11. Ram Dass

A Little Princess

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

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 upstairs.

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. Someone had
come to look at the sunset as she had. There was a head and a 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 schoolroom 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 he 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 schoolroom 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 neat-herd. 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 neat-herd'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 schoolroom! 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!"