AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER
No, perhaps I was rather hasty in saying I could now go straight on
about what I remember myself. There are still a few things belonging to
the time before I can remember, which I had better explain now, to keep
it all in order.
I have spoken of grandmamma as being alone in the world, and so she
was--as far as having no one _very_ near her--no other children, and not
any brothers or sisters of her own. And on my mother's side I had no
relations worth counting. Mamma was an only child, and her father had
married again after _her_ mother died, and then, some years after, he
died himself, and mamma's half-brothers and sisters had never even seen
her, as they were out in India. So none of her relations have anything
to do with my story or with _me_.
But grandmamma had one nephew whom she had been very fond of when he
was a boy, and whom she had seen a good deal of, as he and papa were at
school together. His name was not the same as ours, for he was the son
of a sister of grandpapa's, not of a brother. It was Vandeleur, Mr.
Cosmo Vandeleur.
He was abroad when our great troubles came--I forget where, for though
he was not a soldier, he moved about the world a good deal to all sorts
of out-of-the-way places, and very often for months and months together,
grandmamma never heard anything about him. And one of the things that
made her still lonelier and sadder when we first came to Windy Gap was
that he had never answered her letters, or written to her for a very
long time.
She thought it was impossible that he had not got her letters, and
almost more impossible that he had not seen poor papa's death in some of
the newspapers.
And as it happened he had seen it and he had written to her once,
anyway, though she never got the letter. He had troubles of his own that
he did not say very much about, for he had married a good while ago, and
though his wife was very nice, she was very, _very_ delicate.
Still, his name was familiar to me. I can always remember hearing
grandmamma talk of 'Cosmo,' and when she told me little anecdotes of
papa as a boy, his cousin was pretty sure to come into the story.
And Kezia used to speak of him too--'Master Cosmo,' she always called
him. For she had been a young under-servant of grandmamma's long ago,
when grandpapa was alive and before the money was lost.
That is one thing I want to say--that though Kezia was our only servant,
she was not at all common or rough. She turned herself into what is
called 'a maid-of-all-work,' from being my nurse, just out of love for
granny and me. And she was very good and very kind. Since I have grown
older and have seen more of other children and how they live, I often
think how much better off I was than most, even though my home was only
a cottage and we lived so simply, and even poorly, in some ways.
Everything was so open and happy about my life. I was not afraid of
anybody or anything. And I have known children who, though their parents
were very rich and they lived very grandly, had really a great deal to
bear from cross or unkind nurses or maids, whom they were frightened to
complain of. For children, unless they are _very_ spoilt, are not so
ready to complain as big people think. I had nothing to complain of, but
if I had had anything, it would have been easy to tell grandmamma all
about it at once; it would never have entered my head not to tell her.
She knew everything about me, and I knew everything about her that it
was good for me to know while I was still so young--more, perhaps, than
some people would think a child should know--about our not having much
money and needing to be careful, and things like that. But it did not do
me any harm. Children don't take _that_ kind of trouble to heart. I was
proud of being treated sensibly, and of feeling that in many little ways
I could help her as I could not have done if she had not explained.
And if ever there was anything she did not tell me about, even the
keeping it back was done in an open sort of way. Granny made no
mysteries. She would just say simply--
'I cannot tell you, my dear,' or 'You could not understand about it at
present.'
So that I trusted her--'always,' I was going to say, but, alas, there
came a time when I did not trust her enough, and from that great fault
of mine came all the troubles I ever had.
_Now_ I will go straight on.
Have you ever looked back and tried to find out what is really the very
first thing you can remember? It is rather interesting--now and then the
b--no, I don't mean to speak of them till they come properly into my
story--now and then I try to look back like that, and I get a strange
feeling that it is all there, if only I could keep hold of the thread,
as it were. But I cannot; it melts into a mist, and the very first thing
I _can_ clearly remember stands out the same again.
This is it.
I see myself--those looking backs always are like pictures; you seem to
be watching yourself, even while you feel it is yourself--I see myself,
a little trot of a girl, in a pale gray merino frock, with a muslin
pinafore covering me nearly all over, and a broad sash of Roman colours,
with a good deal of pale blue in it (I have the sash still, so it isn't
much praise to my memory to know all about _it_), tied round my waist,
running fast down the short steep garden path to where granny is
standing at the gate. I go faster and faster, beginning to get a little
frightened as I feel I can't stop myself. Then granny calls out--
'Take care, take care, my darling,' and all in a minute I feel
safe--caught in her arms, and held close. It is a lovely feeling. And
then I hear her say--
'My little girlie must not try to run so fast alone. She might have
fallen and hurt herself badly if granny had not been there.'
There is to me a sort of parable, or allegory, in that first thing I can
remember, and I think it will seem to go on and fit into all my life,
even if I live to be as old as grandmamma is now. It is like feeling
that there are always arms ready to keep us safe, through all the
foolish and even wrong things we do--if only we will trust them and run
into them. I hope the children who _may_ some day read this won't say I
am preaching, or make fun of it. I must tell what I really have felt and
thought, or else it would be a pretence of a story altogether. And this
first remembrance has always stayed with me.
Then come the sunsets. I have told you a little about them, already. I
must often have looked at them before I can remember, but one specially
beautiful has kept in my mind because it was on one of my birthdays.
I think it must have been my third birthday, though granny is half
inclined to think it was my fourth. _I_ don't, because if it had been my
fourth I should remember _some_ things between it and my third
birthday, and I don't--nothing at all, between the running into granny's
arms, which she too remembers, and which was before I was three, there
is nothing I can get hold of, till that lovely sunset.
I was sitting at the window when it began. I was rather tired--I suppose
I had been excited by its being my birthday, for dear granny always
contrived to give me some extra pleasures on that day--and I remember I
had a new doll in my lap, whom I had been undressing to be ready to be
put to bed with me. I almost think I had fallen asleep for a minute or
two, for it seems as if all of a sudden I had caught sight of the sky.
It must have been particularly beautiful, for I called out--
'Oh, look, look, they're lighting all the beauty candles in heaven.
Look, Dollysweet, it's for my birfday.'
Grandmamma was in the room and she heard me. But for a minute or two she
did not say anything, and I went on talking to Dolly and pretending or
fancying that Dolly talked back to me.
Then granny came softly behind me and stood looking out too. I did not
know she was there till I heard her saying some words to herself. Of
course I did not understand them, yet the sound of them must have stayed
in my ears. Since then I have learnt the verses for myself, and they
always come back to me when I see anything very beautiful--like the
trees and the flowers in summer, or the stars at night, and above all,
lovely sunsets.
But all I heard then was just--
'Good beyond compare,
If thus Thy meaner works are fair'--
and all I _remembered_ was--
'... beyond compare,
... are fair.'
I said them over and over to myself, and a funny fancy grew out of them,
when I got to understand what 'beyond' meant. I took it into my head
that 'compare' was the name of the hills, which, as I have said, came
between us and the horizon on the west, and prevented our seeing the
last of the sunset.
And I used to make wonderful fairy stories to myself about the country
beyond or behind those hills--the country I called 'Compare,' where
something, or everything--for I had lost the words just before, was
'fair' in some marvellous way I could not even picture to myself. For I
soon learnt to know that 'fair' meant beautiful--I think I learnt it
first from some of the old fairy stories grandmamma used to tell me when
we sat at work.
That evening she took me up in her arms and kissed me.
'The sun is going to bed,' she said to me, 'and so must my little
Helena, even though it is her birthday.'
'And so must Dollysweet,' I said. I always called that doll
'Dollysweet,' and I ran the words together as if it was one name.
'Yes, certainly,' said granny.
Then she took my hand and I trotted upstairs beside her, carrying
Dollysweet, of course. And there, up in my little room--I had already
begun to sleep alone in my little room, though the door was always left
open between it and grandmamma's--there, at the ending of my birthday
was another lovely surprise. For, standing in a chair beside my cot was
a bed for my doll--_so_ pretty and cosy-looking.
Wasn't it nice of granny? I never knew any one like her for having _new_
sort of ideas. It made me go to bed so very, very happily, and that is
not always the case the night of a birthday. I have known children who,
even when they are pretty big, cry themselves to sleep because the
long-looked-for day is over.
It did not matter to me that my dolly's bed had cost nothing--except,
indeed, what was far more really precious than money--granny's loving
thought and work. It was made out of a strong cardboard box--the lid
fastened to the box, standing up at one end like the head part of a
French bed. And it was all beautifully covered with pink calico, which
grandmamma had had 'by her.' Granny was rather old-fashioned in some
ways, and fond of keeping a few odds and ends 'by her.' And over that
again, white muslin, all fruzzled on, that had once been pinafores of
mine, but had got too worn to use any more in that way.
There were little blankets, too, worked round with pink wool, and little
sheets, and everything--all made out of nothing but love and
contrivance!
It was so delightful to wake the next morning and see Dollysweet in her
nest beside me. She slept there every night for several years, and I am
afraid after some time she slept there a good deal in the day also. For
I gave up playing with dolls rather young--playing with _a_ doll, I
should say. I found it more interesting to have lots of little ones, or
of things that did instead of dolls--dressed-up chessmen did very well
at one time--that I could make move about and act and be anything I
wanted them to be, more easily than one or two big dolls.
Still I always took care of Dollysweet. I never neglected her or let her
get dirty and untidy, though in time, of course, her pink-and-white
complexion faded into pallid yellow, and her bright hair grew dull, and,
worst of all--after that I never could bear to look at her--one of her
sky-blue eyes dropped, not out, but _into_ her hollow head.
Poor old Dollysweet!
The day after my third birthday grandmamma began to teach me to read.
_I_ couldn't have remembered that it was that very day, but she has told
me so. I had very short lessons, only a quarter of an hour, I think, but
though she was very kind, she was very strict about my giving my
attention while I was at them. She says that is the part that really
matters with a very little child--the learning to give attention. Not
that it would signify if the actual things learnt up to six or seven
came to be forgotten--so long as a child knows how to learn.
At first I liked my lessons very much, though I must have been a rather
tiresome child to teach. For I would keep finding out likenesses in the
letters, which I called 'little black things,' and I wouldn't try to
learn their names. Grandmamma let me do this for a few days, as she
thought it would help me to distinguish them, but when she found that
every day I invented a new set of likenesses, she told me that wouldn't
do.
'You may have one likeness for each,' she said, 'but only if you really
try to remember its name too.'
And I knew, by the sound of her voice, that she meant what she said.
So I set to work to fix which of the 'likes,' as I called them, I would
keep.
'A' had been already a house with a pointed roof, and a book standing
open on its two sides, and a window with curtains drawn at the top, and
the wood of the sash running across half-way, and a good many other
things which you couldn't see any likeness to it in, I am sure. But just
as I was staring at it again, I saw old Tanner, who lived in one of the
cottages below our house, settling his double ladder against a wall.
I screamed out with pleasure--
'I'll have Tan's ladder,' I said, and so I did. 'A' was always Tan's
ladder after that. And a year or two later, when I heard some one speak
of the 'ladder of learning,' I felt quite sure it had something to do
with the opened-out ladder with the bar across the middle.
After all, I have had to get grandmamma's help for some of these baby
memories. Still, as I _can_ remember the little events I have now
written down, I suppose it is all right.