_THE FORDYCES._
"AND whatever in the world is to become of them children, 'I' don't
know, nor nobody else neither."
These words smote ruthlessly upon the ears of Beryl Fordyce. Six
seconds before she had been sleeping the placid and dreamless slumber
of healthy childhood, and six seconds later she would have been again
unconscious. But sleep now suddenly fled. She lay listening, with
quickened breathing, her eyes fixed upon the partially closed door,
through the opening of which streamed yellow candle-rays, in contrast
with the white moonbeams entering at the window.
"Poor little dearies!" chimed in somebody else. The tones of the second
speaker were smooth and slow, not rasping and rough like those of the
first. "Poor little dearies! It is very melancholy, Mrs. Dixon, very
melancholy indeed, and there's no denying of it. Now you'll wake 'em,—"
as a small object fell with a click against the fender. Probably some
such sound had roused Beryl.
"Never you fear. Miss Beryl sleeps like a top, and Miss Pearl too when
she's tired. It's a mercy they do sleep, for there's no peace in life
when Miss Beryl's awake."
"And their aunt hasn't left them nothing at all?"
"Not one single penny nor farthing. 'I' don't know why. Seems
unnatural, seeing they was her own flesh and blood. But Mr. Bishop he
seems to know: for he says to me the very day she died, says he to
me,—'There won't be not one penny for them poor children,' says he.
'And whatever is to become of them?' says he, and he shakes his head
like this, Mrs. Medhurst."
Beryl was seized with a strong inclination to laugh at the uncouth
version of Mr. Bishop's utterances, and also at the very unclerical
appearance of Dixon's cap-shadow, as it bobbed forward upon the door
for an instant.
"And there isn't nobody else—aunt nor uncle nor nothing?"
"Not as I knows. Mr. Bishop he is a making of inquiries, I believe.
But Miss Fordyce said to me, when first they come, says she, 'There's
nobody else but me to take 'em in, Dixon,' says she. And she sighs,
like as if it wasn't agreeable to her no more than it was to me. And
if I'd ha' known what was before me, I'd have given warning then and
there, and took my departure,—I would, Mrs. Medhurst, and I means
it, for all the time I've lived with Miss Fordyce, since I was but a
slip of a girl. For it's been 'a' three years, and no mistake; and
I wouldn't live through them again, no, not if you was to give me a
hundred pounds. And I wouldn't have the bringing up of Miss Beryl, not
for nothing you could mention, Mrs. Medhurst. She's that headstrong and
'mischeevious,' as there's no doing anything with her."
"She's isn't so pretty as Miss Pearl, nor so nice in her manners."
"Pretty! She's as ugly as her temper. I never knowed a downright
uglier child than Miss Beryl, nor nastier to deal with. Miss Pearl's
different. She's easy led into naughtiness, and her frocks do take a
deal of mending, but if it wasn't for Miss Beryl, she'd be as good as
she is pretty. I've got no fault to find particular with Miss Pearl.
But Miss Beryl!—nobody can't manage her, and that's a fact."
"She hasn't the look of a bad sort of child, neither," the other said
musingly. "Not downright altogether bad."
"I don't know as you'd call her bad, but she's ugly, and she's worrying
in her ways. She'd worry the life out of anybody. She's an odd sort of
child: don't seem to care for nobody, and nobody don't seem to care
for her. Oh, she don't mind, not she. Miss Pearl is the one to mind.
Miss Pearl would cry her eyes out, if she thought anybody was angry;
but Miss Beryl is that hard, nothing touches her. Nobody likes her, and
she's none the wiser. She never cares a straw what's said. That's her
sort. It's aggravating, Mrs. Medhurst, and 'she's' aggravating. I just
wish you had to do with her one week, and you'd know. Oh, you'd know
fast enough. You wouldn't like Miss Beryl. Nobody does."
Indignation rose high in the heart of the listening child. For Beryl
was sure that Pearl loved her.
Raising herself cautiously to a sitting posture, Beryl obtained a
glimpse of two figures, seated on either side of a table in the next
room, a tallow candle being on the table. One of the two women was
spare and angular, and wore a cap. The other was plump and round, and
wore a bonnet.
Beryl and Pearl were in two little iron beds, placed side by side. A
ray of moonlight fell upon the small fair face of the younger sister,
with its framework of glossy hair, and across the slender hands,
tossed gracefully out upon the coverlet. Pearl had always lain in
unconsciously graceful attitudes from very babyhood. She was at this
time just eleven, but of small and slight make. Beryl, eighteen months
her senior, was somewhat large-boned, and awkward in movement.
Dixon had been the servant of Miss Fordyce during forty years, and she
had unwillingly tended Miss Fordyce's nieces during the last three
of the forty. She was, after her fashion, conscientious, and never
neglected that which she undertook. But she hated children, and did not
scruple to express in plain terms her dislike to their presence in the
house.
Beryl and Pearl Fordyce had been six years motherless and three years
fatherless. Now they were yet farther orphaned by the sudden death of
their aunt. She had been an invalid for many years, but the attack
which carried her off at last was sharp in nature, lasting only a few
hours.
The children's loss was to them less of a heart-trouble than might have
been expected. Miss Fordyce was a person of cold manners, and the two
little girls had been seldom with her. She was not indeed one to endear
herself greatly to other people. They had cried a little when first
told that they would never see their aunt again. And Pearl had shed a
few more tears, as the two watched the nodding hearse-plumes move from
the front door, making Beryl feel rather naughty to be unable to do the
same. But probably the only real mourner was Dixon, and whatever she
felt, she concealed from observers.
The three years of Beryl and Pearl's life in their aunt's house had
been tolerably happy. Children possess a remarkable aptitude for
fitting in with their surroundings. Dixon and Beryl were at chronic
war, yet Dixon saw well to the children's bodily needs. A worn-out
old governess gave them two hours of nominal lessons every morning,
followed by a walk. Beryl liked reading, but hated learning. Miss Catt
avoided unnecessary struggles, and took things quietly, with increase
of composure to herself, though scarcely with increase of knowledge to
Beryl.
In play-hours, the two children were, as a rule, exceedingly content
together. Pearl was alike Beryl's pet and slave; and Beryl was alike
Pearl's protector and tyrant. Beryl's temper was never tried in that
direction, since Pearl never opposed her will. If Beryl were in
disgrace, Pearl was for the time forlorn; but of disagreements between
them, there were none.
Thus things had gone on, and thus things seemed likely to go on, when
suddenly the change came.
But Beryl had not at all realised the position in which she and her
sister stood, until she heard the matter discussed between Dixon and
her friend Mrs. Medhurst, wife of the greengrocer round the corner.
No one had spoken to her about it, and she was an odd child, full of
thought on some subjects, strangely ignorant on others. Dixon had
always seemed to her a much more necessary individual in the house than
Miss Fordyce.
Perhaps even now, sitting up in bed, and looking at the opening through
the doorway, Beryl did not realise it. Certainly, the leading thought
in her mind was not concerning the uncertainties of her future, but the
question, "Was she really so very ugly?"
Dixon had often called her ugly before. The word, however, had made
less impression, when spoken to her in the heat of passion, than when
spoken of her quietly to another. To be ugly at all was bad enough. To
be so hopelessly ugly that no one except Pearl could ever like her, was
serious.
People in general little know the lasting effect which a few careless
words may have upon a child's mind, or how far their influence may
extend in the after-shaping of character.
These words of Dixon sank deeply, making an impression not soon to
be effaced. As Beryl sat thinking them over, a vision of future life
rose before her—a cold and comfortless vision of a life, Esau-like in
kind, wherein her hand was to be against every man, and every man's
hand against her. For Beryl was, as Dixon had truly implied, of a
hasty and headstrong nature; and she said to herself, in the childish
wrath and pain of that hour, that if nobody liked her, she would like
nobody—always excepting Pearl, dear little Pearl, who should ever be
her one darling. Dixon had said that she did not care what other people
thought of her ways. Beryl felt that this was not true; for she knew
she had cared in the past, after her own fashion. But she determined
now to care no longer. Why should she? She would do as she chose, and
please herself.
Then she came back to the question, "Am I really so very ugly?"
Beryl slipped out of bed, and stole to the window, bare-footed. The
moon dipped behind a cloud, leaving the room in darkness, save for the
candle-gleams which stole through the door. Beryl stood waiting, and
presently it shone out again with increased brightness. A face in the
glass met hers, white with the ghastly hue lent by moonlight, having
rough hair in a tangled mass on either side, and eyes widely opened in
anxious scrutiny.
"I know I have freckles and a big mouth, and I'm not so pink and white
as Pearl, and my waist is thick too," murmured Beryl pathetically.
"But I can't help all that. And after all, my hair is the same colour
as hers, and my eyes are the biggest. I'm ugly, of course, but I don't
think I am so ugly as Dixon—not nearly. Her eyes are almost no colour
at all, and her nose is so queer and flat, it is like nobody else's. I
wouldn't change to Dixon, I'm sure, even if I could."
"Now, Miss Beryl, if that isn't 'just' like you—listening at the crack
o' the door!" exclaimed Dixon.
Beryl was back in her bed with a bound, turning then to face Dixon
defiantly.
"I'm not," she said. "I wasn't near the door."
"Always spying out something that don't concern her! Oh, 'I' know!"
Dixon said scornfully. "'I' know your ways. 'I' saw you, Miss Beryl,
a-stealing away when you heard me a-coming."
"I didn't, I tell you," repeated Beryl, shaking with cold and anger. "I
never spy. And it does concern me, too—ever so much."
"And to be sure, so it does," acquiesced Mrs. Medhurst, who, candle
in hand, had followed Dixon into the bedroom. "It does concern her,
there's no doubt whatsomever, Mrs. Dixon. But I shouldn't wonder if
Miss Beryl was only just a-looking at the moon."
"No," said Beryl shortly, "I was looking at myself in the glass."
"Now did you 'ever?'" inquired Dixon expressively.
"What was it for, my dear?" asked Mrs. Medhurst.
"Because I chose. And I don't see why you are to call me 'my dear,'"
pursued Beryl, reining up her tangled head. "I am a young lady, and you
are only a greengrocer."
"'Did' you ever?" reiterated Dixon. "But that's Miss Beryl all over!
Never you mind, Mrs. Medhurst; her pride 'll be took down some day, and
that it will."
"I am not proud," protested Beryl. "I only like to be spoken to
properly. But it was not the moon that I went to look at. I only wanted
to find out if I really was as ugly as Dixon said."
"Didn't I tell you she'd been listening?" interjected Dixon.
"And I don't think I am. At least I am ugly, of course, but not nearly
so ugly as Dixon," concluded Beryl.
Dixon was speechless.
"It don't so much matter about looks, after all," Mrs. Medhurst
remarked, fearing an explosion, and taking refuge in conventionalities.
"It don't really matter about looks, Miss Beryl, so as you behave
proper and do your duty. 'Beauty is only skin deep,' you know, and
'Handsome is as handsome does,' and that's a true saying. And if you're
good, nobody 'll think you ugly; and if you're naughty, nobody 'll
think you pretty."
Beryl did not appreciate the truth underlying these homely words. She
knew nothing as yet of the transforming effects of a loving spirit, or
of an indulged temper, on the features.
"And if you gives way to pride, and takes to underhand ways, why, of
course—" began Mrs. Medhurst anew.
"I am not underhanded," Beryl said fiercely, in her helpless
self-defence. "I was lying here, and you were sitting there, and you
chose to talk and I chose to listen. If you had any secrets to tell,
you ought to have shut the door. But I don't care, and I don't believe
it all either."
With which Beryl lay down, hid her face in the pillow, and refused
to say another word. Nobody saw the tears with which the pillow was
bedewed. Pearl slept peacefully through all.