A Little Princess: Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time

…

Even by that time it seemed to Sara as if the birthday party had either been a dream or a thing which had happened years ago, and had happened in the life of quite another little girl.

Every sign of the festivities had been swept away; the holly had been removed from the school-room walls, and the forms and desks put back into their places. Miss Minchin’s sitting-room looked as it always did – all traces of the feast were gone, and Miss Minchin had resumed her usual dress. The pupils had been ordered to lay aside their party frocks; and this having been done, they had returned to the school-room and huddled together in groups, whispering and talking excitedly.

“Tell Sara to come to my room,” Miss Minchin had said to her sister. “And explain to her clearly that I will have no crying or unpleasant scenes.”

“Sister,” replied Miss Amelia, “she is the strangest child I ever saw. She has actually made no fuss at all. You remember she made none when Captain Crewe went back to India. When I told her what had happened, she just stood quite still and looked at me without making a sound. Her eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger, and she went quite pale. When I had finished, she still stood staring for a few seconds, and then her chin began to shake, and she turned round and ran out of the room and up-stairs. Several of the other children began to cry, but she did not seem to hear them or to be alive to anything but just what I was saying. It made me feel quite queer not to be answered; and when you tell anything sudden and strange, you expect people will say something– whatever it is.”

Nobody but Sara herself ever knew what had happened in her room after she had run up-stairs and locked her door. In fact, she herself scarcely remembered anything but that she walked up and down, saying over and over again to herself in a voice which did not seem her own:

“My papa is dead! My papa is dead!”

Once she stopped before Emily, who sat watching her from her chair, and cried out wildly:

“Emily! Do you hear? Do you hear – papa is dead? He is dead in India – thousands of miles away.”

When she came into Miss Minchin’s sitting-room in answer to her summons, her face was white and her eyes had dark rings around them. Her mouth was set as if she did not wish it to reveal what she had suffered and was suffering. She did not look in the least like the rose-colored butterfly child who had flown about from one of her treasures to the other in the decorated school-room. She looked instead a strange, desolate, almost grotesque little figure.

She had put on, without Mariette’s help, the cast-aside black-velvet frock. It was too short and tight, and her slender legs looked long and thin, showing themselves from beneath the brief skirt. As she had not found a piece of black ribbon, her short, thick, black hair tumbled loosely about her face and contrasted strongly with its pallor. She held Emily tightly in one arm, and Emily was swathed in a piece of black material.

“Put down your doll,” said Miss Minchin. “What do you mean by bringing her here?”

“No,” Sara answered. “I will not put her down. She is all I have. My papa gave her to me.”

She had always made Miss Minchin feel secretly uncomfortable, and she did so now. She did not speak with rudeness so much as with a cold steadiness with which Miss Minchin felt it difficult to cope – perhaps because she knew she was doing a heartless and inhuman thing.

“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 school-room. 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, unchildishly 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 down-stairs 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 any more.”

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.”

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE ATTIC

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 any one 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 some one 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 school-room, 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 school-room.

“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.

“To think that she was the girl with the diamond-mines,” Lavinia commented. “She does look like an object. And she’s queerer than ever. I never liked her much, but I can’t bear that way she has now of looking at people without speaking – just as if she was finding them out.”

“I am,” said Sara, promptly, when she heard of this. “That’s what I look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think about them over afterward.”

The truth was that she had saved herself annoyance several times by keeping her eye on Lavinia, who was quite ready to make mischief, and would have been rather pleased to have made it for the ex-show pupil.

Sara never made any mischief herself, or interfered with any one. She worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, carrying parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the little ones’ French lessons; as she became shabbier and more forlorn-looking, she was told that she had better take her meals down-stairs; she was treated as if she was nobody’s concern, and her heart grew proud and sore, but she never told any one what she felt.

“Soldiers don’t complain,” she would say between her small, shut teeth. “I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.”

But there were hours when her child heart might almost have broken with loneliness but for three people.

The first, it must be owned, was Becky – just Becky. Throughout all that first night spent in the garret, she had felt a vague comfort in knowing that on the other side of the wall in which the rats scuffled and squeaked there was another young human creature. And during the nights that followed the sense of comfort grew. They had little chance to speak to each other during the day. Each had her own tasks to perform, and any attempt at conversation would have been regarded as a tendency to loiter and lose time.

“Don’t mind me, miss,” Becky whispered during the first morning, “if I don’t say nothin’ polite. Some un ’d be down on us if I did. I means ‘please’ an’ ‘thank you’ an’ ‘beg pardon,’ but I dassn’t to take time to say it.”

But before daybreak she used to slip into Sara’s attic and button her dress and give her such help as she required before she went down-stairs to light the kitchen fire. And when night came Sara always heard the humble knock at her door which meant that her handmaid was ready to help her again if she was needed. During the first weeks of her grief Sara felt as if she were too stupefied to talk, so it happened that some time passed before they saw each other much or exchanged visits. Becky’s heart told her that it was best that people in trouble should be left alone.

The second of the trio of comforters was Ermengarde, but odd things happened before Ermengarde found her place.

When Sara’s mind seemed to awaken again to the life about her, she realized that she had forgotten that an Ermengarde lived in the world. The two had always been friends, but Sara had felt as if she were years the older. It could not be contested that Ermengarde was as dull as she was affectionate. She clung to Sara in a simple, helpless way; she brought her lessons to her that she might be helped; she listened to her every word and besieged her with requests for stories. But she had nothing interesting to say herself, and she loathed books of every description. She was, in fact, not a person one would remember when one was caught in the storm of a great trouble, and Sara forgot her.

It had been all the easier to forget her because she had been suddenly called home for a few weeks. When she came back she did not see Sara for a day or two, and when she met her for the first time she encountered her coming down a corridor with her arms full of garments which were to be taken down-stairs to be mended. Sara herself had already been taught to mend them. She looked pale and unlike herself, and she was attired in the queer, outgrown frock whose shortness showed so much thin black leg.

Ermengarde was too slow a girl to be equal to such a situation. She could not think of anything to say. She knew what had happened, but, somehow, she had never imagined Sara could look like this – so odd and poor and almost like a servant. It made her quite miserable, and she could do nothing but break into a short hysterical laugh and exclaim – aimlessly and as if without any meaning:

“Oh, Sara! is that you?”

“Yes,” answered Sara, and suddenly a strange thought passed through her mind and made her face flush.

She held the pile of garments in her arms, and her chin rested upon the top of it to keep it steady. Something in the look of her straight-gazing eyes made Ermengarde lose her wits still more. She felt as if Sara had changed into a new kind of girl, and she had never known her before. Perhaps it was because she had suddenly grown poor and had to mend things and work like Becky.

“Oh,” she stammered. “How – how are you?”

“I don’t know,” Sara replied. “How are you?”

“I’m – I’m quite well,” said Ermengarde, overwhelmed with shyness. Then spasmodically she thought of something to say which seemed more intimate. “Are you – are you very unhappy?” she said in a rush.

Then Sara was guilty of an injustice. Just at that moment her torn heart swelled within her, and she felt that if any one was as stupid as that, one had better get away from her.

“What do you think?” she said. “Do you think I am very happy?” and she marched past her without another word.

In course of time she realized that if her wretchedness had not made her forget things, she would have known that poor, dull Ermengarde was not to be blamed for her unready, awkward ways. She was always awkward, and the more she felt, the more stupid she was given to being.

But the sudden thought which had flashed upon her had made her over-sensitive.

“She is like the others,” she had thought. “She does not really want to talk to me. She knows no one does.”

So for several weeks a barrier stood between them. When they met by chance Sara looked the other way, and Ermengarde felt too stiff and embarrassed to speak. Sometimes they nodded to each other in passing, but there were times when they did not even exchange a greeting.

“If she would rather not talk to me,” Sara thought, “I will keep out of her way. Miss Minchin makes that easy enough.”

Miss Minchin made it so easy that at last they scarcely saw each other at all. At that time it was noticed that Ermengarde was more stupid than ever, and that she looked listless and unhappy. She used to sit in the window-seat, huddled in a heap, and stare out of the window without speaking. Once Jessie, who was passing, stopped to look at her curiously.

“What are you crying for, Ermengarde?” she asked.

“I’m not crying,” answered Ermengarde, in a muffled, unsteady voice.

“You are,” said Jessie. “A great big tear just rolled down the bridge of your nose and dropped off at the end of it. And there goes another.”

“Well,” said Ermengarde, “I’m miserable – and no one need interfere.” And she turned her plump back and took out her handkerchief and boldly hid her face in it.

That night, when Sara went to her attic, she was later than usual. She had been kept at work until after the hour at which the pupils went to bed, and after that she had gone to her lessons in the lonely school-room. When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised to see a glimmer of light coming from under the attic door.