RAM DASS
There were fine sunsets even in the square, sometimes. One could only
see parts of them, however, between the chimneys and over the roofs.
From the kitchen windows one could not see them at all, and could only
guess that they were going on because the bricks looked warm and the air
rosy or yellow for a while, or perhaps one saw a blazing glow strike a
particular pane of glass somewhere. There was, however, one place from
which one could see all the splendor of them: the piles of red or gold
clouds in the west; or the purple ones edged with dazzling brightness;
or the little fleecy, floating ones, tinged with rose-color and looking
like flights of pink doves scurrying across the blue in a great hurry if
there was a wind. The place where one could see all this, and seem at
the same time to breathe a purer air, was, of course, the attic window.
When the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in an enchanted way
and look wonderful in spite of its sooty trees and railings, Sara knew
something was going on in the sky; and when it was at all possible to
leave the kitchen without being missed or called back, she invariably
stole away and crept up the flights of stairs, and, climbing on the old
table, got her head and body as far out of the window as possible. When
she had accomplished this, she always drew a long breath and looked all
round her. It used to seem as if she had all the sky and the world to
herself. No one else ever looked out of the other attics. Generally the
skylights were closed; but even if they were propped open to admit air,
no one seemed to come near them. And there Sara would stand, sometimes
turning her face upward to the blue which seemed so friendly and
near,--just like a lovely vaulted ceiling,--sometimes watching the west
and all the wonderful things that happened there: the clouds melting or
drifting or waiting softly to be changed pink or crimson or snow-white
or purple or pale dove-gray. Sometimes they made islands or great
mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or
chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost
seas; sometimes slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful
lands together. There were places where it seemed that one could run or
climb or stand and wait to see what next was coming--until, perhaps, as
it all melted, one could float away. At least it seemed so to Sara, and
nothing had ever been quite so beautiful to her as the things she saw as
she stood on the table--her body half out of the skylight--the sparrows
twittering with sunset softness on the slates. The sparrows always
seemed to her to twitter with a sort of subdued softness just when these
marvels were going on.
There was such a sunset as this a few days after the Indian gentleman
was brought to his new home; and, as it fortunately happened that the
afternoon's work was done in the kitchen and nobody had ordered her to
go anywhere or perform any task, Sara found it easier than usual to slip
away and go up-stairs.
She mounted her table and stood looking out. It was a wonderful moment.
There were floods of molten gold covering the west, as if a glorious
tide was sweeping over the world. A deep, rich yellow light filled the
air; the birds flying across the tops of the houses showed quite black
against it.
"It's a Splendid one," said Sara, softly, to herself. "It makes me feel
almost afraid--as if something strange was just going to happen. The
Splendid ones always make me feel like that."
She suddenly turned her head because she heard a sound a few yards away
from her. It was an odd sound like a queer little squeaky chattering. It
came from the window of the next attic. Some one had come to look at the
sunset as she had. There was a head and part of a body emerging from
the skylight, but it was not the head or body of a little girl or a
housemaid; it was the picturesque white-swathed form and dark-faced,
gleaming-eyed, white-turbaned head of a native Indian man-servant,--"a
Lascar," Sara said to herself quickly,--and the sound she had heard came
from a small monkey he held in his arms as if he were fond of it, and
which was snuggling and chattering against his breast.
As Sara looked toward him he looked toward her. The first thing she
thought was that his dark face looked sorrowful and homesick. She felt
absolutely sure he had come up to look at the sun, because he had seen
it so seldom in England that he longed for a sight of it. She looked at
him interestedly for a second, and then smiled across the slates. She
had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may
be.
Hers was evidently a pleasure to him. His whole expression altered, and
he showed such gleaming white teeth as he smiled back that it was as if
a light had been illuminated in his dusky face. The friendly look in
Sara's eyes was always very effective when people felt tired or dull.
It was perhaps in making his salute to her that he loosened his hold on
the monkey. He was an impish monkey and always ready for adventure, and
it is probable that the sight of a little girl excited him. He suddenly
broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them chattering, and
actually leaped on to Sara's shoulder, and from there down into her
attic room. It made her laugh and delighted her; but she knew he must be
restored to his master,--if the Lascar was his master,--and she wondered
how this was to be done. Would he let her catch him, or would he be
naughty and refuse to be caught, and perhaps get away and run off over
the roofs and be lost? That would not do at all. Perhaps he belonged to
the Indian gentleman, and the poor man was fond of him.
She turned to the Lascar, feeling glad that she remembered still some of
the Hindustani she had learned when she lived with her father. She
could make the man understand. She spoke to him in the language he knew.
"Will he let me catch him?" she asked.
She thought she had never seen more surprise and delight than the dark
face expressed when she spoke in the familiar tongue. The truth was that
the poor fellow felt as if his gods had intervened, and the kind little
voice came from heaven itself. At once Sara saw that he had been
accustomed to European children. He poured forth a flood of respectful
thanks. He was the servant of Missee Sahib. The monkey was a good monkey
and would not bite; but, unfortunately, he was difficult to catch.
He would flee from one spot to another, like the lightning. He was
disobedient, though not evil. Ram Dass knew him as if he were his child,
and Ram Dass he would sometimes obey, but not always. If Missee Sahib
would permit Ram Dass, he himself could cross the roof to her room,
enter the windows, and regain the unworthy little animal. But he was
evidently afraid Sara might think he was taking a great liberty and
perhaps would not let him come.
But Sara gave him leave at once.
"Can you get across?" she inquired.
"In a moment," he answered her.
"Then come," she said; "he is flying from side to side of the room as if
he was frightened."
Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as
steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life. He
slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound.
Then he turned to Sara and salaamed again. The monkey saw him and
uttered a little scream. Ram Dass hastily took the precaution of
shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very
long chase. The monkey prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the mere
fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's shoulder
and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird little
skinny arm.
Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly. She had seen that his quick native
eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but
he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a
rajah, and pretended that he observed nothing. He did not presume to
remain more than a few moments after he had caught the monkey, and those
moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance to her in
return for her indulgence. This little evil one, he said, stroking the
monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and his master, who was
ill, was sometimes amused by him. He would have been made sad if his
favorite had run away and been lost. Then he salaamed once more and got
through the skylight and across the slates again with as much agility as
the monkey himself had displayed.
When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of
many things his face and his manner had brought back to her. The sight
of his native costume and the profound reverence of his manner stirred
all her past memories. It seemed a strange thing to remember that
she--the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour
ago--had only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated
her as Ram Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose
foreheads almost touched the ground when she spoke to them, who were her
servants and her slaves. It was like a sort of dream. It was all over,
and it could never come back. It certainly seemed that there was no
way in which any change could take place. She knew what Miss Minchin
intended that her future should be. So long as she was too young to be
used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and
servant and yet expected to remember what she had learned and in some
mysterious way to learn more. The greater number of her evenings she was
supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals she was
examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she had
not advanced as was expected of her. The truth, indeed, was that Miss
Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require teachers. Give
her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing them by heart.
She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good deal in the course
of a few years. This was what would happen: when she was older she would
be expected to drudge in the school-room as she drudged now in various
parts of the house; they would be obliged to give her more respectable
clothes, but they would be sure to be plain and ugly and to make her
look somehow like a servant. That was all there seemed to be to look
forward to, and Sara stood quite still for several minutes and thought
it over.
Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek
and a spark light itself in her eyes. She straightened her thin little
body and lifted her head.
"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess
in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be
a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal
more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was
Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she
had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her
and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then
than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best
then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was
stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."
This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had
consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house
with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand
and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the
child were mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the
world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to
her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes,
when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss
Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with
something like a proud smile in them. At such times she did not know
that Sara was saying to herself:
"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and
that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only
spare you because I _am_ a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind,
vulgar old thing, and don't know any better."
This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer
and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing
for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made
rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.
"A princess must be polite," she said to herself.
And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were
insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply
to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.
"She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace,
that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes; "I lose
my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her
manners. 'If you please, cook;' 'Will you be so kind, cook?' 'I beg your
pardon, cook;' 'May I trouble you, cook?' She drops 'em about the
kitchen as if they was nothing."
The morning after the interview with Ram Dass and his monkey, Sara was
in the school-room with her small pupils. Having finished giving them
their lessons, she was putting the French exercise-books together and
thinking, as she did it, of the various things royal personages in
disguise were called upon to do: Alfred the Great, for instance, burning
the cakes and getting his ears boxed by the wife of the neatherd. How
frightened she must have been when she found out what she had done. If
Miss Minchin should find out that she--Sara, whose toes were almost
sticking out of her boots--was a princess--a real one! The look in her
eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most disliked. She would
not have it; she was quite near her and was so enraged that she actually
flew at her and boxed her ears--exactly as the neatherd's wife had boxed
King Alfred's. It made Sara start. She wakened from her dream at the
shock, and, catching her breath, stood still a second. Then, not knowing
she was going to do it, she broke into a little laugh.
"What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin
exclaimed.
It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember
that she was a princess. Her cheeks were red and smarting from the blows
she had received.
"I was thinking," she answered.
"Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin.
Sara hesitated a second before she replied.
"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then;
"but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."
"What were you thinking?" demanded Miss Minchin. "How dare you think?
What were you thinking?"
Jessie tittered, and she and Lavinia nudged each other in unison. All
the girls looked up from their books to listen. Really, it always
interested them a little when Miss Minchin attacked Sara. Sara always
said something queer, and never seemed the least bit frightened. She
was not in the least frightened now, though her boxed ears were scarlet
and her eyes were as bright as stars.
"I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not
know what you were doing."
"That I did not know what I was doing?" Miss Minchin fairly gasped.
"Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a
princess and you boxed my ears--what I should do to you. And I was
thinking that if I were one, you would never dare to do it, whatever I
said or did. And I was thinking how surprised and frightened you would
be if you suddenly found out--"
She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke in
a manner which had an effect even upon Miss Minchin. It almost seemed
for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must be some
real power hidden behind this candid daring.
"What?" she exclaimed. "Found out what?"
"That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do
anything--anything I liked."
Every pair of eyes in the room widened to its full limit. Lavinia leaned
forward on her seat to look.
"Go to your room," cried Miss Minchin, breathlessly, "this instant!
Leave the school-room! Attend to your lessons, young ladies!"
Sara made a little bow.
"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out of
the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the girls
whispering over their books.
"Did you see her? Did you see how queer she looked?" Jessie broke out.
"I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be something.
Suppose she should!"