Dumps – A Plain Girl

“Now then, Miss Rachel, what do you want?” said Hannah. “And I think young gents as ought to be at school ought to keep out of the Professor’s kitchen. That’s what I think.”

“Oh, please, Hannah,” I said, “this gentleman is from over the seas – he comes from Holland, where the beautiful tulips are grown, and his name is Mr Von Marlo.”

“Catch me trying to say a mouthful of a name like that!” was Hannah’s rejoinder.

“He is exceedingly kind,” I continued, “and he is going to help us.”

“Yes, I will help you if you will let me,” said Von Marlo, speaking in his slow and rather distinct way, and not gabbling his words as we English do.

“I want tea and toast and an egg for father; he is waiting for them, and we must hurry,” I said. “Hannah, be as quick as you can.”

“My word,” said Hannah, “what a fuss!”

She was really a kind creature. She must have been good to live with us in that queer old house, for she was actually the only servant we kept. She must have been brave, too, to spend so much of her time in that desolate kitchen and in those black passages, for gas had never been laid on in the bottom portion of the old house, and it smelt very damp, and I am sure the rats had a good time there at night. But Hannah, forty-five years of age, with a freckled face and reddish hair, and high cheek-bones and square shoulders, had never known the meaning of the word fear.

“Ghosts?” she would cry. “Don’t talk nonsense to me! Rats? Well, I guess they’re more afraid of me than I am of them. Loneliness? I’m a sight too busy to be lonely. I does my work, and I eats my vittals, and when bedtime comes I sleeps like a top. I’m fond of the Professor, and proud of him, he’s so cliver; and I’m fond of Miss Rachel, whom I’ve known since she was born, and of the boys, although they be handfuls.”

This was Hannah’s creed; she had no fear, and she was fond of us. But she had a rough tongue, and could be very rude at times, and could make things unpleasant for us children unless we humoured her.

It was Von Marlo, the Dutch boy, who humoured her now. He offered to cut the bread for toast, and he not only offered, but he went boldly to the cupboard, found a loaf, and cut most delicate slices, and set to work toasting them before a clear little fire in a small new range at one end of the kitchen before Hannah had time to expostulate. Then he suggested that father’s egg should be poached, not boiled, and he found a saucepan and put it on the fire and prepared to poach the egg. And when Hannah said, “My, what a fuss!” he found the egg, broke it into the boiling water, poached it beautifully, and put it on the toast. Really, he was a wonderful boy; even Hannah declared that never had she seen his like.

The tea was made fragrant and strong, and we put it on a little tray with a white cloth, and Von Marlo carried it for me up the dark stairs. We reached the hall, and then we stood and faced each other.

“You are going up all those other stairs with that tray?” said Von Marlo. “Then I insist upon carrying it for you.”

“But suppose father should come out? He sometimes does, you know,” I whispered.

“And if he does, what matter?” said Von Marlo. “He won’t eat us! Come along, Miss Rachel.”

I was very glad he did not call me Dumps. He must have heard Hannah call me Miss Rachel, for, as far as the boys were concerned, I might have been christened Dumps, for they never addressed me as anything else.

We went up the stairs, I going first to lead the way, and Von Marlo following, bearing the little tray with its fragrant tea, hot toast, and poached egg. All went well, and nothing would have happened except the pleasant memory of our little adventure if suddenly at the top of the stairs we had not encountered the stern face of father himself. There was gas in that part of the house, and it had been turned on; father looked absolutely black with rage.

“What is the meaning of this?” he said. “Who are you? Von Marlo, I declare! And what, may I ask, are you doing in my house, and venturing up to my rooms, sir? – What is the meaning of this, Rachel? I shall punish you severely. – Go downstairs, sir; go down at once, and leave the house.”

If it had been Squibs, even had it been Alex or Charley, I think he would have turned at once at the sight of that angry, very fierce face; but Von Marlo was like Hannah – he knew no fear. He said quietly, “You are mistaken, sir; I have done nothing that I should be ashamed of. Your son, Mr Alex, invited me to come into the house, and he also invited me to have tea downstairs. Your daughter went to the kitchen to prepare your tea, and I offered to assist her. It is a way we have in my country, sir, to assist the ladies when they have more to do than they can well accomplish. It is the way we gentlemen act, Professor.”

There was something so quaint in Von Marlo’s utterance that even father was appeased. He murmured, “I forgot you were a foreigner. Well then, thanks; but go away now, for goodness’ sake. – Rachel, take the tea into my bedroom. – Von Marlo, you must go; I cannot have any one in my house this evening; my head is very bad.”

“Good-bye, Mr Von Marlo,” I said; “and thank you, thank you.”

Von Marlo boldly took my hand in the presence of father, and then bolted downstairs, I regret to say, with extreme noise; for, notwithstanding his gentlemanly manners, his boots were thick and rough, and the stairs were destitute of carpets.

“Lay the tea on the table, Rachel,” said my father.

He pushed his hands through his hair, which now seemed to stand up on his head and gave him a wild appearance.

“What does this mean? Tell me at once. Speak, Rachel.”

“I think Mr Von Marlo explained, father. I am awfully sorry. I did ask Agnes and Rita Swan to tea this evening. You said – or at least you never said that I wasn’t to ask them.”

“I never gave you leave to ask any one. How dare you invite people to my house without my permission?”

“I am lonely sometimes, father.”

I said the words in a sad voice; I could not help it; there was a lump in my throat. Father gazed at me, and all of a sudden his manner altered. He seated himself in a chair, and motioned to me to take another. He pulled the little tray with the nice tea towards him, poured out a cup, and drank it. Then he looked at the poached egg, put on his glasses, and gazed at it more fixedly.

“That’s a queer sort of thing,” he said; and then he ate it with considerable relish. “It’s very good,” he said when he had finished it. “Who did it?”

“Mr Von Marlo.”

“Rachel, you must be mad!”

“No, father; he isn’t an English boy, you know. He helped me; he is a very nice boy.”

My father sank back in his chair, and suddenly, to my amazement and relief, he burst into a roar of laughter.

“Well, well!” he said, “I admit that I was in a temper; and I was rude to the lad, too. If you ever have headaches like mine you will get into passions too, Rachel. Pray that you may never have them; my misery is something too awful; and when I saw that lad, with his great dark head, and that hair of his coming straight down to his eyebrows, marching up the stairs with you, I really thought a burglar had got into the house. But, after all, it was only the Dutch lad, and he is clever enough, and doesn’t know our English customs. And to think that he poached an egg!”

“And he made the toast, father.”

My father laughed again.

“Whatever he did, he has cured my headache,” was his next remark; “I feel as right as a trivet. I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll turn those lads out, and those girls.”

“But, father – father darling – they have come by invitation. It isn’t their fault.”

My father took my hand.

“So you are lonely, Dumps?” he said. “And why in the world should you be lonely?”

“I want friends,” I said. “I want some one to love me.”

“All women make that sort of cry,” was his next remark. He pulled me close to him and raised my head and looked into my face.

“You have a nice little face of your own,” he said, “and some day you will find – But, pshaw! why talk nonsense to the child? How old are you, Dumps?”

“I’ll be sixteen in six months,” I said. “It is a long way off to have a birthday, but it will come in six months.”

“And then you’ll be seventeen, and then eighteen, and, hey presto! you’ll be a woman. My goodness, child! put off the evil day as long as you can. Keep a child as long as possible.”

“But, father, most children are happy.”

“And you are not? Good gracious me! what more do you want?”

“I don’t know, father; but it seems to me that I want something.”

“Well, look here, you want girls about you, do you?”