The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel

"I keep my eyes wide open," said Sally, "as wide as wide can be, and the things come out of the darkness to meet me. Jist look; I can walk all about, without touching a thing."

Sally brought this to proof by winding her way quickly about the dark room, round the table, in and out of the chairs, round the aquarium, and all with such precision and anxious desire to please as could not fail to elicit approval.

"You're a cunning little sinner," said Seth, "and I don't doubt that we shall get along pretty well together."

CHAPTER XI

"Sally," said Seth Dumbrick, a fortnight afterwards; "I'm beginning to be bothered in my mind."

It was night. Seth was playing "patience" with a very old and very greasy pack of cards. Sally was doing her best to mend her baby's clothes; she was as yet but an indifferent workgirl with the needle. It was not an unpleasant sight to see her taking her stitches, with knitted brow, and pursed-up lips, as though the fate of an empire was in the balance every time she dug her needle in and drew it out again. She had commenced the battle of life very early, but she had put on her armour with great cheerfulness and contentment, and was perhaps at the present moment the happiest little girl in Rosemary Lane. Her baby was asleep on the ground, comfortably covered over.

"I'm beginning to be bothered in my mind," said Seth.

Sally, ready for the bestowal of sympathy, looked up from her work.

"About what?" she asked.

"Many things. That trance of yours, to begin with. It didn't go far enough. Now, I ask you, as a prophetess-do you consider it an out-and-out prophecy?"

The grave air he assumed would have deceived a much riper intellect than Sally's. She prepared to discuss the matter seriously.

"It all come true, Mr. Dumbrick."

"No doubt of that-here you are in proof of it, and there's your father in the hospital, and there's your mother managing the workhouse in the country. It was good enough as far as it went, but it has come to an end already, and there's no more to look forward to. That's what I call not satisfactory."

"No, Mr. Dumbrick?"

"No, Sally Chester. The spirits that came to Joanna when she went off that way beat Pharaoh hollow. He couldn't hold a candle to 'em."

Much distressed by this depreciatory criticism, Sally said:

"It was Pharer's first go, Mr. Dumbrick. Perhaps he wasn't quite up to the business."

For the life of him Seth could not repress a laugh.

"There's something in that, Sally. Practice makes perfect, sure. Now, you couldn't sole and heel a pair o' boots the first time of asking; but you'd manage it in a year or two, with plenty of teaching. But about those spirits of Joanna's; they told all sorts o' things about the future, and they were always at it. And Joanna lived to be an old woman, and to the last day of her life she kept trancing away. Now, you've only had one trance, Sally."

"Yes, Mr. Dumbrick," assented Sally, with a troubled mind, "only one."

"And it doesn't seem likely that you'll have another."

"Yes, it does-yes, it does. I've felt it coming on more than once."

"How does it feel, Sally?" inquired Seth, with an open chuckle.

"A kind o' creepy like, and everything going round."

"That sounds well."

"What is it you want to know, Mr. Dumbrick?"

"Well, there's baby, Sally. She won't be a baby all her life. She'll grow up to be a woman-so will you."

Sally nodded, and listened with all her soul in her ears.

"She has no name except Baby, and it stands to reason that that won't do all along. We must find something else to call her by; it won't be fair to her otherwise, and she wouldn't thank us for it when she grows up. It'd never do to have her grow up ungrateful, and to fly at us for not giving her what everybody else has got."

"Oh! no-never, never! But she'll love us always-you'll see if she won't."

"Don't you set your mind too much on it. Perhaps our baby'll see somebody by-and-by that she'll love better than you or me, and then we shall go to the wall. We're like fiddles, Sally, and Nature's the fiddler, and plays on us."

Open-eyed, and mentally as well as physically wide awake, Sally listened without exactly understanding, but dimly conscious that something very fine was being propounded to her.

"There are not many strings in us, Sally, but, Lord! the number o' tunes that Nature plays on us! And we go through life dancing to 'em, or hobbling to 'em, as the case may be. As this little picture'll do, according to the kind of music that comes to her. As for what takes place when Nature's played her last tune on us, that's beyond you and me, Sally."

"Yes, Mr. Dumbrick," assented Sally, feeling it incumbent upon her to say something, but groping now in such dark depths that she saw no way out of them.

Seth's next utterances, however, brought a little light to her.

"In all that, there are certain things-not many-that we may fairly take credit for. You've got a big heart in a little body. I'd wager my cobbler's stall that I'm going to sit on in the clouds when your dream comes true-I'd wager that to a brass thimble that if you had only one bit o' bread, and you was hungry as you could be, you'd give it to baby, if she cried for it."

Two or three bright tears glistened in Sally's eyes, which Seth accepted as confirmation.

"Take credit for that, Sally."

"Thank you, Mr. Dumbrick," said Sally gratefully, satisfied with this reward of good words for good intentions.

"I'm going to take credit, too, Sally. I'm going to teach you and baby to read and write."

"O! Mr. Dumbrick!"

"That's as much as a real father could do. Reading's a grand thing, Sally. We've much to be thankful for. Be thankful, Sally."

"I am, Mr. Dumbrick, I am, oh, so much!"

"I don't like that mister, Sally."

"No?" questioned Sally, for ever on the alert to discover her guardian's likes or dislikes.

"It's too much like company manners. Now that we're comfortably settled we ought to be more sociable. Call me Dad, or Daddy, or Daddy Dumbrick. Your tongue'll soon get used to it."

"Yes, Mr. – Dad-dy Dumbrick."

Sally's tongue tripped so comically over the new terms that she laughed, and Seth grimly joined in the merriment.

"We soon get used to things, Sally. Once on a time we usedn't to live in houses."

"In what, then, Daddy Dumbrick?"

"In tents and forests and fields and that like."

"As the gipsies do," cried Sally. "I've seed 'em. Mother took me to a fair once."

"Now we live in garrets and cellars, and sweet-smelling habitations."

Sally looked dubious. Many of the houses round about Rosemary Lane were far from sweet-smelling, and she could not realise the advantage of the present over the past of which Seth was evidently boasting. To live in a tent in forest or field was a dream of Elysium to her, with flowers growing around her home and green grass waving. Too good for earth.

"Once on a time," continued Seth, "we couldn't read; now we can. Once on a time we weren't civilised; now we are. We've much more to be thankful for than we know of. This is the age of enlightenment, Sally, and the best thing I can do is to give you your first lesson."

Sally hastily put aside her work, and kneeling by baby's side stooped and kissed her. Seth, who had risen in search of a book, looked down upon the children.

"Don't you forget, Sally, what I said about you're going off in a trance. No, no, Sally!" he cried, putting his hand to his side to restrain his merriment; "not now. Don't you go fainting dead away now; we've got something else to do."

"I wasn't going to, Daddy," said Sally timorously, and with something like a blush on her thin, sallow face.

"Bravo, Sally; there's some lessons you know without being able to read-to tell the truth when it's necessary, and to tell the other thing when it's necessary. You little sinner, you! You've the gumption of twenty grown-up women in that little carcase of yours. Here's a book with large print. It belonged to my mother."

He brought forward a great heavy quarto with old broken clasps, and opened it.

"I shall read out loud the first few words and then you shall learn the letters one by one. Keep your eyes and your mind open and come closer."

So saying, Seth, taking the forefinger of Sally's right hand as a marker, read slowly the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

CHAPTER XII

Seth Dumbrick never raised his eyes from his work the next morning when Sally Chester, who had been standing silently by his side for full five minutes, suddenly said:

"Pharer come agin last night, Daddy."

"I thought he would, Sally."

"'Baby must have a name given to her,' says Pharer, and it's got to be done proper.' 'What name?' says I. 'I don't know,' says Pharer-"

"Not much of a spirit," murmured Seth; "not by any means what I should call a tiptop spirit."

"'There's only one man,' says Pharer," continued Sally, somewhat discomposed, "'as can give baby a proper name, and that man's Daddy Dumbrick.'"

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Seth. "He knows my new title already."

"Spirits know everythink," observed Sally oracularly. "Then Pharer takes me downstairs. And it's night, and there's more than one candle alight; and the fish in the quarian is swimming about, wide awake, salamanders and all; and there's a party."

Seth gave a long, soft whistle. "That's a mistake, Sally. There couldn't be a party."

"There was," said Sally positively.

"Men and women?"

"No; boys and gals."

"Ah, ah! That's bad enough, but it's better than t'other."

"There was Jane Preedy, and Betsy Newbiggin, and Ann Taylor, and Jimmy Platt, and a lot more, all dressed out; and there was baby dressed out splendider than all of 'em put together, and there was me, and you."

"What was I doing?"

"You was giving baby a name. 'And mind,' says Pharer, baby's a little lady, and she's got to have a grand name, better than mine, or your'n, or anybody else's.'"

"When was this party given, Sally?"

"The party was given next Monday," replied Sally in utter defiance of all natural rules and laws, "next Monday as ever was."

"It must be done, I suppose," said Seth, with a sigh of comical resignation, "or Pharaoh'll never come to you again."

"Never," declared Sally.

"Then there's no help for it. You can ask all the little ragamuffins in the neighbourhood to the christening."

"O, Daddy, you are good-you are good!" and out of the depth of her gratitude Sally put her arms round Seth's neck, and kissed him half-a-dozen times without meeting with any opposition.

In good truth Seth was enjoying this new state of things, and would not have liked, now that he had tasted the sweets of companionship, to be compelled to relapse into his old ways. There was nothing to regret in his past life; he had never loved, and therefore had no melancholy remembrance to make the present bitter. He had contracted neither violent friendships nor violent enmities. He had never been wronged-which frequently leads a generous nature to misanthropy; he had never wronged-which often leads to meanness many a nature capable of higher development. Thus, having escaped rocks upon which other men are wrecked, or soured, or embittered for life, he found himself a middle-aged man, the tenderest chords of whose nature had never till now been touched.

Sally's kisses thrilled him tenderly. He did not return them, nor did he exhibit any feeling, but every pulse of his being responded to this mark of affection.

"Daddy," said Sally.

"Yes, Sal."

"You're sure?"

"About next Monday? Oh, yes. We'll have the christening."

"I want to tell you somethink."

"Out with it."

"I've got two shillings."

"Saved up in my frock. Feel 'em."

Seth felt them.

"Mother give 'em to me before she went away. I may spend 'em, mayn't I?"

"For the christening?"

"For baby."

"Well, no; I should say not. Here's two shillings more; spend them, and keep yours."

"But I want to-I want to! It's my money, and I want to spend it on baby."

"You're an obstinate little sinner," said Seth, after some consideration, "but it appears to me that you've generally a reason for what you do. So do it. You can take my money as well, and spend it all if you like."

"We'll have a regular feast," said Sally gleefully.

Issuing forth the next morning, Sally commenced operations. The first acquaintance she met was Betsy Newbiggin. Betsy was pursuing her usual avocation of selling liquorice-water, at the rate of two teaspoonfuls for one pin. This industrious trader was a genius in her way, and displayed unusual qualifications for driving a good bargain. The bosom of her frock was half full of pins, and she trotted about with her breastplate as proud as an Indian of his trophy of scalps.

Not often did Betsy Newbiggin meet with her match in the way of trade, but she met with it this morning, in Sally. Our little sallow-faced mother had the natural cravings of a daughter of Eve for sweet things, and she cast a longing glance at Betsy's bottle of liquorice-water. Betsy observing the glance, scented a customer, and she carelessly shook the bottle two or three times, and removing the paper cork applied it to her tongue with an air of great enjoyment.

"Is it nice, Betsy?" inquired Sally anxiously.

"I should rather think it was," replied Betsy, placing the bottle close to Sally's nose; "smell it. How many pins have yer got?"

Sally passed her hand over the bosom of her frock, and found never a pin.

"Trust us," pleaded Sally.

Betsy laughed scornfully, and made a feint of moving away to more profitable pastures.

"Stop a bit, Betsy," cried Sally, "I want to tell you somethink. I live at Mr. Dumbrick's, you know-me and my baby. And, oh! it's such a place! There never was nothink like it. It's full of the most beautifullest things as ever was, and there's a large glass river with all sorts of fish a swimming about-wouldn't you like to see it?"

"I'd like to," said Betsy.

"It's better than a show, and Mr. Dumbrick he tells such stories-wouldn't you like to hear 'em?"

"I'd like to," repeated Betsy.

"Well, now," said Sally in unconscious imitation of Seth Dumbrick's manner of speaking, "I don't know. Perhaps I'll let you-perhaps I won't. Will you trust us two pins'orth?"

"Yes, I will, I will," exclaimed Betsy eagerly, and measured out four teaspoonfuls of the precious beverage, and gave full measure, mainly in consequence of Sally's watchful eyes being upon her. Long parleying took place thereafter between the cunning and wily Sally and the shrewd but in this instance over-reached Betsy, for before they parted, Sally had emptied every drop of liquorice-water in the bottle, and had besides wheedled Betsy out of twelve pins, to be returned at some remote and convenient period. But Betsy had her reward, in perspective, for she received the first invitation to the feast on Monday evening, in Seth's cellar, and she departed in a glow of triumph to boast of the invitation to her acquaintance. There is no person in the world, however insignificant or humble, who does not build for himself a dunghill upon which he delights to crow, to the exaltment of himself and the depreciation of his neighbours.

By noon all Sally's invitations were issued by word of mouth; and the news spreading with amazing rapidity, the excitement among the juvenile population of Rosemary Lane became most intense. Those who were invited walked about with pride and superiority in their bearing, and those who were not were proportionately humbled and vexed. The circumstance that Seth Dumbrick, the hermit, the crab, had consented to receive in his cave a certain number of children, and to give them a feast, was really an event in the neighbourhood, and even some of the grown-up people said they would like to go to the party.

The eventful evening arrived, and Seth, sitting in his stall, received his guests, and passed them down to Sally. The first to arrive was Betsy Newbiggin; then followed Ann Taylor, Jimmy Platt, Jane Preedy, Young Stumpy, and others, making in all a round dozen.

The cellar presented a splendid appearance. Everything was polished up, the hearth was whitened, the stove was blackened. There was not a speck on the glass of the aquarium; but this latter attraction was covered with a blanket. Seth, who, during the day, had refused to come into the dwelling-room, knowing that Sally was busy, and wished to give him a surprise, gazed around with satisfaction. His eyes meeting Sally's, which were watching him anxiously, he patted her approvingly on the shoulder, which caused her to colour with pleasure. When Seth made his appearance among his guests, they were all demurely seated on two benches which Sally had found in the back yard, and cleaned for the occasion. They were a very respectable party indeed, and behaved themselves quite genteelly. They were in holiday attire too, for, duly impressed with the importance of the event, they had taken pains to personally adorn themselves with any little oddment they could lay their hands on. True, that in some instances the will had to be taken for the deed; as in the case of Young Stumpy, the rents in whose garments would not admit of the entire concealment of his shirt, which peeped out in unwarrantable places, and who was much distressed by his companions slyly pulling at it, and further exposing him; and in the case of Jane Preedy, one of whose feet was buried in a very large old shoe, and the other squeezed into a boot too small to admit of lacing up. But for the matter of that, Sally Chester, if brought before a jury, would have been found guilty of rents, tatters, and incongruities in her attire; so busy had she been that-without inquiring as to whether she had the means-she had no time to make herself smart. On the table were displayed threepennyworth of oranges cut into very small pieces, threepennyworth of whitey-brown seedcakes, threepennyworth of the delectable cake known as the jumble, and threepennyworth of expressionless men and women and blatant cocks and hens fashioned out of the native gingerbread of the neighbourhood. Upon this splendid feast the eyes of the company were eagerly fixed, wandering occasionally away to the dark corners of the cellar and to the blanket which concealed the fish in the aquarium.

"Where's baby, Sally?" asked Seth.

"Not yet, please," said Sally imploringly. "May we commence, Daddy?"

"Yes."

The entertainment was opened by the drawing up of the curtain, or rather by the withdrawal of the blanket from the aquarium, and the sudden and brilliant display of fish swimming about caused a chorus of Oh's! of all shapes and sizes to issue from the throats of the delighted guests. Entering at once into the humour of the affair, Seth Dumbrick constituted himself showman, and proceeded to point out the different fish to the audience, who thronged around the lecturer, and listened open-mouthed to the wonderful things he told them. He took advantage, it must be confessed, of the limited knowledge of his hearers, and imposed upon them as the veriest mountebank would have done. Marvellous were the qualities of the water-beetles; dreadful were the stories he told of the voracious silver pike, saying how fortunate it was that there was not room for them to grow in the aquarium, or there was no telling what would occur; the gold and silver fish were real gold and silver-"Do you think I'd keep sham ones?" he asked, receiving vociferous vindication of his genuineness in the answers: "In course not, Mr. Dumbrick;" "Not you, Mr. Dumbrick;" – and as for the salamanders, which they gazed upon with a kind of horrible fascination, he explained how that fire wouldn't burn them, and expressed his opinion-with downward pointing finger-that they come from the place where wicked boys and girls went to, unless they saw the error of their ways, and repented in good time. So impressed with gloomy forebodings were the guests-all of whom, according to the oft-repeated testimony of their nearest relations, were as bad as bad could be-at this peroration to Seth Dumbrick's discourse, that it was found necessary to revive their sinking spirits. This was successfully accomplished by a circulation of the oranges and cakes, after discussing a portion of which they became the most defiant of young sinners, and figuratively snapped their fingers at fate. Then the principal feature of the evening was heralded by Sally, who, retiring into the recess which had been partitioned off for her sleeping apartment, returned in triumph with baby.

Holding Sally by the hand, she walked in like a little queen.

Of Sally's four shillings, one had been spent on the pleasures of the table; the remaining three had been expended on the child's dress. Heaven only knows what had influenced Sally in her whim, but from the moment she had obtained Seth Dumbrick's permission to hold the feast, she had run about from shop to shop, and street to street, hunting up cheap little bits of finery with which to deck her treasure for the important occasion. Small remnants of silk, bits of ribbon, faded artificial flowers, whatever her eye lighted on in rag and second-hand clothes' shops in the way of colour, Sally had purchased, cheapening and bargaining for them with the zeal and tact of a grown-up woman. The result was a great heap of odds and ends, which Sally had washed, and ironed, and pieced, and patched, with so much industry and ingenuity that her treasure-baby looked like a May-day Queen or an oddly-assorted rainbow. There was no harmony of design in the fashioning or arrangement of the dress, but the general effect was so pretty and unexpected, and the child's face, flushed with pleasure and excitement, was so beautiful, that her appearance in the cellar was like the revelation of a bright cloud, and Seth Dumbrick held his breath for a moment or two in wonder and admiration. The guests clapped their hands in unrestrained delight, and the child, standing in the midst of her admiring audience, received their applause with perfect grace-as though she was used to this sort of thing, and it was naturally her due. There was a rosy glow in her fair cheeks, her flaxen hair hung upon her shoulders like golden silk, her blue eyes sparkled with beauty. Sally stood by her side, like a little sallow gipsy. Seth drew the two children aside, and lifted them on his knees.

"Sally," he said, "you're a little wonder."

"No, no," protested Sally; "she is. I ain't nobody. That's the way I saw her in my dream. You've got to give her a name, you know."

"It's a puzzle, Sally. There's no name I'm acquainted with that would match her."

"But you've got to do it."

"Didn't Pharer say anything about it?"

Sally considered.

"Pharer's a king. She's good enough to be a queen."

"We've got one Queen, Sal, and those that have seen her say she's pretty, too. There's princesses and duchesses-"

"A duchess, a duchess!" cried Sally, clapping her hands. "If she can't be a queen, make her a duchess!"

"So be it, Sally. We'll call her a duchess. The Duchess of Rosemary Lane."

Sally slid off his knees, and brought a cup of water. "You must sprinkle her, you know. That's the way. Now no one can't call her nothink else."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Seth, addressing the company with mock dignity, "allow me to present to you the Duchess of Rosemary Lane."