ERMENGARDE
On that first morning, when Sara sat at Miss Minchin's side, aware that
the whole school-room 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 round 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 to suddenly 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 to rather like her
and want to be her friend. It was a way of hers always to want to spring
into any fray in which some one 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 every one 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 nice and 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 wabbled.
"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 up-stairs.
"Is it true," Ermengarde whispered, as they went through the hall--"is
it true that you have a play-room 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, any one 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 exclaimed.
"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?"
"Oh, may I?" said Ermengarde. "May I, really? She _is_ beautiful!" And
Emily was put into her arms.
Never in her dull, short life had Miss St. John dreamed of such an hour
as the one she spent with the queer new pupil before they heard the
lunch-bell ring and were obliged to go down-stairs.
Sara sat upon the hearth-rug and told her strange things. She sat rather
huddled up, and her green eyes shone and her cheeks flushed. She told
stories of the voyage, and stories of India; but what fascinated
Ermengarde the most was her fancy about the dolls who walked and talked,
and who could do anything they chose when the human beings were out of
the room, but who must keep their powers a secret and so flew back to
their places "like lightning" when people returned to the room.
"_We_ couldn't do it," said Sara, seriously. "You see, it's a kind of
magic."
Once, when she was relating the story of the search for Emily,
Ermengarde saw her face suddenly change. A cloud seemed to pass over
it and put out the light in her shining eyes. She drew her breath in
so sharply that it made a funny, sad little sound, and then she shut
her lips and held them tightly closed, as if she was determined either
to do or _not_ to do something. Ermengarde had an idea that if she had
been like any other little girl, she might have suddenly burst out
sobbing and crying. But she did not.
"Have you a--a pain?" Ermengarde ventured.
"Yes," Sara answered, after a moment's silence. "But it is not in my
body." Then she added something in a low voice which she tried to keep
quite steady, and it was this: "Do you love your father more than
anything else in all the whole world?"
Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little. She knew that it would be far
from behaving like a respectable child at a select seminary to say that
it had never occurred to you that you _could_ love your father, that you
would do anything desperate to avoid being left alone in his society for
ten minutes. She was, indeed, greatly embarrassed.
"I--I scarcely ever see him," she stammered. "He is always in the
library--reading things."
"I love mine more than all the world ten times over," Sara said. "That
is what my pain is. He has gone away."
She put her head quietly down on her little, huddled-up knees, and sat
very still for a few minutes.
"She's going to cry out loud," thought Ermengarde, fearfully.
But she did not. Her short, black locks tumbled about her ears, and she
sat still. Then she spoke without lifting her head.
"I promised him I would bear it," she said. "And I will. You have to
bear things. Think what soldiers bear! Papa is a soldier. If there was
a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness and, perhaps,
deep wounds. And he would never say a word--not one word."
Ermengarde could only gaze at her, but she felt that she was beginning
to adore her. She was so wonderful and different from any one else.
Presently, she lifted her face and shook back her black locks, with a
queer little smile.
"If I go on talking and talking," she said, "and telling you things
about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget, but you bear
it better."
Ermengarde did not know why a lump came into her throat and her eyes
felt as if tears were in them.
"Lavinia and Jessie are 'best friends,'" she said rather huskily. "I
wish we could be 'best friends.' Would you have me for yours? You're
clever, and I'm the stupidest child in the school, but I--oh, I do so
like you!"
"I'm glad of that," said Sara. "It makes you thankful when you are
liked. Yes. We will be friends. And I'll tell you what"--a sudden gleam
lighting her face--"I can help you with your French lessons."