A Little Princess, Page 3

  'Good heavens!' he had said more than once, as he stared at her, 'there are times when I think she is as stupid as her Aunt Eliza!'

  If her Aunt Eliza had been slow to learn and quick to forget a thing entirely when she had learned it, Ermengarde was strikingly like her. She was the monumental dunce of the school, and it could not be denied.

  'She must be made to learn,' her father said to Miss Minchin.

  Consequently Ermengarde spent the greater part of her life in disgrace or in tears. She learned things and forgot them; or, if she remembered them, she did not understand them. So it was natural that, having made Sara's acquaintance, she should sit and stare at her with profound admiration.

  'You can speak French, can't you?' she said respectfully. Sara got on to the window-seat, which was a big, deep one, and, tucking up her feet, sat with her hands clasped round her knees.

  'I can speak it because I have heard it all my life,' she answered. 'You could speak it if you had always heard it.'

  'Oh, no, I couldn't,' said Ermengarde. 'I never could speak it!'

  'Why?' inquired Sara curiously.

  Ermengarde shook her head so that the pigtail wobbled.

  'You heard me just now,' she said. 'I'm always like that. I can't say the words. They're so queer.'

  She paused a moment, and then added with a touch of awe in her voice:

  'You are clever, aren't you?'

  Sara looked out of the window into the dingy square, where the sparrows were hopping and twittering on the wet iron railings and the sooty branches of the trees. She reflected a few moments. She had heard it said very often that she was 'clever', and she wondered if she was - and if she was, how it had happened.

  'I don't know,' she said. 'I can't tell.' Then, seeing a mournful look on the round, chubby face, she gave a little laugh and changed the subject.

  'Would you like to see Emily?' she inquired.

  'Who is Emily?' Ermengarde asked, just as Miss Minchin had done.

  'Come up to my room and see,' said Sara, holding out her hand.

  They jumped down from the window-seat together, and went upstairs.

  'Is it true,' Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall - 'is it true that you have a playroom all to yourself?'

  'Yes,' Sara answered. 'Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have one, because - well, it was because when I play I make up stories and tell them to myself, and I don't like people to hear me. It spoils it if I think people listen.'

  They had reached the passage leading to Sara's room by this time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and quite losing her breath.

  'You make up stories!' she gasped. 'Can you do that - as well as speak French? Can you?'

  Sara looked at her in simple surprise.

  'Why, anyone can make up things,' she said. 'Have you never tried?'

  She put her hand warningly on Ermengarde's.

  'Let us go very quietly to the door,' she whispered, 'and then I will open it quite suddenly; perhaps we may catch her.'

  She was half laughing, but there was a touch of mysterious hope in her eyes which fascinated Ermengarde, though she had not the remotest idea what it meant, or whom it was she wanted to 'catch', or why she wanted to catch her. Whatsoever she meant, Ermengarde was sure it was something delightfully exciting. So, quite thrilled with expectation, she followed her on tiptoe along the passage. They made not the least noise until they reached the door. Then Sara suddenly turned the handle, and threw it wide open. Its opening revealed the room quite neat and quiet, a fire gently burning in the grate, and a wonderful doll sitting in a chair by it, apparently reading a book.

  'Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her!' Sara exclaimed. 'Of course, they always do. They are as quick as lightning.'

  Ermengarde looked from her to the doll and back again.

  'Can she - walk?' she asked breathlessly.

  'Yes,' answered Sara. 'At least, I believe she can. At least, I pretend I believe she can. And that makes it seem as if it were true. Have you never pretended things?'

  'No,' said Ermengarde. 'Never. I - tell me about it.'

  She was so bewitched by this odd, new companion that she actually stared at Sara instead of at Emily - notwithstanding that Emily was the most attractive doll person she had ever seen.

  'Let us sit down,' said Sara, 'and I will tell you. It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always. And it's beautiful. Emily, you must listen. This is Ermengarde St John, Emily. Ermengarde, this is Emily. Would you like to hold her?'

  'Oh, may I?' said Ermengarde. 'May I, really? She is beautiful!' And Emily was put into her arms.

  Never in her dull, short life had Miss St John dreamed of such an hour as the one she spent with the queer new pupil before they heard the lunch-bell ring and were obliged to go downstairs.

  Sara sat upon the hearth-rug and told her strange things. She sat rather huddled up, and her green eyes shone and her cheeks flushed. She told stories of the voyage, and stories of India; but what fascinated Ermengarde the most was her fancy about the dolls who walked and talked, and who could do anything they chose when the human beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a secret and so flew back to their places 'like lightning' when people returned to the room.

  'We couldn't do it,' said Sara seriously. 'You see, it's a kind of magic.'

  Once, when she was relating the story of the search for Emily, Ermengarde saw her face suddenly change. A cloud seemed to pass over it and put out the light in her shining eyes. She drew her breath in so sharply that it made a funny, sad little sound, and then she shut her lips and held them tightly closed, as if she was determined either to do or not to do something. Ermengarde had an idea that if she had been like any other little girl, she might have suddenly burst out sobbing and crying. But she did not.

  'Have you a - a pain?' Ermengarde ventured.

  'Yes,' Sara answered after a moment's silence. 'But it is not in my body.' Then she added something in a low voice which she tried to keep quite steady, and it was this: 'Do you love your father more than anything else in all the whole world?'

  Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little. She knew that it would be far from behaving like a respectable child at a select seminary to say that it had never occurred to you that you could love your father, that you would do anything desperate to avoid being left alone in his society for ten minutes. She was, indeed, greatly embarrassed.

  'I - I scarcely ever see him,' she stammered. 'He is always in the library - reading things.'

  'I love mine more than all the world ten times over,' Sara said. 'That is what my pain is. He has gone away.'

  She put her head quietly down on her little, huddled-up knees, and sat very still for a few minutes.

  'She's going to cry out loud,' thought Ermengarde fearfully.

  But she did not. Her short, black locks tumbled about her ears, and she sat still. Then she spoke without lifting her head.

  'I promised him I would bear it,' she said. 'And I will. You have to bear things. Think what soldiers bear! Papa is a soldier. If there was a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness, and, perhaps, deep wounds. And he would never say a word - not one word.'

  Ermengarde could only gaze at her, but she felt that she was beginning to adore her. She was so wonderful and different from anyone else.

  Presently she lifted her face and shook back her black locks, with a queer little smile.

  'If I go on talking and talking,' she said, 'and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget, but you bear it better.'

  Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat and her eyes felt as if tears were in them.

  'Lavinia and Jessie are "best friends",' she said rather huskily. 'I wish we could be "best friends". Would you have me for yours? You're clever, and I'm the stupidest child in the school, but I - oh, I do so like you!'

  'I'm glad of that,' said Sara. 'It makes
you thankful when you are liked. Yes. We will be friends. And I'll tell you what' - a sudden gleam lighting her face - 'I can help you with your French lessons.'

  4

  Lottie

  If Sara had been a different kind of child, the life she led at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for the next ten years would not have been at all good for her. She was treated more as if she were a distinguished guest at the establishment than as if she were a mere little girl. If she had been a self-opinionated, domineering child, she might have become disagreeable enough to be unbearable through being so much indulged and flattered. If she had been an indolent child, she would have learned nothing. Privately Miss Minchin disliked her, but she was far too worldly a woman to do or say anything which might make such a desirable pupil wish to leave her school. She knew quite well that if Sara wrote to her papa to tell him she was uncomfortable or unhappy, Captain Crewe would remove her at once. Miss Minchin's opinion was that if a child were continually praised and never forbidden to do what she liked, she would be sure to be fond of the place where she was so treated. Accordingly, Sara was praised for her quickness at her lessons, for her good manners, for her amiability to her fellow-pupils, for her generosity if she gave sixpence to a beggar out of her full little purse; the simplest thing she did was treated as if it were a virtue, and if she had not had a disposition and a clever little brain, she might have been a very self-satisfied young person. But the clever little brain told her a great many sensible and true things about herself and her circumstances, and now and then she talked these things over to Ermengarde as time went on.

  'Things happen to people by accident,' she used to say. 'A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just happened that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I don't know' - looking quite serious - 'how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps I'm a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.'

  'Lavinia has no trials,' said Ermengarde stolidly, 'and she is horrid enough.'

  Sara rubbed the end of her little nose reflectively, as she thought the matter over.

  'Well,' she said at last, 'perhaps - perhaps that is because Lavinia is growing.'

  This was the result of a charitable recollection of having heard Miss Amelia say that Lavinia was growing so fast that she believed it affected her health and temper.

  Lavinia, in fact, was spiteful. She was inordinately jealous of Sara. Until the new pupil's arrival, she had felt herself the leader in the school. She had led because she was capable of making herself extremely disagreeable if the others did not follow her. She domineered over the little children, and assumed grand airs with those big enough to be her companions. She was rather pretty, and had been the best-dressed pupil in the procession when the Select Seminary walked out two by two, until Sara's velvet coats and sable muffs appeared, combined with drooping ostrich feathers, and were led by Miss Minchin at the head of the line. This, at the beginning, had been bitter enough; but as time went on it became apparent that Sara was a leader, too, and not because she could make herself disagreeable, but because she never did.

  'There's one thing about Sara Crewe,' Jessie had enraged her 'best friend' by saying honestly - 'she's never "grand" about herself the least bit, and you know she might be, Lavvie. I believe I couldn't help being - just a little - if I had so many fine things and was made such a fuss over. It's disgusting, the way Miss Minchin shows her off when parents come.'

  ' "Dear Sara must come into the drawing-room and talk to Mrs Musgrave about India," ' mimicked Lavinia, in her most highly flavoured imitation of Miss Minchin. ' "Dear Sara must speak French to Lady Pitkin. Her accent is so perfect." She didn't learn her French at the Seminary, at any rate. And there's nothing so clever in her knowing it. She says herself she didn't learn it at all. She just picked it up, because she always heard her papa speak it. And, as to her papa, there is nothing so grand in being an Indian officer.'

  'Well,' said Jessie slowly, 'he's killed tigers. He killed the one in the skin Sara has in her room. That's why she likes it so. She lies on it and strokes its head, and talks to it as if it was a cat.'

  'She's always doing something silly,' snapped Lavinia. 'My mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She says she will grow up eccentric.'

  It was quite true that Sara was never 'grand'. She was a friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings with a free hand. The little ones, who were accustomed to being disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten and twelve, were never made to cry by this most envied of them all. She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or alluded to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small characters.

  'If you are four you are four,' she said severely to Lavinia on an occasion of her having - it must be confessed - slapped Lottie and called her 'a brat'; 'but you will be five next year, and six the year after that. And,' opening large, convincing eyes, 'it only takes sixteen years to make you twenty.'

  'Dear me!' said Lavinia, 'how we can calculate!' In fact, it was not to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty-and twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to dream of.

  So the younger children adored Sara. More than once she had been known to have a tea-party, made up of these despised ones, in her own room. And Emily had been played with, and Emily's own tea-service used - the one with cups which held quite a lot of much-sweetened weak tea and had blue flowers on them. No one had seen such a very real doll's tea-set before. From that afternoon Sara was regarded as a goddess and a queen by the entire alphabet class.

  Lottie Legh worshipped her to such an extent that if Sara had not been a motherly person, she would have found her tiresome. Lottie had been sent to school by a rather flighty young papa who could not imagine what else to do with her. Her young mother had died, and as the child had been treated like a favourite doll or a very spoiled pet monkey or lap-dog ever since the first hour of her life, she was a very appalling little creature. When she wanted anything or did not want anything she wept and howled; and, as she always wanted the things she could not have, and did not want the things that were best for her, her shrill little voice was usually to be heard uplifted in wails in one part of the house or another.

  Her strongest weapon was that in some mysterious way she had found out that a very small girl who had lost her mother was a person who ought to be pitied and made much of. She had probably heard some grown-up people talking her over in the early days, after her mother's death. So it became her habit to make great use of this knowledge.

  The first time Sara took her in charge was one morning when, on passing a sitting-room, she heard both Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia trying to suppress the angry wails of some child who, evidently, refused to be silenced. She refused so strenuously indeed that Miss Minchin was obliged to almost shout - in a stately and severe manner - to make herself heard.

  'What is she crying for?' she almost yelled.

  'Oh - oh - oh!' Sara heard; 'I haven't got any mam - ma-a!'

  'Oh, Lottie!' screamed Miss Amelia. 'Do stop, darling! Don't cry! Please don't!'

  'Oh! oh! oh!' Lottie howled tempestuously. 'Haven't - got - any - mam - ma-a!'

  'She ought to be whipped,' Miss Minchin proclaimed. 'You shall be whipped, you naughty child!'

  Lottie wailed more loudly than ever. Miss Amelia began to cry. Miss Minchin's voice rose until it almost thundered, then suddenly she sprang up from her chair in impotent indignation and flounced out of the ro
om, leaving Miss Amelia to arrange the matter.

  Sara had paused in the hall, wondering if she ought to go into the room, because she had recently begun a friendly acquaintance with Lottie and might be able to quiet her. When Miss Minchin came out and saw her, she looked rather annoyed. She realized that her voice, as heard from inside the room, could not have sounded either dignified or amiable.

  'Oh, Sara!' she exclaimed, endeavouring to produce a suitable smile.

  'I stopped,' explained Sara, 'because I knew it was Lottie - and I thought, perhaps - just perhaps, I could make her be quiet. May I try, Miss Minchin?'

  'If you can. You are a clever child,' answered Miss Minchin, drawing in her mouth sharply. Then, seeing that Sara looked slightly chilled by her asperity, she changed her manner. 'But you are clever in everything,' she said in her approving way. 'I dare say you can manage her. Go in.' And she left her.

  When Sara entered the room, Lottie was lying upon the floor, screaming and kicking her small fat legs violently, and Miss Amelia was bending over her in consternation and despair, looking quite red and damp with heat. Lottie had always found, when in her own nursery at home, that kicking and screaming would always be quieted by any means she insisted on. Poor plump Miss Amelia was trying first one method, and then another.

  'Poor darling!' she said one moment, 'I know you haven't any mamma, poor -' Then in quite another tone: 'If you don't stop, Lottie, I will shake you. Poor little angel! There - there! You wicked, bad, detestable child, I will smack you! I will!'

  Sara went to them quietly. She did not know at all what she was going to do, but she had a vague inward conviction that it would be better not to say such different kinds of things quite so helplessly and excitedly.

  'Miss Amelia,' she said in a low voice, 'Miss Minchin says I may try to make her stop - may I?'

  Miss Amelia turned and looked at her hopelessly. 'Oh, do you think you can?' she gasped.