Part I Chapter 7 Dumps — A Plain Girl by L. T. Meade
A Surprise Tea
We were a little late after all, for the Professor was standing on the steps. It does seem so ridiculous to call your own father the Professor, but after all I had heard of him that day I really felt that I could not even think of him under any other title. He was dressed just as carelessly and with as little regard to outward appearances as though he had been giving a lecture to the Sixth Form boys in the college. His hair was rumpled and pushed back from his lofty forehead. His eyes had that somewhat vacant stare which, notwithstanding his genius, I could not help constantly noticing in them. His adorers—and it struck me that the Professor had many adorers—called that his “far-away” or his “abstracted” or his “marvellous thinking” look, but to me it seemed that it was his vacant look. But there! it was very wrong of me to think such a thing about father.
“He has come,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Rachel, your father is here. I am more vexed than I can say not to have been ready to welcome him. I hope Nancy saw to his comfort. Jump out, child, and run up the path. Be the first to greet him. I will follow you immediately.”
I was almost pushed by Miss Donnithorne out of the carriage, and I ran up the little path which led to Hedgerow House. I felt that Miss Donnithorne and Hermione were following me a few steps behind. I wondered if father would notice the dark-blue dress and the grey fur. If he did he would be sure to say something which would let the cat out of the bag—something which would lower me for ever in the eyes of Hermione. As I had not chosen to tell Hermione at the time that Miss Donnithorne had requested me to wear the dress that day, I should dislike beyond anything to have father blazoning the whole secret abroad. But he did nothing of the kind; he merely said, “Well, Dumps, you look flourishing.”
He held out his hand and gave me the tips of his fingers. Then he shook hands with Miss Donnithorne, and Miss Donnithorne presented Hermione to him. I observed that Miss Donnithorne’s cheeks were brighter than their wont. She began to speak in a very apologetic way, but father cut her short.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said; “pray don’t apologise.” They both went into the house, and it seemed to me that they forgot all about Hermione and me as completely as though we did not exist.
“How queer!” I could not help saying.
“Queer?” said Hermione. “It isn’t a bit queer; it’s what we ought to expect.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
She looked at me. I observed then that her soft brown eyes could be quizzical at times. The lids became slightly narrow, and a smile, not the sweetest, trembled on her lips; then it vanished.
“Have you seen Miss Donnithorne’s garden?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied; “and I am cold; I want to go into the house. Let us go in, Hermione. I want, now father is with us, to be as much with him as I can.”
“Oh, you little goose!” said Hermione. “For goodness’ sake leave them alone. Come upstairs and show me your room.”
“Why should I leave them alone?” I said.
“You are a baby!” said Hermione. She spoke almost crossly.
I certainly absolutely failed to understand her. I said after a minute, “I suppose that I understand father better than you do, and better than Miss Donnithorne does.”
“Better than Miss Donnithorne understands him?” cried Hermione. “Oh Dumps! I must call you Dumps, for you are quite delicious. Never, never since I was born did I meet a little girl quite so much the colour of—the colour of—”
“The colour of what?” I said.
She had her umbrella in her hand. It was very neatly folded. I really don’t know why she brought it, as we had driven in a covered carriage; but now she poked and poked in the snow with it until she came to the grass beneath.
“The colour of that,” she said.
I am sure I turned scarlet; and I can assure you, readers, that I was not at all pretty when I turned that colour, for my complexion was somewhat muddy, and I had none of those delicate pinks and whites in my skin which make people think you so absolutely charming.
“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I think you are very rude.”
She laughed and patted me on the arm.
“You are a very nice girl,” she said. “I know that; but you will forgive me. I perceive that Miss Grace Donnithorne is right and you know nothing of the world.”
“I don’t know anything whatever of the world you live in,” I answered. “I know nothing whatever of the world which suddenly declares that a person whom I scarcely know at all knows more of the heart of the one person whom I have been brought up with all my life than I do myself. I positively declare that Miss Grace Donnithorne does not know as much about father as I do.”
“And I defy you to prove it. If I were a boy I’d make a bet on it,” said Hermione. “But there I never mind; don’t let us talk on the subject any longer. Come and show me your room, and afterwards you can tell me about yourself.”
I had to crush down my gathering wrath, and we went upstairs. Hermione was restless; I tried to talk in a matter-of-fact and yet haughty sort of way, but she hardly replied.
“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.