Part I Chapter 2 Dumps — A Plain Girl by L. T. Meade
The Poached Egg
I returned to the boys and to my school friends.
“Father is awake,” I said, “and he complains of the noise we are making.”
“Noise?” cried Alex. “Why, we are as mum as mice!”
“People must breathe, you know,” said Agnes in what I considered a very impertinent way.
I stared at her. She had no right to speak like that of my father, the great Professor Grant; for my father was a member of the Royal Society, no less, and you can imagine that to hear such talk from a silly little girl like Agnes Swan was, to say the least of it, disagreeable. So I drew myself up; but then I caught Von Marlo’s eyes, and I felt soothed, for he seemed to understand.
“If the Professor wishes it,” he said, “we will, of course, hardly speak at all.—It might be best,” he added, turning to Alex, “if we all went away. What do you think?”
“Please yourself, Von,” said Alex, speaking in a very patronising way, and flinging himself back in a deep chair. “Squibs and Charley and I stay; and as you are the quietest of the party, and inclined to patronise Dumps, I don’t see why you should go.”
Von Marlo came straight up to me and said:
“Can I do anything for you? They say I patronise you, but that is not true. I don’t exactly know what they mean by patronise, but I will do all I can to help you, for you are quite the nicest little girl I have met since I came to England.”
Agnes and Rita seemed neither of them to thoroughly appreciate these remarks of Von Marlo’s, for he was really the biggest and most imposing-looking of the four boys. Even Alex, who was a handsome fellow, looked very young beside him. As to me, I felt soothed. Of course, you must understand that if you have been called Dumps all your life, and told to your face that you haven’t one vestige of good looks, it must be a sort of pleasure to have a person suddenly inform you that you are—oh! better than good-looking—the very prettiest girl he has seen in the whole of the country. I felt, therefore, a flush of triumph stealing to my cheeks, and then I said, “Please keep things as quiet as you can. I must go to the kitchen to get some tea for father. Please don’t let them be noisy.”
“I’ll sit on them if they are,” said Von Marlo.
But Alex called out, “Go along, Von, and help her; that’ll be the best way. Good gracious! she’s in such a state of mind, because you are noticing her and bolstering her up, that she will fall, as likely as not, going down those slippery backstairs. Go along with her, old chap, and help her.”
“Yes, come,” I said, for I could not resist it.
So Von Marlo and I found ourselves in the big hall; then he took my hand and we went along the passage, and then down another passage, and then we opened a door and I called to Hannah.
“Hannah, are you downstairs?”
We were looking into pitch-black darkness, but we heard a muffled voice say, “Yes, Miss Rachel? Sakes alive! What’s wanted now?”
Then Hannah appeared at the foot of the stairs, holding a lighted candle.
“I’m coming down,” I said, “and I’m bringing a gentleman with me.”
Hannah very nearly fell in her amazement, but I went steadily down, Von Marlo following me.
“It is a very old house,” I whispered, “and some people say it is haunted. But you are not afraid of ghosts, are you?”
“I think they are the jolliest things in the world!” was his reply.
He said the word jolly in a very funny way, as though he was not accustomed to the word, and it sounded quite sweet.
At last we got to the lower regions, and then, guided by Hannah’s candle—which was really only like a very little spark of light—we found our way into the kitchen.
“Once this was a grand house and grand people lived here,” I said. “Father lives here now because it belongs to the college. The house is a great deal too big for us, but it is a glorious place for hide-and-seek. This is the kitchen—monstrous dinners used to be cooked here.”
“Now then, Miss Rachel, what do you want?” said Hannah. “And I think young gents as ought to be at school ought to keep out of the Professor’s kitchen. That’s what I think.”
“Oh, please, Hannah,” I said, “this gentleman is from over the seas—he comes from Holland, where the beautiful tulips are grown, and his name is Mr Von Marlo.”
“Catch me trying to say a mouthful of a name like that!” was Hannah’s rejoinder.
“He is exceedingly kind,” I continued, “and he is going to help us.”
“Yes, I will help you if you will let me,” said Von Marlo, speaking in his slow and rather distinct way, and not gabbling his words as we English do.
“I want tea and toast and an egg for father; he is waiting for them, and we must hurry,” I said. “Hannah, be as quick as you can.”
“My word,” said Hannah, “what a fuss!”
She was really a kind creature. She must have been good to live with us in that queer old house, for she was actually the only servant we kept. She must have been brave, too, to spend so much of her time in that desolate kitchen and in those black passages, for gas had never been laid on in the bottom portion of the old house, and it smelt very damp, and I am sure the rats had a good time there at night. But Hannah, forty-five years of age, with a freckled face and reddish hair, and high cheek-bones and square shoulders, had never known the meaning of the word fear.
“Ghosts?” she would cry. “Don’t talk nonsense to me! Rats? Well, I guess they’re more afraid of me than I am of them. Loneliness? I’m a sight too busy to be lonely. I does my work, and I eats my vittals, and when bedtime comes I sleeps like a top. I’m fond of the Professor, and proud of him, he’s so cliver; and I’m fond of Miss Rachel, whom I’ve known since she was born, and of the boys, although they be handfuls.”
This was Hannah’s creed; she had no fear, and she was fond of us. But she had a rough tongue, and could be very rude at times, and could make things unpleasant for us children unless we humoured her.
It was Von Marlo, the Dutch boy, who humoured her now. He offered to cut the bread for toast, and he not only offered, but he went boldly to the cupboard, found a loaf, and cut most delicate slices, and set to work toasting them before a clear little fire in a small new range at one end of the kitchen before Hannah had time to expostulate. Then he suggested that father’s egg should be poached, not boiled, and he found a saucepan and put it on the fire and prepared to poach the egg. And when Hannah said, “My, what a fuss!” he found the egg, broke it into the boiling water, poached it beautifully, and put it on the toast. Really, he was a wonderful boy; even Hannah declared that never had she seen his like.
The tea was made fragrant and strong, and we put it on a little tray with a white cloth, and Von Marlo carried it for me up the dark stairs. We reached the hall, and then we stood and faced each other.
“You are going up all those other stairs with that tray?” said Von Marlo. “Then I insist upon carrying it for you.”
“But suppose father should come out? He sometimes does, you know,” I whispered.
“And if he does, what matter?” said Von Marlo. “He won’t eat us! Come along, Miss Rachel.”
I was very glad he did not call me Dumps. He must have heard Hannah call me Miss Rachel, for, as far as the boys were concerned, I might have been christened Dumps, for they never addressed me as anything else.
We went up the stairs, I going first to lead the way, and Von Marlo following, bearing the little tray with its fragrant tea, hot toast, and poached egg. All went well, and nothing would have happened except the pleasant memory of our little adventure if suddenly at the top of the stairs we had not encountered the stern face of father himself. There was gas in that part of the house, and it had been turned on; father looked absolutely black with rage.
“What is the meaning of this?” he said. “Who are you? Von Marlo, I declare! And what, may I ask, are you doing in my house, and venturing up to my rooms, sir?—What is the meaning of this, Rachel? I shall punish you severely.—Go downstairs, sir; go down at once, and leave the house.”
If it had been Squibs, even had it been Alex or Charley, I think he would have turned at once at the sight of that angry, very fierce face; but Von Marlo was like Hannah—he knew no fear. He said quietly, “You are mistaken, sir; I have done nothing that I should be ashamed of. Your son, Mr Alex, invited me to come into the house, and he also invited me to have tea downstairs. Your daughter went to the kitchen to prepare your tea, and I offered to assist her. It is a way we have in my country, sir, to assist the ladies when they have more to do than they can well accomplish. It is the way we gentlemen act, Professor.”
There was something so quaint in Von Marlo’s utterance that even father was appeased. He murmured, “I forgot you were a foreigner. Well then, thanks; but go away now, for goodness’ sake.—Rachel, take the tea into my bedroom.—Von Marlo, you must go; I cannot have any one in my house this evening; my head is very bad.”
“Good-bye, Mr Von Marlo,” I said; “and thank you, thank you.”
Von Marlo boldly took my hand in the presence of father, and then bolted downstairs, I regret to say, with extreme noise; for, notwithstanding his gentlemanly manners, his boots were thick and rough, and the stairs were destitute of carpets.
“Lay the tea on the table, Rachel,” said my father.
He pushed his hands through his hair, which now seemed to stand up on his head and gave him a wild appearance.
“What does this mean? Tell me at once. Speak, Rachel.”
“I think Mr Von Marlo explained, father. I am awfully sorry. I did ask Agnes and Rita Swan to tea this evening. You said—or at least you never said that I wasn’t to ask them.”
“I never gave you leave to ask any one. How dare you invite people to my house without my permission?”
“I am lonely sometimes, father.”
I said the words in a sad voice; I could not help it; there was a lump in my throat. Father gazed at me, and all of a sudden his manner altered. He seated himself in a chair, and motioned to me to take another. He pulled the little tray with the nice tea towards him, poured out a cup, and drank it. Then he looked at the poached egg, put on his glasses, and gazed at it more fixedly.
“That’s a queer sort of thing,” he said; and then he ate it with considerable relish. “It’s very good,” he said when he had finished it. “Who did it?”
“Mr Von Marlo.”
“Rachel, you must be mad!”
“No, father; he isn’t an English boy, you know. He helped me; he is a very nice boy.”
My father sank back in his chair, and suddenly, to my amazement and relief, he burst into a roar of laughter.
“Well, well!” he said, “I admit that I was in a temper; and I was rude to the lad, too. If you ever have headaches like mine you will get into passions too, Rachel. Pray that you may never have them; my misery is something too awful; and when I saw that lad, with his great dark head, and that hair of his coming straight down to his eyebrows, marching up the stairs with you, I really thought a burglar had got into the house. But, after all, it was only the Dutch lad, and he is clever enough, and doesn’t know our English customs. And to think that he poached an egg!”
“And he made the toast, father.”
My father laughed again.
“Whatever he did, he has cured my headache,” was his next remark; “I feel as right as a trivet. I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll turn those lads out, and those girls.”
“But, father—father darling—they have come by invitation. It isn’t their fault.”
My father took my hand.
“So you are lonely, Dumps?” he said. “And why in the world should you be lonely?”
“I want friends,” I said. “I want some one to love me.”
“All women make that sort of cry,” was his next remark. He pulled me close to him and raised my head and looked into my face.
“You have a nice little face of your own,” he said, “and some day you will find— But, pshaw! why talk nonsense to the child? How old are you, Dumps?”
“I’ll be sixteen in six months,” I said. “It is a long way off to have a birthday, but it will come in six months.”
“And then you’ll be seventeen, and then eighteen, and, hey presto! you’ll be a woman. My goodness, child! put off the evil day as long as you can. Keep a child as long as possible.”
“But, father, most children are happy.”
“And you are not? Good gracious me! what more do you want?”
“I don’t know, father; but it seems to me that I want something.”
“Well, look here, you want girls about you, do you?”
“Yes, some girls.”
“And you think Rita and Agnes Swan, the daughters of our local doctor, quite delightful companions?”
I made no answer.
“Just wait for me a minute, Dumps, and I’ll get dressed and come down and inspect them.”
“Oh, but you won’t frighten them?”
“Frighten them? Well, if they’re that sort they won’t be much good to you. But wait outside the door, and I’ll come down. To think that Von Marlo made the toast! And how do you say he prepared the egg?”
“Poached it, father.”
“Poached an egg for me, and cured my headache, and I scolded him as though he were a rascal! I’ll make amends when I see him next. Wait outside the door, Rachel; I’ll join you in a minute.”
I did wait outside the door, and when my father came out he looked quite spruce. He had absolutely put on a less greasy and shabby coat than usual, and he had brushed his grey hair across his lofty brow; his pale face looked its most dignified and most serene. He took my hand, and we went downstairs.
By this time, as I knew there would be, there were high-jinks going on in the parlour. Von Marlo was not present, but Alex, Charley, Squibs, and the girls were playing at blind-man’s buff. They were endeavouring not to be too noisy; I will say that. It was Rita who was blindfold when my father appeared. The tea-table was pushed into a distant corner of the room; a guard had been put on the fire; and Rita was running as silently as she could, but also as swiftly, round and round, with one of father’s own silk handkerchiefs tied across her eyes. Agnes was in convulsions of laughter, and the boys were also.
“Caught! caught!” she cried, not noticing the entrance of my father, and she clasped him firmly round the waist.
Her horror when the handkerchief was removed, and she found herself holding on to the Professor, may be better imagined than described. Poor Rita! she very nearly turned silly on the spot. I had to convey her to a chair. Father said, “I am your prisoner, Miss Rita Swan. Am I now to be blindfolded?”
“Oh no, father, you couldn’t think of such a thing,” I said.
He smiled and looked at me.
“Well, young people,” he said, “you seem to be having a very merry time. But where’s my Knight of the Poached Egg? Why is he not present?”
However inclined to be impertinent and saucy and rude to me Alex and Charley were when father was not present, they never dared to show this spirit when he was by.
Father related the story of Von Marlo and the poached egg to the other children.
“He is a chivalrous fellow, and I shall talk to him about it when I see him, and thank him. I was very rude to him just now; but as to you, Alex and Charley, if you ever let it leak out at college that he did this thing, or turn him into ridicule on account of it, you won’t hear the last of it from me. It’s a right good flogging either of you’ll get, so just keep your own counsel. And now, boys, if I don’t mistake, it’s time for you to get to your books.—Rachel, my dear, you and your friends can entertain one another; but would it not be nicest and more cheerful if you first of all requested the presence of Hannah to remove the tea-things?”
As father spoke he bowed to the girls, marched the boys in front of him out of the room, and closed the door behind him.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Agnes. “To be sure, Dumps, you do have exciting times in this house!”
“I am very glad you have enjoyed it,” I said, and I sat down and pushed my hair away from my face.
“How flushed your cheeks are! And where is the Knight of the Poached Egg? What a very funny boy he must be!”
“But you two mustn’t tell the story about him either,” I said. “I mean, if you have any friends at the college, you mustn’t relate it, for they might laugh, and he was really very chivalrous. Father thinks a lot of him; I can see that. And as to me, I think he is the most chivalrous boy I have ever come across in the whole course of my life.”
“Oh, that’s because he said you were pretty. That’s a foreigner’s way of talking. Alex spoke about it when you had gone out of the room. He said of course his sister was good-looking; he would always stand up for his sister; but it was a foreigner’s way.”
As Agnes spoke she raised her somewhat piquant little face and glanced at me, as much as to say, “Poor Dumps! you are very plain, but of course your own people must stand up for you.”
“Well, we can have some games now,” I said, forcing myself to turn the conversation.
But the girls were disinclined for games; they preferred to sit by the fire and talk, and ask me innumerable questions about the school, my brothers, and Mr Von Marlo, and if Mr Von Marlo would be allowed to come to see them on Sunday evenings, and if I would bring him, and all sorts of talk of that sort. I answered that I shouldn’t be allowed to do anything of the sort, and that the only boy I knew in the school except my brothers was Squibs, and of course, now, Mr Von Marlo.
“Well, well! we’ll come and see you again if you like; and you must have tea with us, you know, Rachel. Come to see us the night after to-morrow, and we’ll have some friends who will surprise you a bit. You do look very nice in that pale-blue dress. But good-bye now, for it is getting late.”