Princess Sarah, and Other Stories

by John Strange Winter

"I don't know," said Nancy; "I can't say. Other people have made fortunes; other people have done well by writing; why should not I?"

"As if you would ever make a fortune!" said Mrs. Macdonald, with the contemptuousness of a woman to whom the struggle of life had been hard and to whom pounds, shillings and pence in the very hand were the only proofs of reason for what she called "wasting time" over story-writing.

"Well, if not a fortune, at least a comfortable income," said Nancy eagerly; "and if I did, Mother, I should give it all to you!"

"Thank you for nothing, my dear," was the ungracious reply.

To this Nancy made no answer. She carried the big basket of stockings to the window, and sat down in the cold winter light to do such repairs as were necessary. Poor child! It was a hard fate for her. She was the eldest of a family of five, all dependent on the exertions of her widowed mother in keeping afloat the big boarding-house by which they lived. For a boarding-house, be it ever so liberally managed, be the receipts ever so generous, is but a sordid abode, especially to those who have the trouble and care of managing it; and to an eldest daughter, and one who stands between the anxious mother and the younger children, who mostly resemble young rooks with mouths chronically open, such a life appears perhaps more sordid than it does to any one else.

To Nancy Macdonald, with her mind full of visionary beauty, and living daily in a world of her own--not a world of boarding-houses--the life they lived seemed even more sordid, more trivial, more petty, than it was in reality. Her wants were not many; she was never inclined to rail at fate because she had not been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, not at all. But if only she could have a quiet home, with an assured income, just sufficient to cover their modest wants, to provide good wholesome food, to buy boots and shoes for the little ones, to pay the wages of a good servant, to take those lines of anxious care from her mother's forehead, so that she could employ her leisure in cultivating her Art--she always called it her Art, poor child!--she would have been perfectly happy, or she thought she would have been perfectly happy, which, in the main, amounted to the same thing. As she sat in the cold light of that winter's afternoon, darning, as if for dear life, the great pile of stockings which were her portion, she soon drifted away from the tall Bloomsbury dwelling into a bright, brilliant land of romance, where there were no troubles, no cares, where nothing was sordid, and everything was bright and rosy, and even troubles and worries might have been adequately described as "double water gilt."

Young writers do indulge in these blessed dreams of fancy, and Nancy, remember, was only twenty. Her heroines were always lovely, always extravagantly rich or picturesquely poor; her heroes were all lithe and long, and most of them had tawny moustaches, and violet eyes like a girl's. They were all guardsmen or noblemen. They knew not the want of money; if they were called poor, they went everywhere in hansoms, and had valets and gambling debts. It was an ideal world, and Nancy Macdonald was very happy in it.

From that time forward a new life began for the girl. The household certainly went more smoothly, because of that promise to her mother; and Mrs. Macdonald's sharp tongue whetted itself on other grievances more frequently than on that old one about Nancy's scribbling propensities. It was irritating to Nancy, of course, to hear her mother continually nagging about something or other; but then, as she reminded herself very often during the day, her mother had great anxieties and grievous worries. She was a sort of double-distilled Martha, "careful and troubled," not about many things, but about everything--everything that did happen, or might happen, even what could happen under given circumstances which might and probably never would occur. Still, it was not so trying to bear when the shafts of sarcasm and complaining were aimed at others instead of herself, and to do Nancy strict justice, she did try honestly to do the work which lay to her hand.

In the midst of the multitudinous cares of the large household it must be owned that the girl's writing suffered. It is all very well for a girl in fiction to do scullery work all day long, and write the brilliant novel of a season in odd moments, in a cold and cheerless bedroom, but in real life it is very different. Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper, and making herself generally useful; to superintending the education and manners of the little ones, to smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but her much loved work practically went to the wall. She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other things, but mere dreaming is not of much help towards making name or fortune; work is the only road which leads to either. Still, you cannot do your duty without improving your character, and Nancy Macdonald's character was strengthening and softening every day. She worked a little at night, but often she was far too tired and weary to attempt it. Very often when she did so, she found that the words would not run, the incidents would not connect themselves, and frequently that her eyes would not keep open; and then I am obliged to say that it was not an uncommon thing for Nancy Macdonald to get into bed and cry herself to sleep.

Still, her character was strengthening. With every day that went by she learnt more of the power of endurance; she became more patient, more fixed in her ideas; the goal of her desires was set more immediately in front of her. It was less visionary, but it was infinitely more substantial. In a desultory kind of a way she still worked, still wrote of lords and ladies whom she did not know in the flesh, still drew pictures of guardsmen with longer legs and tawnier moustaches even than before. She spent the whole of her pocket-money (which, by the bye, consisted of certain perquisites in the house, the medicine bottles and the dripping forming her chief sources of income) on manuscript paper, and was sometimes hard pushed to pay the postage on the mysterious packages which she smuggled into the post-office, and to provide the stamps for paying the return fare of these children of her fancy. Poor things, they always required it. No enterprising editors wanted the long-legged guardsmen, their blue eyes and tawny moustaches notwithstanding. Nobody had a welcome for the lovely ladies, who were all dressed by Worth, though they never seemed to have heard of such a person as Felix. The disappointments of their continued return were very bitter to her; yet, at heart, Nancy Macdonald was a true artist, and had all the true artist's pluck and perseverance, so that she never thought of giving up her work. It was only that she had not yet found her métier.