Mrs. Chester's recommendation to Seth Dumbrick to give the Duchess and
Sally a day in the country was weighing heavily upon his mind. That it
would do the Duchess good there could not be a shadow of doubt, and it
was certain that she required a change of some sort; for although she
was now better and moving about, her steps were languid, and there
were no signs of a return to her old elasticity of spirits. Day after
day Seth watched in vain for symptoms of vigour in the Duchess, and
the more he watched, the more he was troubled.
"She's well," he said to the doctor, "but she doesn't get strong."
"She wants iron," said the doctor; and he gave her iron, but it did
not improve her. Then the doctor said that the child wanted fresh air.
"Can I get it in bottles?" asked Seth, with melancholy humour.
The doctor smiled and walked away.
Seth Dumbrick was afraid to mention the matter to the Duchess, for he
knew that she would leap for joy at the prospect, and that the hope
deferred would make her worse both in body and spirits. The truth was,
he was too poor for the luxury. The Duchess's illness had exhausted
every penny of his savings. He confided in Sally, who entered at once
upon the consideration of the difficulty, but her suggestions were not
of a practical character.
"If we had some o' them cherubims o' gold," she mused, "or some o'
them gold flowers out of the Temple----"
"They might lead us," added Seth, "to the real flowers we want to see
growing."
Sally was ready with another suggestion, in the shape of a
subscription among the Duchess's playmates.
"They're so fond on her that they'll do anythink for her. They'll all
give. Betsy Newbiggin, and Jane Preedy----" but she was stopped by the
look of suppressed merriment on Seth's face.
"Pins and spoonfuls of liquorice-water won't take us into the country,
Sally. No, we must think of something else. Perhaps I shall have a bit
of good luck"--adding, under his breath--"if I do, and there's money
in it, it'll be the first bit of good luck that has ever fell to Seth
Dumbrick's lot."
There seemed no way out of the difficulty, and the Duchess remained in
the same languid state. But the bit of good luck that Seth had not the
slightest expectation of meeting with did occur, and in a strange way.
The duties of the postman in Rosemary Lane were light, and there were
persons in the neighbourhood who had never arrived at the dignity of
receiving a letter. Certainly no child had ever received one. General
astonishment was therefore created when it became known that the
postman, stopping to deliver a communication at the Royal George, the
celebrated gin-palace of the locality, had produced a letter,
addressed to "The Duchess of Rosemary Lane," and, with an air which
proclaimed that he looked upon the matter as a joke, had asked the
proprietor of the gin-palace if he knew any person answering to that
description. Regarding the matter in a more serious light when he was
informed that there really was such a person in existence, the postman
proceeded to Seth Dumbrick's stall, and delivered the letter in the
presence of a dozen or so curiousmongers, who had became aware of the
circumstance, and considered it sufficiently interesting to warrant an
inquiry. The postman, with a stern sense of duty, did not part with
the letter too easily. It was a Government affair, he said, and he
might be called over the coals for it. Indeed, under any
circumstances, he declared his intention of making a special
memorandum with reference to it, for his own satisfaction and that of
the head of his department. The idea of a duchess in Rosemary Lane was
something almost too astounding for credibility.
"Nevertheless it is a fact," said Seth Dumbrick, looking at the letter
with much inward astonishment; not knowing what the letter might
contain, he deemed it prudent to conceal any exhibition of this
feeling. "She lives with me."
"If you're her father, I suppose you call yourself a duke."
"I'm her guardian, and I call myself a cobbler."
The postman was aware that such a conversation was outside the scope
of his duties, but he was fond of gossip and banter.
"I'd like to see this Duchess."
"Duchess!" called Seth, down the stairs.
Up came the Duchess, accompanied by Sally.
"What's your name?" asked the postman.
"The Duchess of Rosemary Lane," replied the Duchess.
"And upon my word," remarked the postman, "she looks like a little
lady." He could not help admiring her; he had a little girl of his own
at home.
"She is one," said Sally, promptly.
The postman having departed, Seth, with the letter on his leather
apron, fell into a brown study. It had suddenly occurred to him that
it might contain unwelcome intelligence; perhaps it came from some
person who claimed the child. In that case, would it not be better for
him to destroy it without reading it? Sally, aware from the expression
on Seth's face--a book in which she was by this time deeply read--that
he was revolving an important consideration with reference to the
letter, was in a fever of excitement. So, in a less degree, were the
neighbours surrounding the stall.
"Open it, Mr. Dumbrick," said Mrs. Preedy, who was always one in a
Rosemary Lane crowd. There are in every neighbourhood two or three
women ordained to fulfil this special mission. "Open it, and let's
know what's inside."
Seth, recalled to himself by this polite request, looked up with
shrewd twinkles, and replied:
"Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Preedy, but this is a private matter
between the Duchess and the Queen, and to let _you_ into the secret'd
be more than my head's worth. Let's go downstairs, Duchess, and see
what her Majesty has to say to you."
"He's the selfishest man," said Mrs. Preedy, "is that Mr. Dumbrick, as
ever I clapped eyes on--keeping things to hisself in that way! It's a
good job he ain't married; he'd torment the soul out of a poor woman."
Meanwhile, this selfishest of men was sitting in his cellar, with the
Duchess on his knee.
"Duchess," he said, in a tone which denoted that he wished to engage
her serious attention, "this is a most unexpected and mysterious
occurrence. Since I've been in Rosemary Lane, I've received altogether
three letters--about one every ten years--and here you are at your age
beginning to bother the Post Office. You're commencing early,
Duchess."
The Duchess nodded languidly. The letter, not being something nice to
eat, was of no interest to her.
"The question is," continued Seth, who seemed to have lost for the
time his decision of character, "what is in this letter, and who sent
it? It's a good handwriting, and there can't be any mistake about its
being for you."
"Open it, Daddy," said Sally.
"There's no hurry, Sally. Don't let us meet trouble halfway. Duchess,
do you love Daddy Dumbrick?"
"Oh, yes," sighed the Duchess, closing her eyes, and leaning back in
Seth's arms.
"You don't want to leave him?"
"No," murmured the Duchess.
"Because you see, Sally, the world'd seem a different place to me, not
half so good as it was, if anything was to occur as'd take the Duchess
away from us."
"No one shall," cried Sally, beginning to share Seth's fears, "no one
can!"
"I don't know that," said Seth, with an apprehensive observance of the
letter; "they sha'n't if I can help it. If I had plenty of money,
which I haven't, you, me, and the Duchess'd steal away one night from
Rosemary Lane, and'd go and live in the country, where nobody'd know
us, and where we could see green fields and flowers, and breathe the
fresh air from morning to night. For that's what our precious wants.
Green fields and fresh air'd soon pull her round, and we'd live there
happily all our lives."
"Like gipsies, Daddy."
"Yes, Sal, like gipsies."
"That _would_ be nice," said Sally; adding wistfully, "but it can't
be, Daddy, can it?"
"No, it can't be, unless a shower of gold was to come down through the
ceiling--and that's not likely. Let's see what's in the letter."
Had he suspected it to contain gunpowder he could not have broken the
seal more timidly. It was a letter without an envelope, folded in the
old-fashioned way, and when it was opened, a thin paper enclosure
fluttered to the ground. In his anxiety Seth did not notice what had
escaped, and he turned the letter this way and that, without meeting
with any writing but the address. Singular as it was, he experienced a
feeling of relief at this dispersal of his fears.
"Here's something dropped, Daddy," said Sally, in a tone made almost
gay by the change of expression in Seth's countenance.
Seth took the enclosure from Sally's hands. It was a Bank of England
note for ten pounds.
"Why, it's money!" he exclaimed.
"Money!" cried Sally.
"Yes, Sally, money." He glanced up at the ceiling with an air of
comical wonder. "We're in Tom Tiddler's ground, Sally."
"No, no," cried Sally, clapping her hands in glee, "it didn't drop
from there. It dropped out of the letter."
"That's more wonderful, then, than all the rest put together. Out of
the letter! There's not a letter in the letter, Sal--not one, from A
to Z." He laughed aloud, and Sally laughed in sympathy. "I don't care
where this comes from, nor why it has come. What I know is, it's the
brightest bit of good luck that ever happened to a man. This piece of
paper's a looking-glass, my child. Look at it--what do you see in it?"
Literal Sally, looking at the bank-note, as Seth held it open before
her, began at the beginning.
"There's a picture of a lady with a wand in her hand----"
"Britannia ruling the waves. Is that all you can see in it?"
"No; there's--what funny letters, Daddy! I never saw any like 'em
before. There's B-a-n-k, Bank----"
Seth took up the word, and read the note from beginning to end, and
then repeated his question, "Is that a l you can see in it?"
"That's all, Daddy."
"Sally, I'm cleverer than you. I take the note, and put it before me
like this---- Stop a minute." The Duchess had fallen asleep in his
arms, and he placed her gently on the bed. "Now we can get along. I
look at the note like this, and I see--yes, I see a coach, with you
and me and the Duchess sitting on the top of it."
"O Daddy!"
"Here we go, driving into the country. Such a ride, Sally! I see green
fields and flowers and fresh air for our darling in it----"
It was with difficulty that Sally kept herself still to hear the rest.
"I see two weeks of green fields and fresh air for our darling in it.
And I'm not quite sure that I don't see the sea. Do I see the waves
creeping up, Sally?"
"I don't know--oh, _do_ you see 'em, Daddy, do you?"
"It's got a little bit cloudy about here"--tracing an imaginary line
with his finger--"but it'll clear up soon. And, Sally, I see something
still better in it. I see roses for our Duchess's cheeks in it,
sparkles for her eyes, lightness for her foot. Kiss the note, Sally. I
never thought I should come to worship Mammon, but I do worship him
now, with all my heart."
"Daddy," said Sally, struck with a sudden fear, "is it a good un?"
The alarming suggestion caused Seth to run out of the place, as though
he were running for his life, and this display of excitement on his
part was so novel that the neighbours who were still waiting in the
street for news concerning the letter came, first to the usual
conclusion that the house was on fire, and next to the more appetising
one that Seth Dumbrick had suddenly gone mad. He was a long time
absent, for it was no easy matter to get a ten-pound note changed in
Rosemary Lane. There were hundreds who had never seen such a thing,
and to whom a sight of it would have been an eighth wonder of the
world. At the end of an hour Seth returned in a calmer mood, with a
fistful of gold, which he let fall, piece by piece, on the table,
before Sally's wondering eyes. She, who never experienced a pleasure,
new or old, without desiring that her idol should share it, caught up
the Duchess, crying: "Look, Duchess, look!" The Duchess stretched
forth her hand with eager delight, and the children sat close to the
table, playing gleefully with the bright pieces, Seth standing at
their back, looking at them and at the gold, with one hand resting on
the Duchess's shoulder, and the other rasping his chin. His
declaration that he did not care where the money came from was not
ingenious. If he had wished, he could not have banished so singular an
adventure from his mind, and the more he thought of it the more it
puzzled him. He had no friend who was likely or able to commit an
action so quixotic; neither had Sally. Turning his attention to the
letter again, he held it up to the light and peered closely at it, in
the endeavour to discover a clue. Then it came into his mind that
there was a kind of colourless ink with which persons wishing to
communicate secretly could write, and which heat alone would render
visible, and he placed the paper to the fire without arriving at any
satisfactory result. He could not detect even the scratch of a pen. It
was the most unsolvable of riddles. "I am afraid I must give it up,"
he said to himself, but he could not give it up. With the subject
still in his mind, he ascended to his stall to finish some work he had
in hand before he started on the contemplated holiday. During his
work, a hundred ingenious theories started up, all to be dismissed but
one, which took strong possession of him. "Some rich person," he
thought, "perhaps a lady who once had a pretty child, that she was
ashamed to call her own, has seen the Duchess by chance, and has
fallen in love with her beautiful face, because it reminds her of old
days. Then she finds out the Duchess's name; then she discovers that
the Duchess has been ill; and then she sends a present of money in
this mysterious way." The sentiment attaching to this fanciful
speculation rendered it peculiarly attractive to Seth. "We'll put it
down to that," he mused; "stranger things have happened in the world."
So he put it down to "that," and produced some pleasant mental
pictures out of the fancy.
When the midday meal was over, he said, "Duchess, this money's for
you. It's been sent because you've got a pretty face, and pretty
hands, and bright eyes. And it's going to take us into the country,
where the flowers are all a-growing and a-blowing, and where you'll
get strong and lively again."
"Then it _will_ come true," cried Sally, "what you saw in the
ten-pound note!"
"It will come true, Sally, if we're alive to-morrow." An ecstatic
silence followed, broken by Sally.
"Then you know who sent the money, Daddy!"
"It was sent by a lady--as handsome a lady as ever you clapped eyes
on, Sally."
"And you've seen her?"
"Well--hum!--yes, I've seen her." And here Seth rubbed his forehead,
denoting that he meant he had seen her in his mind's eye--a salve to
his conscience.
"Where does she live?" asked Sally, whom it was difficult to stop,
when she commenced to make inquiries on an interesting theme.
"She lives in--hum!--in Fairyland."
"Oh, where's that?"
"Don't ask any more questions. You'll see a bit of it to-morrow."