Our Ada Elizabeth
"The sublime mystery of Providence goes on in silence, and gives noexplanation of itself, no answer to our impatientquestionings."--_Hyperion_.
CHAPTER I
The Dicki'sons lived in Blankhampton. Not in the fashionable suburb ofGreater Gate, for the Dicki'sons were not fashionable people--far fromit, indeed. Nor yet in that exclusive part which immediately surroundsthe cathedral, which Blankhampton folk familiarly call "the Parish."No; they lived in neither of these, but away on the poorer side of thetown and in the narrowest of narrow lanes--so narrow, indeed, that if acart came along the passer-by was glad to get into a doorway, and standthere trembling until the danger was past and the road free again.
I must tell you that, although they were always _called_ the Dicki'sons,their name was spelt in the usual way, with an "n" in the middle andwithout an apostrophe; but, as their neighbours made an invariable ruleof pronouncing the word, as they did themselves, in the way in which Ihave written it, I will take the liberty of continuing the custom inthis story.
For their position, they were rather well-to-do. Mr. Dicki'son, thefather of the family, was a plumber and glazier--not in business forhimself, but the foreman of a business of some importance in the town;and Mr. Dicki'son was a plain man of somewhat reserved disposition.There were ill-natured and rude persons in that neighbourhood who didnot hesitate to describe Mr. Dicki'son as "a sulky beast"; but then theopinion of such was scarcely worth having, and even they had not a wordto say against him beyond a general complaint of his unsociable temper.
They were lively people who lived round about Gardener's Lane. Thefathers worked hard all the week, and mostly got frightfully drunk onSaturday nights, when they went home and knocked their dirty, slipshodwives about, just by way of letting them know their duty to their lordsand masters. And after this sort of thing had subsided, the wivesgenerally gave the children a good cuffing all round, just by way ofletting them know that they need not hope to take any liberties withtheir mothers because of their fathers' little ways; and then they allgot quieted down for the night, and got up late on Sunday morning withheadaches. If the day was fine, the men sat dull and sodden in thesunshine on the pavement in the wide street out of which Gardener's Laneran, propping their backs against the wall and stretching their legsout, greatly to the danger and annoyance of passers-by; and while themen thus smoked the pipe of peace, the women stood in groups at theirdoorways, scratching their elbows and comparing their bruises; and thechildren, who had gone to sleep the previous night in tears andtribulation, found keen enjoyment in watching for the parson and the fewpeople who went to the church round the corner, and called names anduncomplimentary terms after them as they turned in at the gates whichled thereto.
Now, as Mr. Dicki'son was a person of a reserved and taciturndisposition, who was distinctly respectable in all his doings, who nevergot drunk, and openly despised any one else who did, it will readily bebelieved that he was not popular in the neighbourhood of Gardener'sLane. He was not anxious to be popular, and had it not been that thehouse in which he lived was his own, and that it suited his family as ahome, Gardener's Lane would not have counted him among its inhabitants.
Mrs. Dicki'son was a good deal younger than her husband--a pretty, weak,sentimental woman, rather gushing in disposition, and very injudicious.She was always overwhelmed with troubles and babies; although, as amatter of fact, she had but six children altogether, and one of themdied while still an infant. Gerty was twelve years old, and AdaElizabeth just a year younger; then came a gap of two years ere a boy,William Thomas, was born. William Thomas, if he had lived, would, Ifancy, have inherited his father's reserved disposition, for, I mustsay, a more taciturn babe it has never at any time been my lot toencounter. He was a dreadful trouble to his dissatisfied mother, whofelt, and said, that there was something uncanny about a child whoobjected to nothing--who seemed to know no difference between his ownthumb and the bottle which fed him, and would go on sucking as patientlyat the one as at the other; who would lie with as much apparent comforton his face as on his back, and seemed to find no distinction betweenhis mother's arms and a corner of the wide old sofa, which earlier andlater babies resented as a personal insult, and made remarksaccordingly. However, after six months of this monotonous existence,William Thomas was removed from this lower sphere, passing away with thesame dignity as he had lived, after which he served a good purposestill, which was to act as a model to all the other babies who resentedthe corner of the sofa and declined to accept the substitution of theirthumbs, or any other makeshift, for the bottle of their desires.
Two years later was a girl, called Polly, and two years later again wasGeorgie; and then, for a time, Mrs. Dicki'son being free from the caresof a baby, fretted and worried that "'ome isn't like 'ome without a babyin it." But when Georgie was just turned three little Miriam arrived,and Mrs. Dicki'son was able to change her complaint, and tell all heracquaintance that she did think Georgie was going to be the last, andshe was sure she was "just wore out."
Most of the children took after their mother. True, as I have alreadysaid, William Thomas had given signs of not doing so; but William Thomashad not really lived long enough for any one to speak definitely on thesubject. All the rest thrived and grew apace, and they all took aftertheir mother, both in looks and character, with the exception of thesecond girl, "our Ada Elizabeth."
"The very moral of her father," Mrs. Dicki'son was accustomed to sigh,as she tried in vain to trim Ada Elizabeth's hat so that the plainlittle face underneath it should look as bright and fresh as the rosyfaces of her sisters. But it was a hopeless task, and Mrs. Dicki'sonhad to give it up in despair and with many a long speech full of pityfor herself that she, of all people in the world, should have such ahard trial put upon her as a child who was undeniably plain.
For the child was plain. She had been a plain, featureless baby, ofuncertain colour, inclining to drab--very much, indeed, what WilliamThomas was after her. A baby who, even when newly washed, never lookedquite clean; a little girl whose pinafore never hung right, and withtow-coloured hair which no amount of hair-oil or curl-papers could makeanything but lank and unornamental! A child with a heavy, dull face,and a mouth that seldom relaxed into a smile though there were people(not Mrs. Dicki'son among them, though) who did not fail to notice thatthe rare smile was a very sweet one, infinitely sweeter than ever wasseen on the four pretty rosy faces of the other children.
A child with a heavy, dull face.]
Mrs. Dicki'son was eloquent about Ada Elizabeth's looks and temper."I'm sure," she cried one day to Gerty, who was pretty, and quick ofwit, and knew to a hair's-breadth how far she could go with her mother,"it's 'ard upon me I should have such a plain-looking child as our AdaElizabeth. It's no use me trying to trim her hat so as to make her looka credit to us. I'm sure it's aggravating, it is. I've trimmed yourtwo hats just alike, and she looks no better in hers than she does inher old school hat, and I got two nice curly tips just alike. 'Pon myword, it's quite thrown away on her."
"And I want another feather in mine to make it perfect, Mother,"murmured Gerty, with insinuating suggestiveness.
Mrs. Dicki'son caught at the bait thus held out to her. "I've a goodmind to take the tip out," she said hesitatingly.
"Yes, do, Mother; our Ada Elizabeth won't care. Will you, AdaElizabeth?" appealingly to the child who had had the misfortune to beborn plain.
"No, I don't care," returned Ada Elizabeth, whose heart was bursting,not with jealousy, but with a crushing sense of her own shortcomings.
"Just like her father," remarked Mrs. Dicki'son, loosening the featherfrom its place with one snip of her scissors. "He never cares 'ow helooks! ''Andsome is as 'andsome does,' is his motto; and though he'sbeen a good 'usband to me, and I'd be the last to go again' him, yet Imust say I do like a bit of smartness myself. But Ada Elizabeth's thevery moral of her father--as much in her ways as she is in her looks."
So gradually it got t
o be an established custom that Ada Elizabeth'sattire should be shorn of those little decorations with which Mrs.Dicki'son delighted to add effect to her eldest child's prettiness; itwas felt to be quite useless to spend money over curly tips andartificial roses to put above such a plain little face, or "waste" it,as her mother put it, in the not very delicate way in which she tried toexcuse herself to the child when some more obvious difference than usualbetween her clothes and Gerty's was contemplated.
Ada Elizabeth made no complaint. If asked her mind by the officiousGerty, she said she did not care, and the answer was accepted as literaltruth by her mother and sister. But Ada Elizabeth did care. She wasnot jealous, mind--alas! no, poor child--she was only miserable, crushedwith an ever-present consciousness of her own deficiencies andshortcomings, with a sense that in having been born plain and in havingtaken after her father she had done her mother an irreparable injury,had offered her the deepest insult possible! She honestly felt that itwas a hard trial to her mother that she should have such a plain anddull child. More than once she made a desperate effort to chatter afterGerty's fashion, but somehow the Dicki'son family did not appreciate theattempt. Gerty stared at her and sniggered, and her mother told herwith fretful promptness that she did not know what she was talkingabout; and poor Ada Elizabeth withdrew into herself, as it were, andbecame more reserved--"more like her father"--than ever, cherishing noresentment against those who had so mercilessly snubbed her, but onlyfeeling more intensely than ever that she was unlike the rest of theworld, and that her fate was to be seen as little as possible and notheard at all.