Ten Girls from Dickens Part 13

"I don't know about that," Miss Wren retorted; "but you'd better by half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it."

"Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy Body, we should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad thing!"

"Do you mean," returned the little creature with a flush suffusing her face, "bad for your backs and your legs?"

"No, no," said the visitor, shocked at the thought of trifling with her infirmity. "Bad for business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over with the dolls' dressmakers.

"There's something in that," replied Miss Wren, "you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes!" Then, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her, she said in a changed tone: "Talking of ideas, my Lizzie, I wonder how it happens that when I am working here all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers. This is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers; I smell rose-leaves till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor; I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand--so--and expect to make them rustle; I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen very few flowers indeed in my life."

"Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!" said her friend with a glance toward their visitor, as if she would have asked him whether they were given the child in compensation for her losses.

"So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!"

cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, "How they sing!"

There was something in the face and action for the moment quite inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.

"I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell better than other flowers. For when I was a little child," in a tone as though it were ages ago, "the children that I used to see early in the morning were very different from any others I ever saw. They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbors; they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises; and they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses, and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down in long, bright, slanting rows, and say all together, 'Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!' When I told them who it was, they answered, 'Come and play with us!' When I said 'I never play! I can't play,' they swept about me and took me up, and made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me down, and said all together, 'Have patience, and we will come again.' Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off, 'Who is this in pain!

Who is this in pain!' And I used to cry out, 'Oh my blessed children, it's poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me light!'"

By degrees as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised, the last ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful again.

Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face, she looked round and recalled herself.

"What poor fun you think me, don't you," she said to the visitor. "You may well look tired of me. But it's Sat.u.r.day night, and I won't detain you."

"That is to say, Miss Wren," observed the visitor, rather weary of the person of the house, and quite ready to profit by her hint, "you wish me to go?"

"Well, it's Sat.u.r.day night," she returned, "and my child's coming home.

And my child is a troublesome, bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn't see my child."

"A doll?" said the visitor, not understanding, and looking for an explanation.

But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, "_Her father_,"

he took his leave immediately, and presently the weak and shambling figure of the child's father stumbled in, to be expostulated with, and scolded, and treated as the person of the house always treated him, when he came home in such a pitiable condition.

While they ate their supper, Lizzie tried to bring the child round again to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The dolls'

dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew, of the world, worldly; of the earth, earthy.

Poor dolls' dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance! Poor, poor little dolls' dressmaker.

One of Miss Jenny's firmest friends was an aged Jew, Mr. Riah, by name; of venerable aspect, and a generous and n.o.ble nature. He was supposedly the head of the firm of Pubsey and Co., at Saint-Mary-Axe, but really only the agent of one Mr. Fledgeby, a miserly young dandy who directed all the aged Jew's transactions, and forced him into sharp, unfair dealings with those whom Mr. Riah himself would gladly have befriended; shielding his own meanness and dishonesty behind the venerable figure of the Jew, and keeping his own connection with the firm a profound secret.

Mr. Riah suffered himself to remain in such a position only because once when he had had sickness and misfortune, and owed Mr. Fledgeby's father both princ.i.p.al and interest, the son inheriting, had been merciful and placed him there; and little did the guileless old man realize that he had long since, richly repaid the debt; his age and serene respectability, added to the characteristics ascribed to his race, making a valuable screen to hide his employer's misdeeds.

The aged Jew often befriended the dolls' dressmaker, and she called him, in her fanciful way, "G.o.dmother."

On his roof-top garden, Jenny Wren and her friend Lizzie were sitting one day, together, when Mr. Fledgeby came up and joined the party, interrupting their conversation. For the girls, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack, over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book, while a basket of common fruit, and another basket of strings of beads and tinsel sc.r.a.ps were lying near.

"This, sir," explained the old Jew, "is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the master, Jenny."

"Dolls; that's all," said Jenny shortly. "Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists."

"I made acquaintance with my guests, sir," pursued the old Jew, with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, "through their coming here to buy our damage and waste for Miss Jenny's millinery. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball-dresses, and even (so she tells me) are presented at court with it."

"Ah!" said Fledgeby, "she's been buying that basketful to-day, I suppose."

"I suppose she has," Miss Jenny interposed, "and paying for it too, most likely," adding, "we are thankful to come up here for rest, sir; for the quiet and the air, and because it's so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky, from which the wind comes, and, you feel as if you were dead."

"How do you feel when you are dead?" asked the practical Mr. Fledgeby, much perplexed.

"Oh so tranquil!" cried the little creature smiling. "Oh so peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people, who are alive, crying and working and calling to one another in the close dark streets and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange, good, sorrowful happiness comes upon you!"

Her eyes fell upon the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked on.

"Why, it was only just now," said the little creature, pointing at him, "that I fancied I saw him come out of his grave! He toiled out at that low door, so bent and worn, and then he took his breath, and stood upright and looked all around him at the sky, and the wind blew upon him, and his life down in the dark was over!--Till he was called back to life," she added, looking round at Fledgeby with that lower look of sharpness, "Why did you call him back? But you are not dead, you know,"

said Jenny Wren. "Get down to life!"

Mr. Fledgeby seemed to think it a rather good suggestion, and with a nod turned round and took his leave. As Mr. Riah followed him down the stairs, the little creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone, "Don't be gone long. Come back and be dead!" And still as they went down, they heard the little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half singing, "Come back and be dead. Come back and be dead!" And as the old man again mounted, the call or song began to sound in his ears again, and looking above, he saw the face of the little creature looking down out of the glory of her long, bright, radiant hair, and musically repeating to him like a vision:

"Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!"

Not long after this, there came a heavy trial to the dolls' dressmaker in the loss from her home of her friend and lodger, Lizzie Hexam.

Lizzie, having disagreed with her brother upon a subject of vital interest to herself, and having an intense desire to escape from persons whom she knew would pursue her so long as she remained in London, felt it wisest to quietly disappear from the city, leaving no trace of her whereabouts. With the help of Mr. Riah she accomplished this, and found occupation in a paper-mill in the country, leaving poor Jenny Wren with only the slight consolation of her letters, and with the aged Jew for her sole counsellor and friend. He was frequently with Jenny Wren, often escorting her upon her necessary trips, in returning her fine ladies to their homes in various parts of the city, and sometimes the little creature accompanied him upon his own business trips, as well.

One foggy evening as usual, he set out for Church Street, and, wading through the fog, waded to the doorstep of the dolls' dressmaker.

Miss Wren expected him. He could see her through the window, by the light of her low fire--carefully banked up with damp cinders, that it might last the longer, and waste the less when she went out--sitting waiting for him, in her bonnet. His tap at the gla.s.s roused her from the musing solitude in which she sat, and she opened the door, aiding her steps with a little crutch-stick.

"Good evening, G.o.dmother!" said Miss Jenny Wren.

The old man laughed, and gave her his arm to lean on. "Won't you come in and warm yourself, G.o.dmother?" she asked.

"Not if you are ready, Cinderella, my dear."

"Well!" exclaimed Miss Wren, delighted. "Now you ARE a clever old boy!

If we only gave prizes at this establishment you should have the first silver medal for taking me up so quick." As she spake thus, Miss Wren removed the key of the house-door from the keyhole, and put it in her pocket. Satisfied that her dwelling was safe, she drew one hand through the old man's arm, and prepared to ply her crutch-stick with the other.

But the key was of such gigantic proportions that before they started, Riah proposed to carry it.

"No, no, no! I'll carry it myself," returned Miss Wren. "I'm awfully lop-sided, you know, and stowed down in my pocket, it'll trim the ship.

To let you into a secret, G.o.dmother, I wear my pocket on my high side o' purpose."

With that they began their plodding through the fog.

"Yes, it was truly sharp of you, G.o.dmother," returned Miss Wren, with great approbation, "to understand me. But, you see, you _are_ so like the fairy G.o.dmother in the bright little books! You look so unlike the rest of the people, and so much as if you had changed yourself into that shape, just this moment, with some benevolent object. Bah!" cried Miss Jenny, putting her face close to the old man's, "I can see your features, G.o.dmother, behind the beard."

"Does the fancy go to my changing other objects, too, Jenny?"

"Ah! That it does! If you'd only borrow my stick, and tap this piece of pavement, it would start up a coach and six. I say,--Let's believe so!"

"With all my heart," replied the good old man.