A Little Princess
"Mr. Carrisford, madam," he said, "was an intimate friend of the late
Captain Crewe. He was his partner in certain large investments. The
fortune which Captain Crewe supposed he had lost has been recovered,
and is now in Mr. Carrisford's hands."
"The fortune!" cried Miss Minchin; and she really lost color as she
uttered the exclamation. "Sara's fortune!"
"It WILL be Sara's fortune," replied Mr. Carmichael, rather coldly. "It
is Sara's fortune now, in fact. Certain events have increased it
enormously. The diamond mines have retrieved themselves."
"The diamond mines!" Miss Minchin gasped out. If this was true,
nothing so horrible, she felt, had ever happened to her since she was
born.
"The diamond mines," Mr. Carmichael repeated, and he could not help
adding, with a rather sly, unlawyer-like smile, "There are not many
princesses, Miss Minchin, who are richer than your little charity
pupil, Sara Crewe, will be. Mr. Carrisford has been searching for her
for nearly two years; he has found her at last, and he will keep her."
After which he asked Miss Minchin to sit down while he explained
matters to her fully, and went into such detail as was necessary to
make it quite clear to her that Sara's future was an assured one, and
that what had seemed to be lost was to be restored to her tenfold;
also, that she had in Mr. Carrisford a guardian as well as a friend.
Miss Minchin was not a clever woman, and in her excitement she was
silly enough to make one desperate effort to regain what she could not
help seeing she had lost through her worldly folly.
"He found her under my care," she protested. "I have done everything
for her. But for me she should have starved in the streets."
Here the Indian gentleman lost his temper.
"As to starving in the streets," he said, "she might have starved more
comfortably there than in your attic."
"Captain Crewe left her in my charge," Miss Minchin argued. "She must
return to it until she is of age. She can be a parlor boarder again.
She must finish her education. The law will interfere in my behalf."
"Come, come, Miss Minchin," Mr. Carmichael interposed, "the law will do
nothing of the sort. If Sara herself wishes to return to you, I dare
say Mr. Carrisford might not refuse to allow it. But that rests with
Sara."
"Then," said Miss Minchin, "I appeal to Sara. I have not spoiled you,
perhaps," she said awkwardly to the little girl; "but you know that
your papa was pleased with your progress. And--ahem--I have always been
fond of you."
Sara's green-gray eyes fixed themselves on her with the quiet, clear
look Miss Minchin particularly disliked.
"Have YOU, Miss Minchin?" she said. "I did not know that."
Miss Minchin reddened and drew herself up.
"You ought to have known it," said she; "but children, unfortunately,
never know what is best for them. Amelia and I always said you were
the cleverest child in the school. Will you not do your duty to your
poor papa and come home with me?"
Sara took a step toward her and stood still. She was thinking of the
day when she had been told that she belonged to nobody, and was in
danger of being turned into the street; she was thinking of the cold,
hungry hours she had spent alone with Emily and Melchisedec in the
attic. She looked Miss Minchin steadily in the face.
"You know why I will not go home with you, Miss Minchin," she said;
"you know quite well."
A hot flush showed itself on Miss Minchin's hard, angry face.
"You will never see your companions again," she began. "I will see
that Ermengarde and Lottie are kept away--"
Mr. Carmichael stopped her with polite firmness.
"Excuse me," he said; "she will see anyone she wishes to see. The
parents of Miss Crewe's fellow-pupils are not likely to refuse her
invitations to visit her at her guardian's house. Mr. Carrisford will
attend to that."
It must be confessed that even Miss Minchin flinched. This was worse
than the eccentric bachelor uncle who might have a peppery temper and
be easily offended at the treatment of his niece. A woman of sordid
mind could easily believe that most people would not refuse to allow
their children to remain friends with a little heiress of diamond
mines. And if Mr. Carrisford chose to tell certain of her patrons how
unhappy Sara Crewe had been made, many unpleasant things might happen.
"You have not undertaken an easy charge," she said to the Indian
gentleman, as she turned to leave the room; "you will discover that
very soon. The child is neither truthful nor grateful. I suppose"--to
Sara--"that you feel now that you are a princess again."
Sara looked down and flushed a little, because she thought her pet
fancy might not be easy for strangers--even nice ones--to understand at
first.
"I--TRIED not to be anything else," she answered in a low voice--"even
when I was coldest and hungriest--I tried not to be."
"Now it will not be necessary to try," said Miss Minchin, acidly, as
Ram Dass salaamed her out of the room.
She returned home and, going to her sitting room, sent at once for Miss
Amelia. She sat closeted with her all the rest of the afternoon, and
it must be admitted that poor Miss Amelia passed through more than one
bad quarter of an hour. She shed a good many tears, and mopped her
eyes a good deal. One of her unfortunate remarks almost caused her
sister to snap her head entirely off, but it resulted in an unusual
manner.
"I'm not as clever as you, sister," she said, "and I am always afraid
to say things to you for fear of making you angry. Perhaps if I were
not so timid it would be better for the school and for both of us. I
must say I've often thought it would have been better if you had been
less severe on Sara Crewe, and had seen that she was decently dressed
and more comfortable. I KNOW she was worked too hard for a child of her
age, and I know she was only half fed--"
"How dare you say such a thing!" exclaimed Miss Minchin.
"I don't know how I dare," Miss Amelia answered, with a kind of
reckless courage; "but now I've begun I may as well finish, whatever
happens to me. The child was a clever child and a good child--and she
would have paid you for any kindness you had shown her. But you didn't
show her any. The fact was, she was too clever for you, and you always
disliked her for that reason. She used to see through us both--"
"Amelia!" gasped her infuriated elder, looking as if she would box her
ears and knock her cap off, as she had often done to Becky.
But Miss Amelia's disappointment had made her hysterical enough not to
care what occurred next.
"She did! She did!" she cried. "She saw through us both. She saw that
you were a hard-hearted, worldly woman, and that I was a weak fool, and
that we were both of us vulgar and mean enough to grovel on our knees
for her money, and behave ill to her because it was taken from
her--though she behaved herself like a little princess even when she
was a beggar. She did--she did--like a little princess!" And her
hysterics got the better of the poor woman, and she began to laugh and
cry both at once, and rock herself backward and forward.
"And now you've lost her," she cried wildly; "and some other school
will get her and her money; and if she were like any other child she'd
tell how she's been treated, and all our pupils would be taken away and
we should be ruined. And it serves us right; but it serves you right
more than it does me, for you are a hard woman, Maria Minchin, you're a
hard, selfish, worldly woman!"
And she was in danger of making so much noise with her hysterical
chokes and gurgles that her sister was obliged to go to her and apply
salts and sal volatile to quiet her, instead of pouring forth her
indignation at her audacity.
And from that time forward, it may be mentioned, the elder Miss Minchin
actually began to stand a little in awe of a sister who, while she
looked so foolish, was evidently not quite so foolish as she looked,
and might, consequently, break out and speak truths people did not want
to hear.
That evening, when the pupils were gathered together before the fire in
the schoolroom, as was their custom before going to bed, Ermengarde
came in with a letter in her hand and a queer expression on her round
face. It was queer because, while it was an expression of delighted
excitement, it was combined with such amazement as seemed to belong to
a kind of shock just received.
"What IS the matter?" cried two or three voices at once.
"Is it anything to do with the row that has been going on?" said
Lavinia, eagerly. "There has been such a row in Miss Minchin's room,
Miss Amelia has had something like hysterics and has had to go to bed."
Ermengarde answered them slowly as if she were half stunned.
"I have just had this letter from Sara," she said, holding it out to
let them see what a long letter it was.
"From Sara!" Every voice joined in that exclamation.
"Where is she?" almost shrieked Jessie.
"Next door," said Ermengarde, "with the Indian gentleman."
"Where? Where? Has she been sent away? Does Miss Minchin know? Was
the row about that? Why did she write? Tell us! Tell us!"
There was a perfect babel, and Lottie began to cry plaintively.
Ermengarde answered them slowly as if she were half plunged out into
what, at the moment, seemed the most important and self-explaining
thing.
"There WERE diamond mines," she said stoutly; "there WERE!" Open mouths
and open eyes confronted her.
"They were real," she hurried on. "It was all a mistake about them.
Something happened for a time, and Mr. Carrisford thought they were
ruined--"
"Who is Mr. Carrisford?" shouted Jessie.
"The Indian gentleman. And Captain Crewe thought so, too--and he died;
and Mr. Carrisford had brain fever and ran away, and HE almost died.
And he did not know where Sara was. And it turned out that there were
millions and millions of diamonds in the mines; and half of them belong
to Sara; and they belonged to her when she was living in the attic with
no one but Melchisedec for a friend, and the cook ordering her about.
And Mr. Carrisford found her this afternoon, and he has got her in his
home--and she will never come back--and she will be more a princess
than she ever was--a hundred and fifty thousand times more. And I am
going to see her tomorrow afternoon. There!"
Even Miss Minchin herself could scarcely have controlled the uproar
after this; and though she heard the noise, she did not try. She was
not in the mood to face anything more than she was facing in her room,
while Miss Amelia was weeping in bed. She knew that the news had
penetrated the walls in some mysterious manner, and that every servant
and every child would go to bed talking about it.
So until almost midnight the entire seminary, realizing somehow that
all rules were laid aside, crowded round Ermengarde in the schoolroom
and heard read and re-read the letter containing a story which was
quite as wonderful as any Sara herself had ever invented, and which had
the amazing charm of having happened to Sara herself and the mystic
Indian gentleman in the very next house.
Becky, who had heard it also, managed to creep up stairs earlier than
usual. She wanted to get away from people and go and look at the
little magic room once more. She did not know what would happen to it.
It was not likely that it would be left to Miss Minchin. It would be
taken away, and the attic would be bare and empty again. Glad as she
was for Sara's sake, she went up the last flight of stairs with a lump
in her throat and tears blurring her sight. There would be no fire
tonight, and no rosy lamp; no supper, and no princess sitting in the
glow reading or telling stories--no princess!