Chapter II: 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.