Part I Chapter 4 Dumps — A Plain Girl by L. T. Meade
Miss Grace Donnithorne
When father came in that evening I was quite lively, but he did not specially notice it. I hoped he would. I felt wonderfully excited about Miss Grace Donnithorne. The boys, of course, were also in the room, but they were generally in a subdued state and disinclined to make a noise when father was present.
Hannah came up with the dinner. She dumped down the tray on the sideboard, and put the appetising rump-steak in front of father. It was rump-steak with onions, and there were fried potatoes, and there was a good deal of juice coming out of the steak, and oh, such a savoury smell! Alex began to sniff, and Charley looked with keen interest and watering eyes at the good food.
“There,” said Hannah, placing a mutton bone in front of Alex; “you get on with that. There’s plenty of good meat if you turn it round and cut from the back part. It’s good and wholesome, and fit for young people. The steak is for the Professor. I’ve got some roast potatoes; thought you’d like them.”
The roast potatoes were a sop in the pan; but oh, how we did long for a piece of the steak! That was the worst about father; he really was a most kindly man, but he was generally, when not absorbed in lecturing—on which occasions, I was told, he was most animated and lively and all there—in a sort of dream. He ate his steak now without in the least perceiving that his children were dining off cold mutton. Had he once noticed it, he would have taken the mutton bone for himself and given us the steak. I heard Alex mutter, “It’s rather too bad, and he certainly won’t finish it!”
But I sat down close to Alex, and whispered, “Alex, for shame! You know how he wants it; he isn’t at all strong.”
Then Alex’s grumbles subsided, and he ate his own dinner with boyish appetite.
After the brief and very simple meal had come to an end the boys left the room, and the Professor, as we often called him, stood with his back to the fire. Now was my opportunity.
“Father,” I said, “I had a visitor this afternoon.”
“Eh? What’s that. Dumps?”
“Father, I wish you wouldn’t call me Dumps.”
“Don’t fret me, Rachel; what does it matter what I call you? The thing is that I address the person who is known to me as my daughter. What does it matter whether I speak of her as Dumps, or Stumps, or Rachel, or Annie, or any other title? What’s in a name?”
“Oh father! I think there’s a good deal in a name. But never mind,” I continued, for I didn’t want him to go off into one of those long dissertations which he was so fond of, quite forgetting the person he was talking to. So I added hastily, “Miss Grace Donnithorne called. She said she was a friend of yours. Do you know her?”
“Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?” said father, speaking very slowly and pausing between each word. “Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?”
“Why, yes, father,” I said, and I went close to him now. “She was, oh, so funny—such a fat, jolly sort of person! Only she didn’t like this house one bit.”
“Eh? Eh?” said my father.
He sank into a chair near the fire.
“That is the very chair she sat in.”
My father looked round at it.
“The shabbiest chair in the whole house,” he said.
“But the most comfy, father.”
“Well, all right; tell me about her.”
“She sat here, and she made me have a good fire.”
“Quite right. Why should you be cold, Dumps?”
“But I thought, father, that you did not want us to be extravagant?”
“It is far more extravagant, let me tell you, Dumps, to get a severe cold and to have doctors’ bills to pay.”
I was startled by this sentiment of father’s, and treasured it up to retail to Hannah in the future.
“But tell me more about her,” he said.
Then I related exactly what had happened. He was much amused, and after a time he said, with a laugh, “And so you got tea for her?”
“Yes; she insisted on it. She wouldn’t let me off getting that tea for all the world. I didn’t mind it, of course—indeed, I quite enjoyed it—but what I did find hard was bringing up the hod of coal from the coal-cellar.”
“Good practice, Dumps. Arms are made to be useful.”
“So they are,” I answered. “And feet are made to run with.”
“Of course, father.”
“And a girl’s little brain is meant to keep a house comfortable.”
“But, father, I haven’t such a little brain; and I think I could do something else.”
“Could what?” said father, opening his eyes with horror. “What in the world is more necessary for a girl who is one day to be a woman than to know how to keep a house comfortable?”
“Yes, yes,” I said; “I suppose so.”
I was very easily stopped when father spoke in that high key.
“And you have complained to me that you find life dull. Did you find Miss Grace Donnithorne dull?”
“Oh no; she is very lively, father.”
Father slowly crossed one large white hand over the other; then he rose.
“Good-night, Dumps,” he said.
“Have you nothing more to say?” I asked.
“Good gracious, child! this is my night for school. I have to give two lectures to the boys of the First Form. Good-night—good-night.”
He did not kiss me—he very seldom did that—but his voice had a very affectionate tone.
After he had gone I sat for a long time by the fire. The neglected dinner-things remained on the table; the room was as shabby and as empty as possible, but not quite as cold as usual. Presently Hannah came in. She began to clear away the dinner-things.
“Hannah,” I said, “I told father about Miss Grace Donnithorne’s visit.”
“And who in the name of wonder may she be?” asked Hannah.
“Oh, a lady. I let her in myself this afternoon.”
“What call have you to be opening the hall door?”
“Didn’t you hear a very sharp ring at the hall door about three o’clock?” I said.
Hannah stood stock-still.
“I did, and I didn’t,” she replied.
“What do you mean by you did and you didn’t?”
“Well, you see, child, I wasn’t in the humour to mount them stairs, so I turned my deaf ear to the bell and shut up my hearing one with cotton-wool; after that the bell might ring itself to death.”
“Then, of course, Hannah, I had to go to the door.”
“Had to? Young ladies don’t open hall doors.”
“Anyhow, I did go to the door, and I let the lady in, and she sat by the fire. She’s a very nice lady indeed; she’s about your age, but not scraggy.”
“I’ll thank you, Miss Dumps, not to call me names.”
“But you are scraggy, for that means thin.”
“I may be thin and genteel, and not fat and vulgar, but I won’t have it said of me that I’m scraggy,” said Hannah; “and by you too, Miss Dumps, of all people!”
“Very well, Hannah. She was fat and vulgar, if you like, and you are thin and genteel. Anyhow, I liked her; she was very jolly. She was about your age.”
“How d’you know what age I be?”
“Didn’t I see father put it down at the time of the last census?”
“My word! I never knew children were listening. I didn’t want my age known.”
“Hannah, you are forty-five.”
“And what if I be?”
“That’s very old,” I said.
“’Tain’t,” said Hannah.
“It is,” I repeated. “I asked Alex one day, and he said it was the age when women began to drop off.”
“Lawks! what does that mean?” said Hannah.
“It’s the way he expressed it. I don’t want to frighten you, but he said lots of people died then.” Hannah now looked really scared.
“And that’s why, Hannah,” I continued, “I don’t like to see you in your grandmother’s shawl, for I am so awfully afraid your bad cold will mean your dropping off.”
“Master Alex talks nonsense,” said Hannah. “You give me a start for a minute with the sort of gibberish you talk. Forty-five, be I? Well, if I be, my grandmother lived to eighty, and my grandfather to ninety; and if I take after him—and they say I have a look of him—I have another good forty-five years to hang on, so there’s no fear of my dropping off for a bit longer.” As these remarks of Hannah’s were absolutely impossible for me to understand, I did not pursue the subject further, but I said, “Father made such a nice remark to-night!”
“And whatever was that? The Professor is always chary of his talk.”
“He said that it was very wrong to be cold, and that the fires ought to be large and good.”
“He said that?”
“Yes, he did. And then I said, ‘I thought you wanted us to be saving;’ and he said, ‘It’s not saving to catch cold and have doctors’ bills.’ So now, Hannah, you have your orders, and we must have a big, big fire in the parlour during the cold weather.”
“Don’t bother me any longer,” said Hannah. “Your talk is beyond anything for childishness! What with trying to frighten a body in the prime of life about her deathbed, and then giving utterance to rubbish which you put into the lips of the Professor, it is beyond any sensible person to listen to. It’s cotton-wool I’ll put in my right ear the next time I come up to see you, Miss Dumps.”
By this time Hannah had filled her tray. She raised it and walked towards the door. She then, with some skill and strength, placed the whole weight of the tray on her right arm, and with the left she opened the door. I have seen waiters in restaurants do that sort of trick, but I never could understand it. Even if Hannah was dropping off, she must have some strong muscles, was my reflection.
The next day I went to school as usual. The fog had cleared and it was fairly bright—not very bright, for it never is in the city part of London in the winter months.
At school I, as usual, took my place in the same form with Agnes and Rita Swan. I was glad to see that I got to the head of the form and they remained in a subordinate position that day. In consequence during play-hours they were rather less patronising and more affectionate to me than usual. But I held up my head high and would have little to do with them. I was much more inclined to be friends with Augusta Moore than with the Swans just then.
Now, Augusta lived in a very small house a long way from the school. She was very poor, and lived alone with her mother, whose only child she was. Augusta was an uncommunicative sort of girl. She worked hard at her books, and was slow to respond to her schoolfellows’ advances of friendship; but when I said, “May I walk up and down in the playground with you, Augusta?” she on this occasion made no objection.
She glanced round at me once or twice, and then said, “I don’t mind, of course, your walking with me, Rachel, but I have to read over my poetry once or twice in order to be sure of saying it correctly.”
I asked her if she would like me to hear her, and she was much obliged when I made this offer; and after a few minutes’ pause she handed me the book, and repeated a very fine piece of poetry with considerable spirit. When she had come to the end she said, “How many mistakes did I make?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You don’t know? But you said you would hear me.”
“I didn’t look at the book,” I said; “I was so absorbed watching you.”
“Oh! then you are no good at all,” said Augusta, and she looked really annoyed. “You must give me back the book and I must read it over slowly.”
“But you know it perfectly—splendidly.”
“That won’t do. I have to make all the proper pauses, you know, just as our recitation mistress required, and there mustn’t be a syllable too many or a syllable too few in any of the words, and there mustn’t be a single word transposed. That is the proper way to say poetry, and I know perfectly well that I cannot repeat Gray’s Elegy like that.”
I said I was sorry, and she took the book from my hands. Presently she went away to a distant part of the playground, and I saw her lips moving as she paced up and down. I walked quickly myself, for I wanted to keep warm, and just before I went into the house Rita Swan came up to me.
“Well, Dumps,” she said, “I wonder how you’ll like it?”
“Like what?” I asked.
Rita began to laugh rather immoderately. She looked at Agnes, who also came up at that moment.
“I don’t believe Dumps knows,” she said.
“Know what?” I asked angrily.
“Why, what is about to happen. Oh, what a joke!”
“What is it?” I asked again. I was so curious that I didn’t mind even their rude remarks at that moment.
“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t know!” laughed Rita, and she jumped softly up and down. “What fun! What fun! Just to think of a thing of that sort going to take place in her very own house—in her very own, own house—and she not even to have a suspicion of it!”
“Oh, if it’s anything to do with home, I know everything about my home,” I said in a very haughty tone, “and I don’t want you to tell me.”
I marched past the two girls and entered the schoolroom. But during the rest of the morning I am afraid I was not very attentive to my lessons. I could not help wondering what they meant, and what there was to know. But of course there was nothing. They were such silly girls, and I could not understand for one moment how I had ever come to be friends with them.
At one o’clock I went home, and there, lying on the parlour table, was a letter addressed to me. Now it is true, although some girls may smile when they read these words, I had never before received a letter. I have never made violent friendships. I met my school friends, for what they were worth, every day; I had no near relations of any sort, and father was always at home except for the holidays, when he took us children to some very cheap and very dreary seaside place. There was really no one to write to me, and therefore no one ever did write. So a letter addressed to Miss Rachel Grant made my heart beat. I took it up and turned it round and round, and looked at it back and front, and did all those strange things that a person will do to whom a letter is a great rarity and something precious.
I heard the boys tramping into the house at that moment, and I thrust the letter into my pocket. Presently father came in, and we sat down to our midday meal. Luckily for me, neither father nor the boys knew anything about the letter; but it was burning a hole in my pocket, and I was dying for the boys to return to school, and for father to go back to his classes, so that I might have an opportunity of opening the precious epistle.
Just as father was leaving the room he turned back to me and said, “You may accept it if you like.”
“What, father?” I said in some astonishment.
“When it is offered to you, you may accept it.”
He stooped and, to my great astonishment, kissed me on the forehead. Then he left the room, and a minute or two later left the house.
What could he mean? Would the letter explain? Was there anything at all in the strange words of Agnes and Rita Swan?
Of course, any ordinary girl would have relieved her curiosity by tearing open the letter; but I was somewhat slow and methodical in my movements, and wished to prolong my luxury as much as possible. I had the whole long afternoon in which to learn a few stupid lessons, and then to do nothing.
Just then Hannah came up to remove the lunch-things. She seemed so sure that I would tackle her about her age that she had stuck cotton-wool into her right ear. I therefore did not speak at all; I was most anxious for her to depart. At last she did so, banging the door fiercely behind her. I heard her tramping off with her tray, and then I knew that my moment of bliss had arrived.
I got a knife and very deliberately cut the flap of the envelope open at the top. I then slipped my hand into the precious enclosure and took out its contents. I opened the sheet of paper; I could read writing quite well, and this writing was plain and quite intelligible to any ordinary eyes.
On the top of the sheet of paper were written the words, “Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex,” and the letter ran as follows:
“My dear Rachel or Dumps,—I want to know if you will come on Saturday next to pay me a little visit until Tuesday evening. I have heard that it is half-term holiday at your school, and should like you to see my pretty house and this pretty place. I believe I can give you a good time, so trust you will come.—Yours sincerely, Grace Donnithorne.
“P.S.—In case you say yes, I will expect you by the train which leaves Liverpool Street at ten o’clock in the morning. I shall be waiting with the pony and cart at Chelmsford at eleven o’clock, and will drive you straight to Hedgerow House.
“P.S. 2.—I have a great many pets. I trust you will be nice about them. Don’t fear my little dog; his bark is worse than his bite.
“P.S. 3.—Your clothes will do; don’t bother about getting a fresh wardrobe.”
This extraordinary letter caused a perfect tumult in my heart. I had never gone on a visit in my life. I really was a very stranded sort of girl. Hitherto I had had no outlets of any sort; I was just Dumps, a squat, rather plain girl, who knew little or nothing of the world—a neglected sort of girl, I have no doubt; but then I had no mother.
A warm glow came all over me as I read the letter. The half-term holiday had not been looked forward to with any feelings of rapture by me. I could well guess what, under ordinary circumstances, would happen. I should be indoors all the morning as well as all the afternoon, for the half-term holiday was so planned that it should not in any way clash with the boys’ half-term holiday. If Alex and Charley had had a holiday at the same time, I might have coaxed one of them at least to come for a walk with me in Regent’s Park, or to take me to the British Museum, or to the Zoo, or to some other sort of London treat; but I shouldn’t be allowed to go out alone, and at present I was not in the humour to ask either Agnes or Rita Swan to entertain me. Now I need ask nobody, for I was going away on a visit. Of course, I understood at last the meaning of father’s words, “You may accept it;” though it seemed strange at the time, now I knew all about it, and my excitement was so great that I could scarcely contain myself.
The first business was to answer the precious letter. I sat down and replied that I should be delighted to come to Miss Grace Donnithorne on the following Saturday, that I would be sure to be at Liverpool Street in good time to catch the train, that I adored pets, and was not at all afraid even of barking dogs. I did not mind going in a shabby dress, and above all things I hoped she would call me Rachel, and not Dumps.
Having written my letter, which took me a long time, for I was unaccustomed to writing of that sort, I got an envelope and addressed it to Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex, and then went out and dropped it into the nearest pillar-box. When I returned the afternoon had fled and it was time for tea.
Father came in to tea. This was unexpected; he had not often time to leave his classes and rush across to the house to have tea; but he came in on this occasion, and when he saw me in the parlour bending over the warm fire making toast, he said at once, “Have you accepted it?”
“Then you know all about it, father?” I exclaimed. “Oh yes,” he said, with a grave and yet queer smile trembling for an instant on his lips and then vanishing.
“I thought that must be what you meant, and I have accepted it,” I said. “I mean about going to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
“Yes, child; it is very kind of her to ask you.”
“Yes, isn’t it, father? And she is so nice and considerate; she says I may go in my shabby clothes.”
“Your shabby clothes, Rachel!” he replied, putting on his spectacles and looking at me all over. “Your shabby clothes! Why should they be shabby?”
“Well, father,” I answered, “they are not very smart. You know you haven’t given me a new dress for over a year, and my best pale-blue, which I got the summer before last, is very short in the skirt, and also in the sleeves. But never mind,” I continued, as he looked quite troubled; “I’ll do; I know I’ll do.”
He looked at his watch.
“I declare,” he said, “this will never answer. I don’t wish my daughter, Professor Grant’s daughter, to go away on a visit, and of all people to Miss Grace Donnithorne, shabby. Look here, Dumps, can these things be bought to hand?”
“What do you mean, father?”
He took up a portion of my skirt.
“Things of that sort—can they be bought ready to put on?”
“Oh, I expect so, father.”
“They’re to be found in the big shops, aren’t they?”
“Yes, yes,” I said warmly, for it seemed to me that a new vista of wonderful bliss was opening out before me. “Of course they are. We could go to—to Wallis’s shop at Holborn Viaduct. I have been there sometimes with the boys, and I’ve seen all sorts of things in the windows.”
“Then go upstairs, put on your hat and jacket immediately, and I’ll take you there. You shall not go shabby to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
Wonder of wonders! I rushed up to my room; I put on my short, very much worn little jacket, and slipped my hat on my head, thrust my hands into my woollen gloves, and, lo! I was ready. I flew down again to father. He looked hard at me.
“But, after all, you are quite well covered,” he said. It had certainly never before dawned upon his mind that a woman wanted to be more than, as he expressed it, covered.
“But, father,” I said, “you can be shabbily covered and prettily covered. That makes all the difference; doesn’t it, father?”
“I don’t know, child; I don’t know. When I read in the great works of Sophocles—”
He wandered off into a learned dissertation. I was accustomed to these wanderings of his, and often had to pull him back.
“I’m ready,” I said, “if you are.”
“Then come along,” was his remark.
When the Professor got out of doors he walked very fast indeed. He walked at such a fearful pace that I had nearly to run to keep up with him. But at last we found ourselves at Wallis’s. There my father became extremely masterful. He said to the shopman who came to meet him, “I want new garments for this young lady. Show me some, please—some that will fit—those that are ready-made.”
We were taken into a special department where all sorts of dresses were to be found. Now, I had my own ideas about clothes, which by-and-by would turn out quite right and satisfactory; but father’s ideas were too primitive for anything. He disliked my interfering; he would not consult me. In the end I was furbished up with a long brown skirt which reached to my feet, and a dark-red blouse. My father bought these garments because he said they felt weighty and would keep out the cold. He desired them to be packed in brown-paper, paid for them, and gave me the parcel to carry.
I felt a sense of absolute misery as I walked home with my hideous brown skirt and that dreadful red blouse. It was of a dark brick-red colour, and would not suit me; I knew that quite well. Still, father was highly pleased.
“There, now,” he said, “you won’t go to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s looking shabby. But, good gracious me! I’m five minutes late for class. Good-night, Dumps.”
“Won’t you be in to dinner, father?” I asked.
“I don’t know—don’t expect to. Now, not another word, or I shall have one of my furious headaches. Good-night, my dear.”
He banged the hall door, and I sat down with the brown-paper parcel in front of me.