A Little Princess (3 page)

"I—I have never really learned French, but—but—" she began,
trying shyly to make herself clear.

One of Miss Minchin's chief secret annoyances was that she did
not speak French herself, and was desirous of concealing the
irritating fact. She, therefore, had no intention of discussing
the matter and laying herself open to innocent questioning by a
new little pupil.

"That is enough," she said with polite tartness. "If you have
not learned, you must begin at once. The French master, Monsieur
Dufarge, will be here in a few minutes. Take this book and look
at it until he arrives."

Sara's cheeks felt warm. She went back to her seat and opened
the book. She looked at the first page with a grave face. She
knew it would be rude to smile, and she was very determined not
to be rude. But it was very odd to find herself expected to
study a page which told her that "le pere" meant "the father,"
and "la mere" meant "the mother."

Miss Minchin glanced toward her scrutinizingly.

"You look rather cross, Sara," she said. "I am sorry you do not
like the idea of learning French."

"I am very fond of it," answered Sara, thinking she would try
again; "but—"

"You must not say 'but' when you are told to do things," said
Miss Minchin. "Look at your book again."

And Sara did so, and did not smile, even when she found that "le
fils" meant "the son," and "le frere" meant "the brother."

"When Monsieur Dufarge comes," she thought, "I can make him
understand."

Monsieur Dufarge arrived very shortly afterward. He was a very
nice, intelligent, middle-aged Frenchman, and he looked
interested when his eyes fell upon Sara trying politely to seem
absorbed in her little book of phrases.

"Is this a new pupil for me, madame?" he said to Miss Minchin.
"I hope that is my good fortune."

"Her papa—Captain Crewe—is very anxious that she should begin
the language. But I am afraid she has a childish prejudice
against it. She does not seem to wish to learn," said Miss
Minchin.

"I am sorry of that, mademoiselle," he said kindly to Sara.
"Perhaps, when we begin to study together, I may show you that
it is a charming tongue."

Little Sara rose in her seat. She was beginning to feel rather
desperate, as if she were almost in disgrace. She looked up into
Monsieur Dufarge's face with her big, green-gray eyes, and they
were quite innocently appealing. She knew that he would
understand as soon as she spoke. She began to explain quite
simply in pretty and fluent French. Madame had not understood.
She had not learned French exactly—not out of books—but her
papa and other people had always spoken it to her, and she had
read it and written it as she had read and written English. Her
papa loved it, and she loved it because he did. Her dear mamma,
who had died when she was born, had been French. She would be
glad to learn anything monsieur would teach her, but what she had
tried to explain to madame was that she already knew the words in
this book— and she held out the little book of phrases.

When she began to speak Miss Minchin started quite violently and
sat staring at her over her eyeglasses, almost indignantly, until
she had finished. Monsieur Dufarge began to smile, and his smile
was one of great pleasure. To hear this pretty childish voice
speaking his own language so simply and charmingly made him feel
almost as if he were in his native land—which in dark, foggy
days in London sometimes seemed worlds away. When she had
finished, he took the phrase book from her, with a look almost
affectionate. But he spoke to Miss Minchin.

"Ah, madame," he said, "there is not much I can teach her. She
has not LEARNED French; she is French. Her accent is exquisite."

"You ought to have told me," exclaimed Miss Minchin, much
mortified, turning to Sara.

"I—I tried," said Sara. "I—I suppose I did not begin right."

Miss Minchin knew she had tried, and that it had not been her
fault that she was not allowed to explain. And when she saw that
the pupils had been listening and that Lavinia and Jessie were
giggling behind their French grammars, she felt infuriated.

"Silence, young ladies!" she said severely, rapping upon the
desk. "Silence at once!"

And she began from that minute to feel rather a grudge against
her show pupil.

On that first morning, when Sara sat at Miss Minchin's side,
aware that the whole schoolroom was devoting itself to observing
her, she had noticed very soon one little girl, about her own
age, who looked at her very hard with a pair of light, rather
dull, blue eyes. She was a fat child who did not look as if she
were in the least clever, but she had a good-naturedly pouting
mouth. Her flaxen hair was braided in a tight pigtail, tied with
a ribbon, and she had pulled this pigtail around her neck, and
was biting the end of the ribbon, resting her elbows on the desk,
as she stared wonderingly at the new pupil. When Monsieur
Dufarge began to speak to Sara, she looked a little frightened;
and when Sara stepped forward and, looking at him with the
innocent, appealing eyes, answered him, without any warning, in
French, the fat little girl gave a startled jump, and grew quite
red in her awed amazement. Having wept hopeless tears for weeks
in her efforts to remember that "la mere" meant "the mother," and
"le pere," "the father,"— when one spoke sensible English—it
was almost too much for her suddenly to find herself listening to
a child her own age who seemed not only quite familiar with these
words, but apparently knew any number of others, and could mix
them up with verbs as if they were mere trifles.

She stared so hard and bit the ribbon on her pigtail so fast
that she attracted the attention of Miss Minchin, who, feeling
extremely cross at the moment, immediately pounced upon her.

"Miss St. John!" she exclaimed severely. "What do you mean by
such conduct? Remove your elbows! Take your ribbon out of your
mouth! Sit up at once!"

Upon which Miss St. John gave another jump, and when Lavinia and
Jessie tittered she became redder than ever—so red, indeed, that
she almost looked as if tears were coming into her poor, dull,
childish eyes; and Sara saw her and was so sorry for her that she
began rather to like her and want to be her friend. It was a way
of hers always to want to spring into any fray in which someone
was made uncomfortable or unhappy.

"If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago," her
father used to say, "she would have gone about the country with
her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress.
She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble."

So she took rather a fancy to fat, slow, little Miss St. John,
and kept glancing toward her through the morning. She saw that
lessons were no easy matter to her, and that there was no danger
of her ever being spoiled by being treated as a show pupil. Her
French lesson was a pathetic thing. Her pronunciation made even
Monsieur Dufarge smile in spite of himself, and Lavinia and
Jessie and the more fortunate girls either giggled or looked at
her in wondering disdain. But Sara did not laugh. She tried to
look as if she did not hear when Miss St. John called "le bon
pain," "lee bong pang." She had a fine, hot little temper of her
own, and it made her feel rather savage when she heard the
titters and saw the poor, stupid, distressed child's face.

"It isn't funny, really," she said between her teeth, as she
bent over her book. "They ought not to laugh."

When lessons were over and the pupils gathered together in
groups to talk, Sara looked for Miss St. John, and finding her
bundled rather disconsolately in a window-seat, she walked over
to her and spoke. She only said the kind of thing little girls
always say to each other by way of beginning an acquaintance, but
there was something friendly about Sara, and people always felt
it.

"What is your name?" she said.

To explain Miss St. John's amazement one must recall that a new
pupil is, for a short time, a somewhat uncertain thing; and of
this new pupil the entire school had talked the night before
until it fell asleep quite exhausted by excitement and
contradictory stories. A new pupil with a carriage and a pony
and a maid, and a voyage from India to discuss, was not an
ordinary acquaintance.

"My name's Ermengarde St. John," she answered.

"Mine is Sara Crewe," said Sara. "Yours is very pretty. It
sounds like a story book."

"Do you like it?" fluttered Ermengarde. "I—I like yours."

Miss St. John's chief trouble in life was that she had a clever
father. Sometimes this seemed to her a dreadful calamity. If
you have a father who knows everything, who speaks seven or eight
languages, and has thousands of volumes which he has apparently
learned by heart, he frequently expects you to be familiar with
the contents of your lesson books at least; and it is not
improbable that he will feel you ought to be able to remember a
few incidents of history and to write a French exercise.
Ermengarde was a severe trial to Mr. St. John. He could not
understand how a child of his could be a notably and unmistakably
dull creature who never shone in anything.

"Good heavens!" he had said more than once, as he stared at her,
"there are times when I think she is as stupid as her Aunt
Eliza!"

If her Aunt Eliza had been slow to learn and quick to forget a
thing entirely when she had learned it, Ermengarde was strikingly
like her. She was the monumental dunce of the school, and it
could not be denied.

"She must be MADE to learn," her father said to Miss Minchin.

Consequently Ermengarde spent the greater part of her life in
disgrace or in tears. She learned things and forgot them; or,
if she remembered them, she did not understand them. So it was
natural that, having made Sara's acquaintance, she should sit
and stare at her with profound admiration.

"You can speak French, can't you?" she said respectfully.

Sara got on to the window-seat, which was a big, deep one, and,
tucking up her feet, sat with her hands clasped round her knees.

"I can speak it because I have heard it all my life," she
answered. "You could speak it if you had always heard it."

"Oh, no, I couldn't," said Ermengarde. "I NEVER could speak
it!"

"Why?" inquired Sara, curiously.

Ermengarde shook her head so that the pigtail wobbled.

"You heard me just now," she said. "I'm always like that. I
can't SAY the words. They're so queer."

She paused a moment, and then added with a touch of awe in her
voice, "You are CLEVER, aren't you?"

Sara looked out of the window into the dingy square, where the
sparrows were hopping and twittering on the wet, iron railings
and the sooty branches of the trees. She reflected a few
moments. She had heard it said very often that she was "clever,"
and she wondered if she was—and IF she was, how it had happened.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't tell." Then, seeing a
mournful look on the round, chubby face, she gave a little laugh
and changed the subject.

"Would you like to see Emily?" she inquired.

"Who is Emily?" Ermengarde asked, just as Miss Minchin had
done.

"Come up to my room and see," said Sara, holding out her hand.

They jumped down from the window-seat together, and went
upstairs.

"Is it true," Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall-
-"is it true that you have a playroom all to yourself?"

"Yes," Sara answered. "Papa asked Miss Minchin to let me have
one, because—well, it was because when I play I make up stories
and tell them to myself, and I don't like people to hear me. It
spoils it if I think people listen."

They had reached the passage leading to Sara's room by this
time, and Ermengarde stopped short, staring, and quite losing her
breath.

"You MAKE up stories!" she gasped. "Can you do that—as well as
speak French? CAN you?"

Sara looked at her in simple surprise.

"Why, anyone can make up things," she said. "Have you never
tried?"

She put her hand warningly on Ermengarde's.

"Let us go very quietly to the door," she whispered, "and then I
will open it quite suddenly; perhaps we may catch her."

She was half laughing, but there was a touch of mysterious hope
in her eyes which fascinated Ermengarde, though she had not the
remotest idea what it meant, or whom it was she wanted to
"catch," or why she wanted to catch her. Whatsoever she meant,
Ermengarde was sure it was something delightfully exciting. So,
quite thrilled with expectation, she followed her on tiptoe along
the passage. They made not the least noise until they reached
the door. Then Sara suddenly turned the handle, and threw it
wide open. Its opening revealed the room quite neat and quiet, a
fire gently burning in the grate, and a wonderful doll sitting in
a chair by it, apparently reading a book.

"Oh, she got back to her seat before we could see her!" Sara
explained. "Of course they always do. They are as quick as
lightning."

Ermengarde looked from her to the doll and back again.

"Can she—walk?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes," answered Sara. "At least I believe she can. At least I
PRETEND I believe she can. And that makes it seem as if it were
true. Have you never pretended things?"

"No," said Ermengarde. "Never. I—tell me about it."

She was so bewitched by this odd, new companion that she
actually stared at Sara instead of at Emily—notwithstanding that
Emily was the most attractive doll person she had ever seen.

"Let us sit down," said Sara, "and I will tell you. It's so
easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on
doing it always. And it's beautiful. Emily, you must listen.
This is Ermengarde St. John, Emily. Ermengarde, this is Emily.
Would you like to hold her?"