Boys and Girls from Thackeray

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

When Mrs. Crabb heard of this dreadful accident she at once proclaimed James Gann to be a swindler, a villain, a disreputable, vulgar man, and made over her money to the Misses Rosalind Clancy and Isabella Finigan McCarty, leaving poor little Caroline without a cent of legacy. Half of one thousand five hundred pounds allotted to each twin was to be paid at marriage, the other half on the death of Mrs. James Gann, who was to enjoy the interest thereof. Thus did the fortunes of little Caroline alter in a single night! Thus did Cinderella enter upon the period of her loneliness!

After James Gann's failure his family lived in various uncomfortable ways, until at length Mrs. Gann opened a lodging-house in a certain back street in the town of Margate, on the door of which house might be read in gleaming brass the name of MR. GANN. It was the work of a single smutty servant-maid to clean this brass plate every morning, and to attend to the wants of Mr. Gann, his family, and lodgers. In this same house Mr. Gann had his office, though if truth be told he had nothing to do from morning until night. He was very much changed, poor fellow! He was now a fat, bald-headed man of fifty whose tastes were no longer aristocratic, and who loved public-house jokes and company.

As for Mrs. Gann, she had changed, too, under the pressure of misfortune. Her chief occupation was bragging of her former acquaintances, taking medicine, and mending and altering her gowns. She had a huge taste for cheap finery, loved raffles, tea-parties, and walks on the pier, where she flaunted herself and daughters as gay as butterflies. She stood upon her rank, did not fail to tell her lodgers that she was "a gentlewoman," and was mighty sharp with Becky, the maid, and Carrie, her youngest child.

For the tide of affection had turned now, and the Misses Wellesley McCarty were the darlings of their mother's heart, as Caroline had been in the early days of Putney prosperity. Mrs. Gann respected and loved her elder daughters, the stately heiresses of £1500, and scorned poor Caroline, who was likewise scorned, like Cinderella, by her brace of haughty, thoughtless sisters. These young women were tall, well-grown, black-browed girls, fond of fun, and having great health and spirits. They had pink cheeks, white shoulders, and many glossy curls about their shining foreheads. Such charms cannot fail of having their effect, and it was very lucky for Caroline that she did not possess them, or she might have been as vain, frivolous, and vulgar as these young ladies were. As it was, Caroline was pale and thin, with fair hair and neat grey eyes; nobody thought her a beauty in her moping cotton gown, and while her sisters enjoyed their pleasures and tea-parties abroad, it was Carrie's usual fate to remain at home and help the servant in the many duties which were required in Mrs. Gann's establishment. She dressed her mamma and her sisters, brought her papa his tea in bed, kept the lodgers' bills, bore their scoldings, and sometimes gave a hand in the kitchen if any extra cookery was required. At two she made a little toilette for dinner, and was employed on numberless household darnings and mendings in the long evenings while her sisters giggled over the jingling piano. Mamma lay on the sofa, and Gann was at the club. A weary lot, in sooth, was yours,—poor little Caroline. Since the days of your infancy, not one hour of sunshine, no friendship, no cheery playfellows, no mother's love! Only James Gann, of all the household, had a good-natured look for her, and a coarse word of kindness, but Caroline did not complain, nor shed any tears. Her misery was dumb and patient; she felt that she was ill-treated, and had no companion; but was not on that account envious, only humble and depressed, not desiring so much to resist as to bear injustice, and hardly venturing to think for herself. This tyranny and humility served her in place of education and formed her manners, which were wonderfully gentle and calm. It was strange to see such a person growing up in such a family, and the neighbours spoke of her with much scornful compassion. "A poor half-witted, thing," they said, "who could not say bo! to a goose." And I think it is one good test of gentility to be thus looked down on by vulgar people.

I have said that Miss Caroline had no friend in the world except her father, but one friend she most certainly had, and that was honest Becky, the smutty maid, whose name has been mentioned before. A great comfort it was for Caroline to descend to the calm kitchen from the stormy back-parlour, and there vent some of her little woes to the compassionate servant of all work.

When Mrs. Gann went out with her daughters Becky would take her work and come and keep Miss Caroline company; and, if the truth must be told, the greatest enjoyment the pair used to have was in these afternoons, when they read together out of the precious, greasy, marble-covered volumes that Mrs. Gann was in the habit of fetching from the library. Many and many a tale had the pair so gone through. I can see them over "Manfrone; or the One-handed Monk," the room dark, the street silent, the hour ten, the tall, red, lurid candlewick waggling down, the flame flickering pale upon Miss Caroline's pale face as she read out, and lighting up honest Becky's goggling eyes, who sat silent, her work in her lap; she had not done a stitch of it for an hour. As the trapdoor slowly opens, and the scowling Alonzo, bending over the sleeping Imoinda, draws his pistol, cocks it, looks well if the priming be right, places it then to the sleeper's ear, and—thunder under-under—down fall the snuffers! Becky has had them in her hand for ten minutes, afraid to use them. Up starts Caroline and flings the book back into mamma's basket. It is only that lady returned with her daughters from a tea-party, where they have been enjoying themselves.

For the sentimental, too, as well as the terrible, Miss Caroline and the cook had a strong predilection, and had wept their poor eyes out over "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and the "Scottish Chiefs." Fortified by the examples drawn from those instructive volumes, Becky was firmly convinced that her young mistress would meet with a great lord some day or other, or be carried off, like Cinderella, by a brilliant prince, to the mortification of her elder sisters, whom Becky hated.

When, therefore, a new lodger came, lonely, mysterious, melancholy, elegant, with the romantic name of George Brandon—when he actually wrote a letter directed to a lord, and Miss Caroline and Becky together examined the superscription, Becky's eyes were lighted up with a preternatural look of wondering wisdom; whereas, after an instant, Caroline dropped hers, and blushed and said, "Nonsense, Becky!"

"Is it nonsense?" said Becky, grinning, and snapping her fingers with a triumphant air; "the cards come true; I knew they would. Didn't you have a king and queen of hearts three deals running? What did you dream about last Tuesday, tell me that?"

But Miss Caroline never did tell, for just then her sisters came bouncing down the stairs, and examined the lodger's letter. Caroline, however, went away musing much upon these points; and she began to think Mr. Brandon more wonderful and beautiful every day, whereas he was remarkable for nothing except very black eyes, a sallow face, and a habit of smoking cigars in bed till noon. His name of George Brandon was only an assumed one. He was really the son of a half-pay Colonel, of good family, who had been sent to Eton to acquire an education. From Eton he went to Oxford, took honours there, but ran up bills amounting to two thousand pounds. Then there came fury on the part of his stern old "governor"; and final payment of the debt, but while this settlement was pending Master George had contracted many more debts and was glad to fly to the Continent as tutor to young Lord Cinqbars, and afterwards went into retirement at Margate until his father's wrath should be appeased. For that reason we find him a member of the Gann establishment, flirting when occasion seemed to demand it with mother and daughters, and taking occasional notice of little Caroline, who frequently broiled his cutlets.