Dumps – A Plain Girl
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“It is so amusing,” she said.
“What is the matter with you?”
“Oh, to be in the house with them, you know.”
“The house with whom?”
“Why, the Professor and Miss Grace Donnithorne.”
“I don’t see that it is the least remarkable,” I answered.
“But it is – very. And dear old Grace, too – dear old Grace – whom I have known ever since I was a baby. I suppose I am glad, but perhaps I am sorry too; I am really not sure. You see, I have hardly looked at your Professor, but I’ll study him tremendously when tea is ready. Now do come downstairs, Dumps, and don’t look so bewildered. You would be quite nice-looking if your hair was properly arranged. Here, let me arrange it for you. Why should it sag in that hideous way over your forehead? Give me your comb.”
Hermione could be very masterful. She folded back my hair in some marvellous fashion, which made my forehead look much broader, and then she plaited it in two thick plaits which hung down my back. Those plaits kept the front quite tidy and in complete order; and then she brought a little hand-glass and made me look at my reflection behind.
“You look quite a nice girl,” she said. “I grant that you have not the most perfect features in the world, but a great many girls who have better features would give up everything for your hair.”
Yes, my hair was very thick, and it was very bright, and somewhat tawny in shade, and the two plaits were massive and very long, for they hung far below my waist.
“I have such a little screw of hair,” said Hermione, “that I shall be delighted when I am allowed to put it up; but mother won’t hear of it until I am seventeen. She says that, as my hair is so rat’s-taily, I may as well put it up when I am seventeen, but that won’t be for a whole year and three months.”
“Then you are not sixteen yet?”
“No.”
“I am three months younger than you,” I replied, “and I am not a bit anxious to be grown-up; I want to remain a child.”
“Perhaps so; with your sort of figure and your thick hair – it won’t look nearly so well when it is coiled round your head – I am not surprised. Oh, delightful sound! There’s the tinkle of dear Grace’s tea-bell. Now come along down; I do want to store at the Professor.”
We did go down. There was a very cosy tea; it was laid in the pretty parlour. Father sat at one end of the table and Miss Donnithorne at the other, while Hermione occupied the central position at the side near the fire, and I the opposite one. The Professor kept talking all the time. It did not matter in the very least whether he was answered or not. He was explaining the peculiarities of a fossil which he had discovered by the merest chance a month ago. He was telling the exact age which had produced this fossil, and using most unintelligible names. Miss Donnithorne was listening, and now and then putting in a remark, but neither Hermione nor I uttered a word. I began to day-dream. The Professor was just as he always was. He always talked like that – always. He was a little less interesting than usual when he got on fossils; they were his very driest subject. The boys and I knew quite well what subjects he was best on: he was best when he alluded to the great Greek tragedians; occasionally then an ordinary person could get a glimmering of his meaning. I thought I would show those good ladies, Miss Donnithorne and that precious Hermione, that I understood father a little better than they did. So I said after a pause, “Which of the plays of Sophocles do you like best, father?”
It was a very daring remark, and Miss Donnithorne opened her brown, laughing eyes and stared at me as though I had committed sacrilege. Hermione very nearly jumped from her seat. My words had the effect of pulling the Professor up short. He stared at me and said, “Eh, Dumps – eh? What are you talking about, Dumps?”
“Which play of Sophocles do you regard as his greatest?” I said, and I felt very proud of myself as I uttered this remark.
I had now led father into the stream of conversation in which he could show himself off to the best advantage. He took to the bait, forgot the fossils, and began to talk of that other fossil the old Greek tragedian. I leant back in my chair; I had accomplished my object. Father looked as though he were about to fight the whole world in the cause of Sophocles – as though any human being wanted to take any of his laurels from the poor old dead and gone tragedian.
But I was watching my chance. I saw that the ladies were impressed, and by-and-by I swept father once more off his feet into another direction by asking him to explain one of the greatest passages in the works of Milton. Father turned on me almost with fury. Miss Donnithorne muttered something. Hermione said, “Oh, I am so hot with my back to the fire!”
But again father rose to the bait and burst forth in a panegyric on Milton which I suppose a scholar, if he knew shorthand, would have taken down on the spot, for I know it was marvellously clever. But Miss Donnithorne was a little pale when father had finished. Then he and she got up and went into the garden, and walked up and down; and Hermione took my hand and dragged me into the room with the stuffed birds, and flung herself on the sofa and burst into a peal of laughter.
“How rude you are!” I said. “What is the matter?”
“Oh, you are a genius, you greenest of green Dumps!” was her remark. “To think of your daring to oppose that stream of eloquence!”
“Well, you see, I know father, and I know that there are two subjects on which he can be wonderful; one is Sophocles and the other Milton.”
“I never heard of Sophocles,” said Hermione in her calmest tone.
“You never heard of Sophocles?” I said, for the temptation to crow over her was too great to be resisted. “Why, he was the greatest writer of the tragic muse that ever existed.”
“For goodness’ sake, Dumps – ” Hermione pressed her hands to her ears. “If you talk like that I shall fly.”
“I don’t know him,” I said; “and what is more,” I added, “I never mean to. If you had a father like the Professor you’d hate the classics. But after Sophocles,” I continued, “the person he loves best is Milton. I haven’t read Milton, and I don’t mean to.”
“Oh, I suppose I shall have to read him,” said Hermione. “But poor, poor dear Grace! Does he always talk like that, Dumps?”
“He was particularly lucid to-day,” I said. “As a rule he is much more difficult to understand.”
“And do you always have your meals with that sort of stream of learning pouring down you?”
“Oh no; most times he is silent.”
“That must be much better,” said Hermione, with a profound sigh.
“I don’t know; it’s rather dull. We aren’t allowed to talk when the Professor is silent.”
“Bless him! And Grace is such a chatterbox, you know.”
“She is very, very nice,” I said.
Just then the Professor came in.
“Where is Dumps?” he said.
I jumped to my feet.
“Good-bye, child,” he said, holding out his hand limply. Then he drew me to him and pressed a very light kiss on my forehead.
“Glad you are with Grace – Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Hope you are enjoying yourself. I’ll expect you back on the evening of Tuesday. School begins on Wednesday. You mustn’t neglect your books. As glorious Milton says – ”
He rhapsodised for two minutes, then stopped, glanced at Hermione, and said abruptly, “Don’t know this young lady.”
“Oh yes, you do, Professor,” said Miss Donnithorne. “This is my great friend, Miss Hermione Aldyce.”
“My father is a great admirer of yours, sir,” said Hermione, colouring slightly and looking very pretty.
“Eh – eh?” said the Professor. “Don’t like people to admire me. Good-bye, good-bye. – Good-bye, Miss Donnithorne – Grace, I mean – no, Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Good-bye, good-bye!”
He was out of the house and down the path before we had hardly time to breathe. Hermione went away a few minutes afterwards, and Miss Donnithorne and I had the evening to ourselves. We had supper almost in silence. There was a sort of constraint over us. I looked at Miss Donnithorne, and saw that she was very pale. I said to myself, “No wonder, poor thing! She has had some of father’s eloquence dinned into her ears; it is enough to scare any one.”
After a long period of silence, during which I was scraping more and more apple off the core of the baked one I had been eating, and trying to fiddle with my bread and get it to last as long as possible, she said abruptly, “One’s duty is sometimes difficult, is it not, little Rachel?”
“Is it?” I answered. “Yes, I suppose so.”
She looked at me again.
“You are the index-finger which points to the path of duty,” was her next remarkable speech.
This was too much!
“I hate being called an index-finger!” was my answer. “I don’t know what it means.”
She got up, put her arm round me, and kissed me.
“I would be good to you,” she said in her softest voice.
It really was difficult to resist her. She was a very sweet woman. I knew it then by the way she kissed me, and I don’t think in all my life I ever felt anything softer than the soft, soft cheek which was pressed against mine. Had she been a girl of my own age, she could not have had a more delicate complexion.
“You are good to me – you are very good to me,” I said with gratitude.
“I like you and even love you, and I hope you will like me and not misunderstand me.”
“But why should I?” I asked.
“Come into the other room, child,” was her remark.
We went into the room where the stuffed birds were, and Miss Donnithorne sat down and poked up the fire.
Then she said gently, “Does he always talk as much as he did at tea?”
“Who, Miss Donnithorne?”
“Your father, my dear.”
“Not always,” I answered.
She gave a sigh of profound thankfulness.
“But does he at most times?”
“Most times he is silent,” I said, “and we are all silent too. It’s the rule at home for none of us to speak when the Professor is eating. If he likes he speaks, but none of us does.”
“What do you mean by ‘none of us’?”
“The boys and I. We sit very still. It isn’t difficult for me, because I am accustomed to it; but Alex – he sometimes moves his legs, for they are so long. Father is annoyed then. Father suffers from headache.”
“No wonder, with such a brain. His learning is colossal!”
“It is,” I said wearily.
“You admire him very much, don’t you, Dumps?”
“Naturally, because he is my father.” But then I added, “I only wish he wasn’t so learned. I hate learning, you know. I never mean to be learned.”
Miss Donnithorne laughed, and her favourite expression, “Bless the child!” burst from her lips.
Part 1, Chapter VIII
Home Again
I went home on Tuesday evening. I had no more very specially interesting conversations with Miss Donnithorne; but she gave me during the whole of Monday and all Tuesday, until it was time to put me into the train for my return journey, a right royal time. I can speak of it in no other way. I lived for the first time in my whole existence. She managed to open up the world for me. She did not tell me about the dead and gone great people, who to me were very musty and mouldy and impossible; but she talked of living things – of birds and beasts and flowers. She was great on flowers. She said the country was the right place to live in, and the town was a very melancholy abode, and not specially good for any one. But then she added, “It is the lot of some girls and some men and women to live in the town, and when it is they must make the best of it.”
I began to consider her not only a most agreeable woman, but also a very noble woman.
“Now, if you lived in our house, would you make things different?” I said.
“I shall – ” she began, and then she stopped.
“Oh yes, Dumps – yes. Your house isn’t at all what it ought to be; it isn’t well ordered.”
“How would you manage things? I wish you would tell me, Miss Donnithorne – I really do – for now I have been with you, and eaten such delicious meals, and been in such a pretty, very clean house, I see the difference.”
“It would be difficult for you to make much change,” she said; “but of course there are always things to be done. Your house wants – ”
She paused to consider. There came a frown between her brows.
“Dumps dear,” she said after a pause, “I cannot explain just now. Your house wants – well, I will say it – to be turned topsy-turvy, inside out, round about; to be – to be made as different from what it is now as the sun is different from the moon.”
“If that is the case I needn’t trouble,” I said in a sort of desponding tone, “for Hannah won’t work any harder, and I don’t think I can; and father likes his meals anyhow, and the boys and I – well, I suppose we are poor; I’m sure I don’t know, but there doesn’t seem to be much money. It will feel so strange when I go home.”
“Trust to better times coming,” said Miss Donnithorne. “The house can be altered. I will write to you about it.”
We were sitting by the fire on the last evening when she said this. I turned to her.
“Why don’t you tell me now?”
But she said, “No; it will be best to write. The fact is, I could not tell you now; it will be best to write.”
“What a darling little house this is!” was my next remark. “If only we could have a sweet little house like this to live in in town, how happy I should be!”
“It is a nice house,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll give it up. In fact,” she added, “I have made up my mind not to.”
“Were you thinking of moving?” I asked.
“I have made up my mind that the house shall remain – I mean that I shall keep the house,” was her unintelligible remark; and then she got very red – quite scarlet – all over, and she walked to one of the bookcases, opened it, and took out two volumes of The Daisy Chain and two more of The Heir of Redclyffe, and flung them into my lap.
“You haven’t read those, have you?” she asked.
“Oh no,” I replied, opening the first volume that came handy, and dipping into its contents.
“I think you will like them,” she said. “Take them back with you; put them into your brown-paper parcel. I mean – ” She stopped.
She was a funny woman, after all. Why did she draw herself up each moment? It became almost irritating.
Well, the precious, darling, joyful time came to an end, and I was once more in the train. I was in the train, but on the rack above me there was no longer a brown-paper parcel – a hideous, humiliating brown-paper parcel. On the contrary, there was a neat little trunk in the luggage-van, and the only thing I had with me was my umbrella, which I held in my hand. I was wearing the dark-blue dress with the grey fur, so my hands were warm with my little grey muff, and altogether I was a totally different creature from the girl who had travelled down to Chelmsford on the Saturday before.
Hannah was waiting for me on one of the big platforms at Liverpool Street Station. I was amused at the way she stared at me.
“Sakes!” she cried, “who’s that?”
I went up to her and clapped her on the shoulder.
“It’s I. I am smart, am I not, Hannah?”
“Sakes!” said Hannah again, “I wouldn’t ha’ known you. Here, come along – do. Where in the name of fortune did you get them things from?”
“I’ll tell you presently.”
“And where’s your brown-paper parcel? My word, if it’s lost there’ll be a fuss! I don’t think I dare take you home if the parcel is lost; all your best linen in it, and your night-dress with the frills, and the handkerchiefs, and the stockings, and the dress you went down in, and the new skirt and blouse as the Professor gave you. Wherever be the parcel?”
I felt very dignified and grand. I called a porter.
“My luggage is in the van behind that carriage,” I said – “the van at the end of the train.”
“You ain’t never put a brown-paper parcel in the van, child?” said Hannah, in high dudgeon.
“Oh, come along, Hannah,” I said.
I swept her with me. She was quite neatly dressed, but I saw the cotton-wool sticking in her right ear, and somehow the depression of all that was before me in the ugly house swept over my mind with renewed force. The trunk was small and wonderfully neat. It had my initials, R.G., on it. Hannah gave a snort.
“I suppose the person as togged you up in all that finery give you the trunk as well,” she said.
“You may suppose anything you like, Hannah; the trunk holds my clothes. Ladies cannot go about with brown-paper parcels. Now then!”
The trunk was put on the top of a four-wheeler – nothing would induce Hannah to go in a hansom – and we drove back to the old house belonging to the college. It was dark and dismal, for the dim light of one gas-jet in the hall only made the shadows look the deeper. The parlour, too, was quite hideous to behold. It was more than usually untidy, for there had been no one to put the books in order or keep confusion at bay since Dumps had gone. Not that Dumps was in herself in the very least of the tidy sort, but she was a few shades tidier than the boys, Alex and Charley.
Alex was sitting by the fire with his shoulders hitched up to his ears; he was conning a Latin treatise, muttering the words aloud. I came in, stole softly up to him, and gave him a slap on the back.
“Goodness gracious! who’s that?”
Alex sprang to his feet. He saw a smartly dressed girl. Alex secretly adored girls. He became immediately his most polite self.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I – ”
He approached in the direction of the nearest gas-jet in order to turn it up higher. Then he recognised me. He recoiled at once; he was angry with me for misleading him.
“Oh, it’s you, Dumps! What in the name of fortune did you steal in like that for, like a thief in the night, and slap me on the back to make me – ”
“Oh, you didn’t know me!” I said, catching his hands and jumping softly up and down. “Don’t I look nice in my new dress? Tell me I look nice – tell me – tell me, Alex!”
But Alex was really angry.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said.
I had counted much on the impression that I should make on Alex with my dress. I thought he would be respectful and treat me as a lady. I thought he would begin to see that even Dumps, with her hair neatly arranged and in a pretty costume, could look nearly as nice as other girls.
But if Alex failed me, Charley did not. Charley came in at that moment, and he was in raptures. On his heels came Von Marlo. And as to Von Marlo, he said quite openly that Miss Rachel was a most charmingly pretty young lady.
“You shut up!” said Alex. “It isn’t the custom here to praise girls to their faces. Sit down, Von, or go away, but don’t stand there looking like a foolish owl.” Nothing could put Von Marlo out of countenance. He sank down on the nearest chair, hitched up his great, square shoulders, and gazed at me from under his penthouse of inky-black hair.
“Very, very nice indeed,” he said. “And where did you get the dress, Miss – Miss Dumps?”
I was inclined to be friendly with Von Marlo and with Charley, but I would be quite cold to Alex.
Just at that moment Hannah bustled in with the supper. I did think she might have made a little struggle to have something appetising for me to-night; but no, there was the invariable cold mutton bone and potatoes, boiled this time, and not too well boiled at that. There was a dear little dish of something fried, which smelt very good, for father.
Then the Professor came in without his glasses. He could never see much without them. He called out to me, as though I had never left the house, “Go and hunt for my spectacles, Dumps.”
Away I went, and of course I found them and brought them to him. He put them on his nose, and his eyes fell on Von Marlo.
“Is that you, Von Marlo?” he said. “Sit down, my dear fellow, and have some supper. – Alex, help Von Marlo to whatever there is.”
He pulled the contents of the hot dish towards himself and began to eat ravenously. There was not even a welcome for me. He had evidently quite forgotten that I had been away. After a time I said, “Father, I have come back.”
“Eh?” said the Professor. “By-the-bye, Von Marlo, did you notice the grand passage you and the other fellows were construing this afternoon? There was a fellow in the form inclined to mock at the magnificent words, but that could not have been you.”
“Oh no, sir,” replied Von Marlo.
“Father, I have come back,” I repeated. “I have come back from Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
“Ah!” he said. The fact that I had come back did not move him, but the words “Miss Grace Donnithorne” seemed to rouse him, for he got up, came straight towards me, and put a hand on my right shoulder and a hand on my left, and drew me towards him.
“How is Grace Donnithorne?” he said.
“She seems quite well, father.”
“Then that is all right.”
“Aren’t you glad I am back?” I said.
The Professor returned to his seat. “Alex, I shall be obliged to stay up until the small hours. That paper for the Royal Society must be finished to-night. I shall send it to be typed the first thing in the morning. You must get up half-an-hour earlier than usual, and come to my room for copy, and take it to the typewriting office in Chancery Lane.”
Not a word about me. I felt a sense of pain at the back of my eyes. What was the good of having a learned Professor for a father when he hardly noticed you? I had been so hoping that my pretty dress would be seen and admired in the home circle.
I went to bed that night in my comfortless and hideous room. It was so cold that I could not sleep for some time, and as I pressed and pressed the bedclothes round me I could not help thinking of the jolly life some girls had, and even a few tears rolled down my cheeks. To be very ugly, to be in no way endowed with any special talent, and to have a great father who simply forgot your existence, was not the most enviable lot in all the world for a girl.
“If only mother had lived!” I could not help saying to myself.
Then in my dreams mother seemed to come to me; she took me in her arms and kissed me and called me her little darling; and when she did this it seemed to me that looks mattered nothing and love mattered everything. I was her child; I was with her; she was all my own.
When I went down to breakfast I was surprised to find that the only person in the parlour was father. He was not eating; he was standing on the hearth-rug. His hair was ruffled up, but his face looked calmer than usual. He was evidently in one of those moods in which he could be approached. I had on, of course, my everyday school dress, and I must start almost immediately for school. I went up to him and took one of his long hands.
“Father,” I said, “may I ask you something?”
He looked down at me with quite a gentle expression.
“What is it my little Rachel wants?”
“Father, have you got anywhere a picture of my mother?”
He dropped my hands as though they hurt him.
“You want it?” he said.
“I should love to have it.”
“You have missed your mother’s care?”
“Yes.”
“If I – ” He stopped.
“Why do you stop?” I said. “You are just like Miss Donnithorne. She is always beginning sentences and stopping. But oh! please,” – for he seemed to be going off into one of his Demosthenes or Sophocles monologues – “please, if you have a picture of my mother, give it to me.”
For answer he went out of the room. He was gone two or three minutes. When he returned he put a little case into my hand.
“You can keep it; it is yours now by every right. I treasured it. Understand that I have not forgotten her; but you can keep it. It is yours by every right.” Before I could reply he had left the room. I heard him bang the door, and I heard Hannah’s step on the stairs. I could not stand the thought of Hannah seeing the little case in my hands. She was the sort of woman who could be devoured by curiosity. This was more than I could bear. I flew to my room and put the dear little case into one of my drawers. I forbore to open it just then. My heart was warm and full of bliss. I possessed it; I would look at it to-night. It should lie in my arms when I slept; I could kiss it in the morning. It was next best to having mother to have a picture of mother. I was happy.
A few minutes later I was on my way to school. There I met the Swan girls. They came up to me.
“Well, well,” they said, “how are you? How do you like her?”