12. The Other Side of the Wall

A Little Princess

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

When one lives in a row of houses, it is interesting to think of
the things which are being done and said on the other side of the
wall of the very rooms one is living in. Sara was fond of amusing
herself by trying to imagine the things hidden by the wall which
divided the Select Seminary from the Indian gentleman's house. She
knew that the schoolroom was next to the Indian gentleman's study,
and she hoped that the wall was thick so that the noise made
sometimes after lesson hours would not disturb him.

"I am growing quite fond of him," she said to Ermengarde; "I
should not like him to be disturbed. I have adopted him for a
friend. You can do that with people you never speak to at all. You
can just watch them, and think about them and be sorry for them,
until they seem almost like relations. I'm quite anxious sometimes
when I see the doctor call twice a day."

"I have very few relations," said Ermengarde, reflectively, "and
I'm very glad of it. I don't like those I have. My two aunts are
always saying, `Dear me, Ermengarde! You are very fat. You
shouldn't eat sweets,' and my uncle is always asking me things like,
`When did Edward the Third ascend the throne?' and, `Who died of a
surfeit of lampreys?'"

Sara laughed.

"People you never speak to can't ask you questions like that,"
she said; "and I'm sure the Indian gentleman wouldn't even if he was
quite intimate with you. I am fond of him."

She had become fond of the Large Family because they looked
happy; but she had become fond of the Indian gentleman because he
looked unhappy. He had evidently not fully recovered from some very
severe illness. In the kitchen--where, of course, the servants,
through some mysterious means, knew everything--there was much
discussion of his case. He was not an Indian gentleman really, but
an Englishman who had lived in India. He had met with great
misfortunes which had for a time so imperilled his whole fortune that
he had thought himself ruined and disgraced forever. The shock had
been so great that he had almost died of brain fever; and ever since
he had been shattered in health, though his fortunes had changed and
all his possessions had been restored to him. His trouble and peril
had been connected with mines.

"And mines with diamonds in 'em!" said the cook. "No savin's of
mine never goes into no mines--particular diamond ones"-- with a side
glance at Sara. "We all know somethin' of them." "He felt as my papa
felt," Sara thought. "He was ill as my papa was; but he did not
die."

So her heart was more drawn to him than before. When she was
sent out at night she used sometimes to feel quite glad, because
there was always a chance that the curtains of the house next door
might not yet be closed and she could look into the warm room and see
her adopted friend. When no one was about she used sometimes to
stop, and, holding to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he
could hear her.

"Perhaps you can feel if you can't hear," was her fancy.
"Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and
doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and
don't know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you
will get well and happy again. I am so sorry for you," she would
whisper in an intense little voice. "I wish you had a `Little
Missus' who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a
headache. I should like to be your `Little Missus' myself, poor dear!
Good night--good night. God bless you!"

She would go away, feeling quite comforted and a little warmer
herself. Her sympathy was so strong that it seemed as if it must
reach him somehow as he sat alone in his armchair by the fire, nearly
always in a great dressing gown, and nearly always with his forehead
resting in his hand as he gazed hopelessly into the fire. He looked
to Sara like a man who had a trouble on his mind still, not merely
like one whose troubles lay all in the past.

"He always seems as if he were thinking of something that hurts
him now", she said to herself, "but he has got his money back and he
will get over his brain fever in time, so he ought not to look like
that. I wonder if there is something else."

If there was something else--something even servants did not
hear of--she could not help believing that the father of the Large
Family knew it--the gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency. Mr.
Montmorency went to see him often, and Mrs. Montmorency and all the
little Montmorencys went, too, though less often. He seemed
particularly fond of the two elder little girls--the Janet and Nora
who had been so alarmed when their small brother Donald had given
Sara his sixpence. He had, in fact, a very tender place in his heart
for all children, and particularly for little girls. Janet and Nora
were as fond of him as he was of them, and looked forward with the
greatest pleasure to the afternoons when they were allowed to cross
the square and make their well-behaved little visits to him. They
were extremely decorous little visits because he was an invalid.

"He is a poor thing," said Janet, "and he says we cheer him up.
We try to cheer him up very quietly."

Janet was the head of the family, and kept the rest of it in
order. It was she who decided when it was discreet to ask the Indian
gentleman to tell stories about India, and it was she who saw when he
was tired and it was the time to steal quietly away and tell Ram Dass
to go to him. They were very fond of Ram Dass. He could have told
any number of stories if he had been able to speak anything but
Hindustani. The Indian gentleman's real name was Mr. Carrisford, and
Janet told Mr. Carrisford about the encounter with the
little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar. He was very much interested, and
all the more so when he heard from Ram Dass of the adventure of the
monkey on the roof. Ram Dass made for him a very clear picture of
the attic and its desolateness--of the bare floor and broken plaster,
the rusty, empty grate, and the hard, narrow bed.

"Carmichael," he said to the father of the Large Family, after
he had heard this description, "I wonder how many of the attics in
this square are like that one, and how many wretched little servant
girls sleep on such beds, while I toss on my down pillows, loaded and
harassed by wealth that is, most of it--not mine."

"My dear fellow," Mr. Carmichael answered cheerily, "the sooner
you cease tormenting yourself the better it will be for you. If you
possessed all the wealth of all the Indies, you could not set right
all the discomforts in the world, and if you began to refurnish all
the attics in this square, there would still remain all the attics in
all the other squares and streets to put in order. And there you
are!"

Mr. Carrisford sat and bit his nails as he looked into the
glowing bed of coals in the grate.

"Do you suppose," he said slowly, after a pause--"do you think
it is possible that the other child--the child I never cease thinking
of, I believe--could be--could possibly be reduced to any such
condition as the poor little soul next door?"

Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily. He knew that the worst
thing the man could do for himself, for his reason and his health,
was to begin to think in the particular way of this particular
subject.

"If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you
are in search of," he answered soothingly, "she would seem to be in
the hands of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted
her because she had been the favorite companion of their little
daughter who died. They had no other children, and Madame Pascal
said that they were extremely well-to-do Russians."

"And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had
taken her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford.

Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders.

"She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only
too glad to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the
father's death left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do
not trouble themselves about the futures of children who might prove
burdens. The adopted parents apparently disappeared and left no
trace."

"But you say `if the child was the one I am in search of. You
say 'if.' We are not sure. There was a difference in the name."

"Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of
Crewe--but that might be merely a matter of pronunciation. The
circumstances were curiously similar. An English officer in India
had placed his motherless little girl at the school. He had died
suddenly after losing his fortune." Mr. Carmichael paused a moment,
as if a new thought had occurred to him. "Are you sure the child was
left at a school in Paris? Are you sure it was Paris?"

"My dear fellow," broke forth Carrisford, with restless
bitterness, "I am sure of nothing. I never saw either the child or
her mother. Ralph Crewe and I loved each other as boys, but we had
not met since our school days, until we met in India. I was absorbed
in the magnificent promise of the mines. He became absorbed, too.
The whole thing was so huge and glittering that we half lost our
heads. When we met we scarcely spoke of anything else. I only knew
that the child had been sent to school somewhere. I do not even
remember, now, how I knew it."

He was beginning to be excited. He always became excited when
his still weakened brain was stirred by memories of the catastrophes
of the past.

Mr. Carmichael watched him anxiously. It was necessary to ask
some questions, but they must be put quietly and with caution.

"But you had reason to think the school was in Paris?"

"Yes," was the answer, "because her mother was a Frenchwoman,
and I had heard that she wished her child to be educated in Paris. It
seemed only likely that she would be there."

"Yes," Mr. Carmichael said, "it seems more than probable."

The Indian gentleman leaned forward and struck the table with a
long, wasted hand.

"Carmichael," he said, "I must find her. If she is alive, she
is somewhere. If she is friendless and penniless, it is through my
fault. How is a man to get back his nerve with a thing like that on
his mind? This sudden change of luck at the mines has made realities
of all our most fantastic dreams, and poor Crewe's child may be
begging in the street!"

"No, no," said Carmichael. "Try to be calm. Console yourself
with the fact that when she is found you have a fortune to hand over
to her."

"Why was I not man enough to stand my ground when things looked
black?" Carrisford groaned in petulant misery. "I believe I should
have stood my ground if I had not been responsible for other people's
money as well as my own. Poor Crewe had put into the scheme every
penny that he owned. He trusted me--he loved me. And he died
thinking I had ruined him--I--Tom Carrisford, who played cricket at
Eton with him. What a villain he must have thought me!"

"Don't reproach yourself so bitterly."

"I don't reproach myself because the speculation threatened to
fail--I reproach myself for losing my courage. I ran away like a
swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and
tell him I had ruined him and his child."

The good-hearted father of the Large Family put his hand on his
shoulder comfortingly.

"You ran away because your brain had given way under the strain
of mental torture," he said. "You were half delirious already. If
you had not been you would have stayed and fought it out. You were in
a hospital, strapped down in bed, raving with brain fever, two days
after you left the place. Remember that."

Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands.

"Good God! Yes," he said. "I was driven mad with dread and
horror. I had not slept for weeks. The night I staggered out of my
house all the air seemed full of hideous things mocking and mouthing
at me."

"That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael.
"How could a man on the verge of brain fever judge sanely!"

Carrisford shook his drooping head.

"And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was dead--and
buried. And I seemed to remember nothing. I did not remember the
child for months and months. Even when I began to recall her
existence everything seemed in a sort of haze."

He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead. "It sometimes
seems so now when I try to remember. Surely I must sometime have
heard Crewe speak of the school she was sent to. Don't you think
so?"

"He might not have spoken of it definitely. You never seem even
to have heard her real name."

"He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He
called her his `Little Missus.' But the wretched mines drove
everything else out of our heads. We talked of nothing else. If he
spoke of the school, I forgot--I forgot. And now I shall never
remember."

"Come, come," said Carmichael. "We shall find her yet. We will
continue to search for Madame Pascal's good-natured Russians. She
seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take
that as a clue. I will go to Moscow."

"If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said
Carrisford; "but I can only sit here wrapped in furs and stare at the
fire. And when I look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face
gazing back at me. He looks as if he were asking me a question.
Sometimes I dream of him at night, and he always stands before me and
asks the same question in words. Can you guess what he says,
Carmichael?"

Mr. Carmichael answered him in a rather low voice.

"Not exactly," he said.

"He always says, `Tom, old man--Tom--where is the Little
Missus?'" He caught at Carmichael's hand and clung to it. "I must be
able to answer him--I must!" he said. "Help me to find her. Help
me."

On the other side of the wall Sara was sitting in her garret
talking to Melchisedec, who had come out for his evening meal.

"It has been hard to be a princess today, Melchisedec," she
said. "It has been harder than usual. It gets harder as the weather
grows colder and the streets get more sloppy. When Lavinia laughed
at my muddy skirt as I passed her in the hall, I thought of something
to say all in a flash--and I only just stopped myself in time. You
can't sneer back at people like that- -if you are a princess. But you
have to bite your tongue to hold yourself in. I bit mine. It was a
cold afternoon, Melchisedec. And it's a cold night."

Quite suddenly she put her black head down in her arms, as she
often did when she was alone.

"Oh, papa," she whispered, "what a long time it seems since I
was your `Little Missus'!"

This was what happened that day on both sides of the wall.