Part I Chapter 13 Dumps — A Plain Girl by L. T. Meade
Putting the House in Order
The play was as lively as any four children could desire. It was called The Grand Duke Alexis; it had a great deal to do with Nihilism and with the Russians generally. There was a very handsome woman in it who had a mission to kill somebody, and a very evil-looking man whose mission it was to get her arrested; and the handsome woman and the wicked man seemed to chase each other on and off the stage, and to mingle up in the plot, and to fasten themselves in some unpleasant manner into my brain. I am sure the boys enjoyed themselves vastly, and there is no doubt that I was interested.
“Your eyes are like the eyes of an owl,” whispered Charley to me; “if they get any rounder they’ll drop out like marbles.”
I was accustomed to this kind of remark, and was too much fascinated with the lovely lady and the man who was trying to arrest her to take any notice of his words. The Grand Duke was certainly the most appallingly wicked person I had ever imagined. Even father’s new wife seemed pale and commonplace and everyday beside him. Even the fact that my own precious mother was superseded by another was of no consequence at all when I recalled to memory that lovely lady’s face, and the face of the man who was trying to have her arrested.
The play came to an end, but when we arrived home Hannah had not yet returned. We let ourselves in, in lordly fashion, with the latchkey. Von Marlo bade us good-bye, and promised to come in again on the following day. He said he would stand by us. He gave my hand an affectionate squeeze.
“Make the best of things,” he said; “there’s a good girl.”
I began to think Von Marlo a very comfortable sort of friend. I wished that he was a girl instead of a boy. I could have been quite fond of him had he been a girl.
We three sat in the parlour; we would not go to bed until Hannah came in. We began to nod presently, and Alex dropped off to sleep. It was past midnight when we heard Hannah’s steps creeping upstairs towards her bedroom. Charley immediately rushed on tiptoe to the parlour door, opened it a tenth of an inch, and peeped out.
“She is off to bed. She is walking as straight as a die. She has got on her best bonnet. I hope she’ll be in a better temper in the morning. Now then, I’m going to follow her example; I’m dead-beat I shall be asleep in a twinkling.”
He went off; his good-humoured, boyish face flashed back at us full of fun. Father’s marriage, the knowledge that there would soon be a lady in the house, whom some people would call his new mamma, did not affect him very deeply.
I went up to Alex and spoke to him.
“You and I will stand shoulder to shoulder, won’t we?” I said.
“Why, yes, Dumps—of course,” he replied.
“I mean,” I said, “that you will do what I do.”
“What do you exactly mean by that?”
“I’m prepared to be quite kind and lady-like, and not to storm or scold or say ugly things, and I want you to do just the same. You will, won’t you? We’ll understand each other. We’ll be most careful, truly, not to put her in dear mother’s place.”
My voice trembled.
“It’s a long time since mother died,” said Alex.
“But, Alex, you remember her.”
“No, I don’t,” said Alex.
“Nor do I,” I said. “Sometimes I try to. But I have got her miniature; father gave it to me. Wouldn’t you like to see it?”
“A miniature? That’s a picture of her, isn’t it? Have you got one?”
“Yes.”
“I knew father had one, but I didn’t know he would part with it.”
“He never would until now.”
“Once,” said Alex, “years ago, he was very ill in bed for a few days, and I went into his room. He was sitting up in bed, and he had a picture in a frame; he was looking at it, and there were tears in his eyes. When he saw me he fired up—you know his hasty sort of way—and stuffed the picture under his pillow. I believe it was mother’s picture he was looking at. He must have loved her then.”
“But he doesn’t love her now,” I said. “He has given the picture to me because he has put another woman in her place.”
“Well, most of them do,” said Alex.
“What do you mean?”
“Most men marry again. There are two masters at our school, and they’ve married again jolly quick—one of them within a year and a half, and the other even in a shorter time. All the fellows were talking about it. It was mighty unfortunate, I can tell you, for we had to subscribe to give them both wedding presents, otherwise we wouldn’t have noticed. They were widowers, and they had no right to do it. It was beastly hard on the boys; that’s what I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“The wedding presents, I mean.”
“Oh Alex! that is a very trivial part of the matter.”
“I expect they’ll collect something jolly for father.”
“Well, we needn’t subscribe,” I said.
“Of course not; that’s the best of it.”
“I hope they won’t,” I said.
“They’re certain to. They just worship him in the school. You haven’t the least idea how popular he is. They just adore him. He’s such a splendid teacher, and so sympathetic over a difficulty. He is a great man, there’s no doubt of that.”
But I was not in a humour to hear his praises.
“Let’s think of our own dear little mother to-night,” I said.
“All right, Rachel.”
“Come up with me to my room and I’ll show you her portrait.”
“All right, old girl.”
We went up together. I thought if Alex would stand my friend—if he would lean on me as a very superior sort of sister, and allow me to take the place of sister and mother—then I could endure things. Father’s new wife might go her own way, and I would go mine. I just wanted Alex at least to understand me. Charley was a good boy, but he was hopeless. Still, I had a vague sort of hope that Alex would keep on my side.
When we got to my room I lit all the bits of candle, and made quite a strong light; and then I opened the miniature frame, and told Alex to kneel down by me and I would show it to him. He looked at it very earnestly. He himself was strangely like the miniature, but I don’t think the likeness struck him particularly. Nevertheless, he had his sensibilities, and his lips quivered, and his soft, gentle brown eyes looked their very softest and gentlest now as they fixed themselves on my face.
“Poor mother!” he said. He bent his head and kissed the glass which covered the pictured face.
I shut up the case hastily.
“You are in rare luck to have it,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered; “it is a great comfort to me. This is mother; this is the woman I love; no other can ever take her place.”
“Of course not,” said Alex. “And some day when I’m rich you’ll let me have it photographed, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will. We’ll stick to our bargain, won’t we, Alex?”
Alex rose to his feet. He yawned slightly.
“I’m dead-tired, and I must go to school to-morrow. I haven’t looked at one of my lessons, but it doesn’t really matter. When the Professor is away marrying, you know, he can’t expect his children to work as hard as they do when he is at home.”
“Oh Alex, Hannah said something dreadful!”
“As though anybody minded what she said!”
“She said that mother—our little, young, pretty mother—was killed. She said mother would have been in the world now if she hadn’t been killed.”
“That’s all stuff!” said Alex. “Why do you speak in that exaggerated sort of way? If she had been killed there would have been a coroner’s inquest and a trial, and the murderer would have been discovered and—and hanged. Why do you talk such rot?”
“Oh, there are many ways of killing a person, and mother died for want of sunshine.”
“Oh, I see. Well, well! good-night.”
He kissed me again and left the room.
During the next day or two I was very busy. Father had said that the house was to be put in order. Now, what that meant I could not tell, but the house on the whole was about in as much order as such a great, desolate, and unfurnished abode could be. But when the next day at breakfast I found a second letter from father on my plate, and when I opened it and read father’s own directions that the spare room was to be got ready for the reception of himself and his wife on the following Sunday, I knew that Hannah and I must come either to open war or to a dismissal of the latter. I went down to the kitchen and told her at once.
“The spare room, forsooth!” she said. “Well, yes, I thought of that last night. Master said it was to be put in order, but he needn’t have written; I’d have seen to it.”
I was greatly relieved at this change of front. Hannah was looking quite gentle. She was moving about in the kitchen in quite an orderly fashion. The little cooking-stove was black instead of grey; there were no ashes to be seen anywhere, and a bright little fire burned in it. There was a pot on, and there was something boiling in the pot, and the thing that boiled and bubbled gave forth a most appetising smell. When I spoke Hannah turned and opened the oven door, and I saw inside a great cake.
“Why, Hannah!” I said.
“It’s only right to have cake and that sort of thing handy,” she said. “Don’t talk nonsense, Dumps. There’s a deal for you and me to do. Be you going to school to-day?”
“No,” I said.
“Why will you keep away?”
“Because I won’t go.”
“You will get a report; your mistress will be very angry.”
“I don’t care,” I said; “I won’t go. I’ll go afterwards. I won’t go this week.”
“Highty-tighty!” said Hannah. “Well, you’ll catch it!”
“Seems to me I’m always catching it,” I said.
“Seems to me you are,” said Hannah.
“Well, Hannah, what about the spare room?”
“I’ll see to it myself. I’ll have it ready.”
“Can I help you, Hannah?”
“No; but you can come and look on if you like.”
“Don’t you want Mrs Herring? She is so strong. Everything should be turned out; the place should be made very clean.”
“I don’t want none of your herrings nor your sprats neither,” replied Hannah in her most aggressive tone. This was a very old joke of Hannah’s.
I went upstairs now. The spare room was on the same landing as the drawing-room, and, as far as I could tell, had never been of any use at all to any single member of the family. Perhaps in mother’s time it had been of service to some long-forgotten guest. The door was always locked. I supposed Hannah had the key. At nights sometimes, when the wind was blowing high, there was a moaning, through the keyhole of that locked door, and there were times when I flew past it up and up and up to my own attic bedroom. But now I stood outside the door. At the other side of the landing was the drawing-room. It was a very big room with three windows. We sat there sometimes when father had his professors, men very nearly as learned as himself—not quite, of course—to visit him.
I went into the drawing-room. It was very ugly, and not nearly as cosy as the parlour. The spare room I had never seen the inside of that I could remember. Hannah came up now, and took a great bunch of keys from her pocket and opened the door, and we went in.
“Oh, how musty it smells!” I said.
“In course it do,” said Hannah. “When a room’s shut up for going on fourteen years, why shouldn’t it smell musty? But there, child! don’t you go and catch your death of cold. The first thing is to air the room and then to light a fire. Afterwards I’ll rub up the furniture and put up clean hangings. It won’t be exactly a cheerful sort of room, but I suppose the master must be content.”
There were grey-looking curtains hanging at the three tall windows. There were green Venetian blinds, which looked almost white now, so covered were they with dust. There was a sort of rough drugget stuff on the floor, which was quite as grey as the curtains which surrounded the windows. There was a huge four-poster bed, drawn out a little from the wall, and taking one of the best positions in the room. This also was hung with grey moreen, and looked as desolate and as uninviting as a couch could look. There was a huge arm-chair, covered also with the same grey moreen; and there were a few other chairs, hard and dirty. There was a very tall brass fender to the grate, which in itself was large and of generous proportions. There was a chest of drawers, made of mahogany, with brass handles; and a huge wardrobe, almost as big as a small house. I really don’t remember the rest of the furniture of the room, except that there were engravings hanging on the walls, and one in particular portraying Herodias bearing the head of John the Baptist on a charger, hanging exactly over the fireplace. The picture was as ghastly as the room.
“I wouldn’t sleep here for the world,” I said.
“Well, you won’t have the chance,” said Hannah. “Now, you can just go out and make yourself useful somewhere else, while I’m beginning to clean up and get things in order.”