Chapter 3 Girls of the True Blue by L. T. Meade
THE FROCK WITH CRAPE
All the lodgers in the house, the landlady, and the servants were extremely kind to Nan that night; but Nan would have none of them. Presently Phoebe was sent to sit in the parlour with her. The lamp, which usually smoked, burned brightly, and there was quite a good fire in the grate—of late it had been a miserable one—and the curtains were drawn, and a clean cloth had been put on the table, and Nan was treated as if she were a princess. Phoebe, too, dressed in her Sunday best, came and sat with her. Phoebe was sixteen years of age; she had left her country home about two months ago, and felt now wonderfully important. She took a sorrowful, keen, and at the same time pleasurable interest in Nan. She put the bowl of bread and milk, which Mrs. Vincent considered the best solace for grief, inside the fender to keep warm, and then she sat on a hard-bottomed chair, very erect, with her hands folded in her lap. For a long time her eyes sought the ground, but then curiosity got the better of her. She began to watch Nan. Nan sat with her back to her. Sophia Maria was lying on the table near. As a rule this battered and disreputable doll was clutched tight in her little mistress’s embrace, but even the doll could not comfort Nan now. Phoebe gave a groan.
“What are you doing that for?” said the child. She raised her eyes; there came a frown between her brows; she looked full at Phoebe.
“I am so sorrowful about you, missy!” replied Phoebe.
There was something in Phoebe’s hearty tone that interested Nan. She hated Mrs. Richmond and Mrs. Vincent when they expressed their grief; even the dear old gentleman, Mr. Pryor, on the first floor was intolerable to her to-night. As to Miss Edgar, the old maid who lived on the second floor, Nan would have fled any distance from her; but there was something about Phoebe’s country tone, and her round face, and the tears which filled her blue eyes which touched Nan in spite of herself.
“I wish you would eat your supper, miss,” was Phoebe’s next remark.
Nan shook her head. After a time she spoke.
“If your mother had just gone to heaven, would you eat a big bowl of bread and milk?”
“Oh, lor’, miss! I don’t know.”
“Has your mother gone to heaven?” was Nan’s next question.
“Indeed and she has not, miss; I would break my heart if she had.”
“Oh!” said Nan.
For the first time tears rose to her eyes. She looked again at Phoebe, then she glanced at the fire, then at the doll.
“Sophia Maria does not comfort me any longer,” she said. “Would it kill you, Phoebe, if your mother went to heaven?”
“I ’spect so, miss. Oh dear, missy! I ’spect so.”
“Then,” said Nan—and the next instant she had tumbled from her seat, had tottered forward, and was clasped in Phoebe’s arms—“let me cry. Don’t say anything to comfort me; I want to cry such a big, big lot. Let me cry, and clasp me tight—very tight—Phoebe.”
So Phoebe did clasp the motherless little girl, and the two mingled their tears. After that affairs moved better. Phoebe herself fed Nan, and then they cuddled up on the sofa, which Phoebe drew in front of the fire. Phoebe found her occupation intensely interesting. She was very, very sorry for Nan, and very comfortable in the thought that her own mother was alive. Nan began to ask her questions, and Phoebe answered.
“Did you ever know a little girl whose mother died ’cept me—did you, Phoebe?”
“Oh yes, miss; there was a girl in our village. It was a more mournful case than yours, miss, for there were two little brothers—they were young as young could be, nothing more than babies—and she was left to mind them, so to speak.”
“That must have been very nice for her. I wish I had two little brothers to mind. And did she mind them, Phoebe? Was she good to them?”
“No, miss; that she warn’t. She were for a bit, but afterwards she took to neglecting of them, and they were sent to an orphan school, and the girl went to service.”
“Oh! she was not a lady,” said Nan in a tone of slight contempt.
“We ’as our feelings even if we ain’t ladies,” was Phoebe’s somewhat sharp retort.
“Dear, dear Phoebe, I know you have; but tell me more about her. What happened just immediately afterwards, before she began to be cross to the little brothers?”
“Well, miss, there was the funeral and the funeral feast.”
“A feast!” interrupted Nan.
“In the country, miss, and amongst us we always take the occasion to have a big and hearty meal; but that ain’t interesting to you.”
“I could not eat—not now that mother is dead.”
“Well, miss, that was in the country; it is different there—grief makes us hungry. And she had her mourning to get.”
“Her mourning! What is that?”
“Black, miss—black from head to foot—and crape. She went into debt for the crape.”
“Did she? What is crape?”
“Something they put on black dresses to make people know that you are mourning for a near relative; and according to the amount of crape you puts on, so is the relation between you and the deceased,” said Phoebe in a very oracular voice.
Nan became intensely interested.
“Then I ought to get a black dress at once,” she said.
“As you will, miss. Mrs. Richmond will see to that.”
“I don’t want Mrs. Richmond to. I would rather get it myself. I have a little money. Don’t you think I could get my own dress?”
“Of course, miss, if you have the money.”
“Are you anything of a dressmaker, Phoebe?”
“Well, miss, I made the dress I am now wearing.”
“And it is awfully nice,” said Nan. “And Sophia Maria ought to wear black too.”
“To be sure, miss.”
“I wish I could get it to-night. But you might go out early in the morning and get the stuff, and we could begin to make it.”
“So we could,” said Phoebe, who wondered much if her mistress would allow her to devote all her time to Nan.
“I know a little bit about dressmaking myself; we could easily make the dress,” continued Nan. “And we need not let any one into the room; I could keep the door locked, and we could both make the dress that I am to wear for my own mother. Phoebe, would it make her happier to know I was putting stitches into a black, black dress with crape on it to wear because of her, because she has gone to God?”
“It would make a wonderful difference,” said Phoebe.
“Would it indeed? Then I will have it very black, and a lot of crape. If I have a lot of crape, would she be glad?”
“If anything could make her more glad than she is now, that would,” said Phoebe; “I know it for a fact.”
“And Sophia Maria would wear crape and a black dress too?”
“Yes, miss.”
After that the two girls talked on until they grew sleepy, and finally Phoebe wrapped her little mistress in a warm blanket, and lay down herself on the rug; and so the first night passed away.
Nan possessed exactly two pounds, which she had saved, sixpence by sixpence. She broke into her little savings-bank now and gave the money to Phoebe, who went out at an early hour and purchased coarse cashmere and the poorest crape she could get, and brought the materials to Nan.
They kept the parlour door locked, and sewed and sewed. Nan was interested, and although her tears often dropped upon the black stuff, yet, when Phoebe assured her that her mother was growing happier each moment at the thought of the very deep mourning her little daughter was to wear, she cheered up.
“You are quite, quite certain you are telling me the truth, Phoebe?” said Nan at last.
“Certain sure, miss. Didn’t I live through it all when poor Susan Fagan lost her mother? This is a dress for all the world the same as Susan appeared in at the funeral.”
After two or three days’ hard work the dress was finished. It was certainly not stylish to look at. Then there came an awful time when carriages drove up to the house, and all that was left of poor Mrs. Esterleigh was borne away to her long home. Nan could never afterwards quite recall that dreadful day. Mrs. Richmond arrived early. She had borne with Nan’s wish to stay locked into the parlour with what patience she could; but on the day of the funeral she insisted on the door being opened, and when Nan appeared before her in her lugubrious dress, badly made, with no fit whatever, the good woman gave a shocked exclamation.
“My dear child,” she said, “I have got a suitable dress for you. I found a frock of yours upstairs and had it measured. Take off that awful thing.”
“This awful thing!” said Nan. “I bought it with my own money. I won’t wear anything—anything else. And Sophia Maria is in mourning too,” she added; and she pointed to her doll, which was attired in crape from head to foot.
“Let her wear it,” said a voice behind her; and raising her eyes, Nan saw the kindly face of Mr. Pryor looking at her.
He had always been a strange sort of character, and it seemed now that in one glance he understood the child; he held out his hand and drew her towards him.
“You bought this out of your own money?” he asked,
“Yes,” answered Nan.
Tears trembled on her eyelashes; she raised her eyes and looked full at Mr. Pryor.
“And there is a lot of crape,” she said. “Everybody must know that she was a very near relation.”
“And you made it yourself?”
“Phoebe and I made it ourselves; and Maria is in black too.” She touched the doll with her finger.
“Then you shall go to the funeral in that dress,” said Mr. Pryor. “I take it upon me to say that your mother would wish it, and that is enough.”
So Nan attended her mother’s funeral in the dress she had made herself, and stood close to the grave, and tried vaguely to realise what was taking place. But what chiefly impressed her was the depth of the shabby crape on her little skirt, and the fact that she had bought her mourning out of her very own savings, and that the doll, Sophia Maria, from whom she would not be parted for a single moment, was also in mourning.