taciturn disposition, who was distinctly respectable in all his doings, who never got drunk, and openly despised any one else who did, it will readily be believed that he was not popular in the neighbourhood of Gardener's Lane. He was not anxious to be popular, and had it not been that the house in which he lived was his own, and that it suited his family as a home, Gardener's Lane would not have counted him among its inhabitants.

Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son was a good deal younger than her husband--a pretty, weak, sentimental woman, rather gushing in disposition, and very injudicious.

She was always overwhelmed with troubles and babies; although, as a matter of fact, she had but six children altogether, and one of them died while still an infant. Gerty was twelve years old, and Ada Elizabeth just a year younger; then came a gap of two years ere a boy, William Thomas, was born. William Thomas, if he had lived, would, I fancy, have inherited his father's reserved disposition, for, I must say, a more taciturn babe it has never at any time been my lot to encounter. He was a dreadful trouble to his dissatisfied mother, who felt, and said, that there was something uncanny about a child who objected to nothing--who seemed to know no difference between his own thumb and the bottle which fed him, and would go on sucking as patiently at the one as at the other; who would lie with as much apparent comfort on his face as on his back, and seemed to find no distinction between his mother's arms and a corner of the wide old sofa, which earlier and later babies resented as a personal insult, and made remarks accordingly. However, after six months of this monotonous existence, William Thomas was removed from this lower sphere, pa.s.sing away with the same dignity as he had lived, after which he served a good purpose still, which was to act as a model to all the other babies who resented the corner of the sofa and declined to accept the subst.i.tution of their thumbs, or any other makeshift, for the bottle of their desires.

Two years later was a girl, called Polly, and two years later again was Georgie; and then, for a time, Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son being free from the cares of a baby, fretted and worried that "'ome isn't like 'ome without a baby in it." But when Georgie was just turned three little Miriam arrived, and Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son was able to change her complaint, and tell all her acquaintance that she did think Georgie was going to be the last, and she was sure she was "just wore out."

Most of the children took after their mother. True, as I have already said, William Thomas had given signs of not doing so; but William Thomas had not really lived long enough for any one to speak definitely on the subject. All the rest thrived and grew apace, and they all took after their mother, both in looks and character, with the exception of the second girl, "our Ada Elizabeth."

"The very moral of her father," Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son was accustomed to sigh, as she tried in vain to trim Ada Elizabeth's hat so that the plain little face underneath it should look as bright and fresh as the rosy faces of her sisters. But it was a hopeless task, and Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son had to give it up in despair and with many a long speech full of pity for herself that she, of all people in the world, should have such a hard trial put upon her as a child who was undeniably plain.

For the child was plain. She had been a plain, featureless baby, of uncertain colour, inclining to drab--very much, indeed, what William Thomas was after her. A baby who, even when newly washed, never looked quite clean; a little girl whose pinafore never hung right, and with tow-coloured hair which no amount of hair-oil or curl-papers could make anything but lank and unornamental! A child with a heavy, dull face, and a mouth that seldom relaxed into a smile though there were people (not Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son among them, though) who did not fail to notice that the rare smile was a very sweet one, infinitely sweeter than ever was seen on the four pretty rosy faces of the other children.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A child with a heavy, dull face.]

Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son was eloquent about Ada Elizabeth's looks and temper.

"I'm sure," she cried one day to Gerty, who was pretty, and quick of wit, and knew to a hair's-breadth how far she could go with her mother, "it's 'ard upon me I should have such a plain-looking child as our Ada Elizabeth. It's no use me trying to trim her hat so as to make her look a credit to us. I'm sure it's aggravating, it is. I've trimmed your two hats just alike, and she looks no better in hers than she does in her old school hat, and I got two nice curly tips just alike. 'Pon my word, it's quite thrown away on her."

"And I want another feather in mine to make it perfect, Mother,"

murmured Gerty, with insinuating suggestiveness.

Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son caught at the bait thus held out to her. "I've a good mind to take the tip out," she said hesitatingly.

"Yes, do, Mother; our Ada Elizabeth won't care. Will you, Ada Elizabeth?" appealingly to the child who had had the misfortune to be born plain.

"No, I don't care," returned Ada Elizabeth, whose heart was bursting, not with jealousy, but with a crushing sense of her own shortcomings.

"Just like her father," remarked Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son, loosening the feather from its place with one snip of her scissors. "He never cares 'ow he looks! "Andsome is as 'andsome does,' is his motto; and though he's been a good 'usband to me, and I'd be the last to go again' him, yet I must say I do like a bit of smartness myself. But Ada Elizabeth's the very moral of her father--as much in her ways as she is in her looks."

So gradually it got to be an established custom that Ada Elizabeth's attire should be shorn of those little decorations with which Mrs.

d.i.c.ki'son delighted to add effect to her eldest child's prettiness; it was felt to be quite useless to spend money over curly tips and artificial roses to put above such a plain little face, or "waste" it, as her mother put it, in the not very delicate way in which she tried to excuse herself to the child when some more obvious difference than usual between her clothes and Gerty's was contemplated.

Ada Elizabeth made no complaint. If asked her mind by the officious Gerty, she said she did not care, and the answer was accepted as literal truth by her mother and sister. But Ada Elizabeth did care. She was not jealous, mind--alas! no, poor child--she was only miserable, crushed with an ever-present consciousness of her own deficiencies and shortcomings, with a sense that in having been born plain and in having taken after her father she had done her mother an irreparable injury, had offered her the deepest insult possible! She honestly felt that it was a hard trial to her mother that she should have such a plain and dull child. More than once she made a desperate effort to chatter after Gerty's fashion, but somehow the d.i.c.ki'son family did not appreciate the attempt. Gerty stared at her and sn.i.g.g.e.red, and her mother told her with fretful promptness that she did not know what she was talking about; and poor Ada Elizabeth withdrew into herself, as it were, and became more reserved--"more like her father"--than ever, cherishing no resentment against those who had so mercilessly snubbed her, but only feeling more intensely than ever that she was unlike the rest of the world, and that her fate was to be seen as little as possible and not heard at all.

CHAPTER II

The time had come round for the great annual examination of the National Schools where the young d.i.c.ki'sons received their education, and on the great day itself the children came in at tea-time full to overflowing with the results of their efforts. And Ada Elizabeth was full of it too, but not to overflowing; on the contrary, she crept into the kitchen, where her father and mother and little two-year-old Miriam--commonly called "Mirry"--were already seated at the table, and put her school-bag away in its place with a shamefaced air, as if she, being an ignominious failure, could have no news to bring.

"Well," exclaimed Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son to Gerty, who threw her hat and bag down and wriggled into her seat with her mouth already open to tell her tale, "did you get a prize?"

"No, I didn't, Mother," returned Gerty glibly. "A nasty old crosspatch Miss Simmonds is; she always did hate me, and I think she hates me worse than ever now. Anyway, she didn't give me a prize--just to show her spite, nasty thing!"

Mrs. d.i.c.ki'son always declared that her husband was a slow man; and he looked up slowly then and fixed his dull eyes upon Gerty's flushed face.

"H'm!" he remarked, in a dry tone, and then closed his lips tight and helped himself to another slice of bread and b.u.t.ter.

Gerty's flushed face grew a fine scarlet. She knew only too well what the "h'm" and the dry tone and the tightly-closed lips meant, and made haste to change the subject, or, at least, to turn the interest of the conversation from herself to her sister.