A Little Princess (10 page)

"You will have no time for dolls in future," she said. "You
will have to work and improve yourself and make yourself useful."

Sara kept her big, strange eyes fixed on her, and said not a
word.

"Everything will be very different now," Miss Minchin went on.
"I suppose Miss Amelia has explained matters to you."

"Yes," answered Sara. "My papa is dead. He left me no money. I
am quite poor."

"You are a beggar," said Miss Minchin, her temper rising at the
recollection of what all this meant. "It appears that you have
no relations and no home, and no one to take care of you."

For a moment the thin, pale little face twitched, but Sara again
said nothing.

"What are you staring at?" demanded Miss Minchin, sharply. "Are
you so stupid that you cannot understand? I tell you that you
are quite alone in the world, and have no one to do anything for
you, unless I choose to keep you here out of charity."

"I understand," answered Sara, in a low tone; and there was a
sound as if she had gulped down something which rose in her
throat. "I understand."

"That doll," cried Miss Minchin, pointing to the splendid
birthday gift seated near—"that ridiculous doll, with all her
nonsensical, extravagant things—I actually paid the bill for
her!"

Sara turned her head toward the chair.

"The Last Doll," she said. "The Last Doll." And her little
mournful voice had an odd sound.

"The Last Doll, indeed!" said Miss Minchin. "And she is mine,
not yours. Everything you own is mine."

"Please take it away from me, then," said Sara. "I do not want
it."

If she had cried and sobbed and seemed frightened, Miss Minchin
might almost have had more patience with her. She was a woman
who liked to domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at
Sara's pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little
voice, she quite felt as if her might was being set at naught.

"Don't put on grand airs," she said. "The time for that sort of
thing is past. You are not a princess any longer. Your
carriage and your pony will be sent away—your maid will be
dismissed. You will wear your oldest and plainest clothes—your
extravagant ones are no longer suited to your station. You are
like Becky—you must work for your living."

To her surprise, a faint gleam of light came into the child's
eyes—a shade of relief.

"Can I work?" she said. "If I can work it will not matter so
much. What can I do?"

"You can do anything you are told," was the answer. "You are a
sharp child, and pick up things readily. If you make yourself
useful I may let you stay here. You speak French well, and you
can help with the younger children."

"May I?" exclaimed Sara. "Oh, please let me! I know I can
teach them. I like them, and they like me."

"Don't talk nonsense about people liking you," said Miss
Minchin. "You will have to do more than teach the little ones.
You will run errands and help in the kitchen as well as in the
schoolroom. If you don't please me, you will be sent away.
Remember that. Now go."

Sara stood still just a moment, looking at her. In her young
soul, she was thinking deep and strange things. Then she turned
to leave the room.

"Stop!" said Miss Minchin. "Don't you intend to thank me?"

Sara paused, and all the deep, strange thoughts surged up in her
breast.

"What for?" she said.

"For my kindness to you," replied Miss Minchin. "For my
kindness in giving you a home."

Sara made two or three steps toward her. Her thin little chest
heaved up and down, and she spoke in a strange un-childishly
fierce way.

"You are not kind," she said. "You are NOT kind, and it is NOT a
home." And she had turned and run out of the room before Miss
Minchin could stop her or do anything but stare after her with
stony anger.

She went up the stairs slowly, but panting for breath and she
held Emily tightly against her side.

"I wish she could talk," she said to herself. "If she could
speak—if she could speak!"

She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tiger-skin, with
her cheek upon the great cat's head, and look into the fire and
think and think and think. But just before she reached the
landing Miss Amelia came out of the door and closed it behind
her, and stood before it, looking nervous and awkward. The truth
was that she felt secretly ashamed of the thing she had been
ordered to do.

"You—you are not to go in there," she said.

"Not go in?" exclaimed Sara, and she fell back a pace.

"That is not your room now," Miss Amelia answered, reddening a
little.

Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this
was the beginning of the change Miss Minchin had spoken of.

"Where is my room?" she asked, hoping very much that her voice
did not shake.

"You are to sleep in the attic next to Becky."

Sara knew where it was. Becky had told her about it. She
turned, and mounted up two flights of stairs. The last one was
narrow, and covered with shabby strips of old carpet. She felt
as if she were walking away and leaving far behind her the world
in which that other child, who no longer seemed herself, had
lived. This child, in her short, tight old frock, climbing the
stairs to the attic, was quite a different creature.

When she reached the attic door and opened it, her heart gave a
dreary little thump. Then she shut the door and stood against it
and looked about her.

Yes, this was another world. The room had a slanting roof and
was whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy and had fallen off in
places. There was a rusty grate, an old iron bedstead, and a
hard bed covered with a faded coverlet. Some pieces of furniture
too much worn to be used downstairs had been sent up. Under the
skylight in the roof, which showed nothing but an oblong piece of
dull gray sky, there stood an old battered red footstool. Sara
went to it and sat down. She seldom cried. She did not cry now.
She laid Emily across her knees and put her face down upon her
and her arms around her, and sat there, her little black head
resting on the black draperies, not saying one word, not making
one sound.

And as she sat in this silence there came a low tap at the door—
such a low, humble one that she did not at first hear it, and,
indeed, was not roused until the door was timidly pushed open and
a poor tear-smeared face appeared peeping round it. It was
Becky's face, and Becky had been crying furtively for hours and
rubbing her eyes with her kitchen apron until she looked strange
indeed.

"Oh, miss," she said under her breath. "Might I—would you
allow me—jest to come in?"

Sara lifted her head and looked at her. She tried to begin a
smile, and somehow she could not. Suddenly—and it was all
through the loving mournfulness of Becky's streaming eyes—her
face looked more like a child's not so much too old for her
years. She held out her hand and gave a little sob.

"Oh, Becky," she said. "I told you we were just the same—only
two little girls—just two little girls. You see how true it is.
There's no difference now. I'm not a princess anymore."

Becky ran to her and caught her hand, and hugged it to her
breast, kneeling beside her and sobbing with love and pain.

"Yes, miss, you are," she cried, and her words were all broken.
"Whats'ever 'appens to you—whats'ever—you'd be a princess all
the same—an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different."

The first night she spent in her attic was a thing Sara never
forgot. During its passing she lived through a wild, unchildlike
woe of which she never spoke to anyone about her. There was no
one who would have understood. It was, indeed, well for her that
as she lay awake in the darkness her mind was forcibly
distracted, now and then, by the strangeness of her surroundings.
It was, perhaps, well for her that she was reminded by her small
body of material things. If this had not been so, the anguish of
her young mind might have been too great for a child to bear.
But, really, while the night was passing she scarcely knew that
she had a body at all or remembered any other thing than one.

"My papa is dead!" she kept whispering to herself. "My papa is
dead!"

It was not until long afterward that she realized that her bed
had been so hard that she turned over and over in it to find a
place to rest, that the darkness seemed more intense than any she
had ever known, and that the wind howled over the roof among the
chimneys like something which wailed aloud. Then there was
something worse. This was certain scufflings and scratchings and
squeakings in the walls and behind the skirting boards. She knew
what they meant, because Becky had described them. They meant
rats and mice who were either fighting with each other or playing
together. Once or twice she even heard sharp-toed feet scurrying
across the floor, and she remembered in those after days, when
she recalled things, that when first she heard them she started
up in bed and sat trembling, and when she lay down again covered
her head with the bedclothes.

The change in her life did not come about gradually, but was
made all at once.

"She must begin as she is to go on," Miss Minchin said to Miss
Amelia. "She must be taught at once what she is to expect."

Mariette had left the house the next morning. The glimpse Sara
caught of her sitting room, as she passed its open door, showed
her that everything had been changed. Her ornaments and luxuries
had been removed, and a bed had been placed in a corner to
transform it into a new pupil's bedroom.

When she went down to breakfast she saw that her seat at Miss
Minchin's side was occupied by Lavinia, and Miss Minchin spoke to
her coldly.

"You will begin your new duties, Sara," she said, "by taking
your seat with the younger children at a smaller table. You must
keep them quiet, and see that they behave well and do not waste
their food. You ought to have been down earlier. Lottie has
already upset her tea."

That was the beginning, and from day to day the duties given to
her were added to. She taught the younger children French and
heard their other lessons, and these were the least of her
labors. It was found that she could be made use of in numberless
directions. She could be sent on errands at any time and in all
weathers. She could be told to do things other people neglected.
The cook and the housemaids took their tone from Miss Minchin,
and rather enjoyed ordering about the "young one" who had been
made so much fuss over for so long. They were not servants of
the best class, and had neither good manners nor good tempers,
and it was frequently convenient to have at hand someone on whom
blame could be laid.

During the first month or two, Sara thought that her willingness
to do things as well as she could, and her silence under
reproof, might soften those who drove her so hard. In her proud
little heart she wanted them to see that she was trying to earn
her living and not accepting charity. But the time came when she
saw that no one was softened at all; and the more willing she was
to do as she was told, the more domineering and exacting careless
housemaids became, and the more ready a scolding cook was to
blame her.

If she had been older, Miss Minchin would have given her the
bigger girls to teach and saved money by dismissing an
instructress; but while she remained and looked like a child, she
could be made more useful as a sort of little superior errand
girl and maid of all work. An ordinary errand boy would not have
been so clever and reliable. Sara could be trusted with
difficult commissions and complicated messages. She could even
go and pay bills, and she combined with this the ability to dust
a room well and to set things in order.

Her own lessons became things of the past. She was taught
nothing, and only after long and busy days spent in running here
and there at everybody's orders was she grudgingly allowed to go
into the deserted schoolroom, with a pile of old books, and study
alone at night.

"If I do not remind myself of the things I have learned, perhaps
I may forget them," she said to herself. "I am almost a scullery
maid, and if I am a scullery maid who knows nothing, I shall be
like poor Becky. I wonder if I could QUITE forget and begin to
drop my H'S and not remember that Henry the Eighth had six
wives."

One of the most curious things in her new existence was her
changed position among the pupils. Instead of being a sort of
small royal personage among them, she no longer seemed to be one
of their number at all. She was kept so constantly at work that
she scarcely ever had an opportunity of speaking to any of them,
and she could not avoid seeing that Miss Minchin preferred that
she should live a life apart from that of the occupants of the
schoolroom.

"I will not have her forming intimacies and talking to the other
children," that lady said. "Girls like a grievance, and if she
begins to tell romantic stories about herself, she will become an
ill-used heroine, and parents will be given a wrong impression.
It is better that she should live a separate life—one suited to
her circumstances. I am giving her a home, and that is more than
she has any right to expect from me."

Sara did not expect much, and was far too proud to try to
continue to be intimate with girls who evidently felt rather
awkward and uncertain about her. The fact was that Miss
Minchin's pupils were a set of dull, matter-of-fact young people.
They were accustomed to being rich and comfortable, and as Sara's
frocks grew shorter and shabbier and queerer-looking, and it
became an established fact that she wore shoes with holes in them
and was sent out to buy groceries and carry them through the
streets in a basket on her arm when the cook wanted them in a
hurry, they felt rather as if, when they spoke to her, they were
addressing an under servant.