Sara Craven

“ In the dimly lit hall, standing at the foot of the staircase with his hand clenched on the oaken rail, Craven watched with tortured eyes the slender drooping figure move slowly upward, battling with himself, praying for strength to let her go—for he knew that if she even turned her head his self-control would shatter. It was weakening now and the sweat broke out in heavy drops on his forehead as he strove to crush an insidious inward voice that bade him forget the past and take what was his. “Only one life,” it seemed to shout in mocking derision, “live while you can, take what you can! ”

“ That there does seem real now, doesn’t it? The missus is more like the head jailer every day she lives. I can jest see them big keys you say she carries. The cook she’s like one of the under-jailers. Tell me some more, please, miss—tell me about the subt’ranean passage we’ve dug under the walls.”
“I’ll tell you something warmer,” shivered Sara. “Get your coverlet and wrap it round you, and I’ll get mine, and we will huddle close together on the bed, and I’ll tell you about the tropical forest where the Indian gentleman’s monkey used to live. ”

“ CUTHBERTSON (emphatically) . So it is, Craven, so it is.
CHARTERIS. Exactly. That's what keeps it so select: nobody but people whose reputations are above suspicion dare belong to it. If we once got a good name, we should become a mere whitewashing shop for all the shady characters in London. Better join us, Craven. Let me put you up.
CRAVEN. What! Join a club where there's some scoundrel who guaranteed my daughter to be an unwomanly woman! If I weren't an invalid, I'd kick him. ”

“ A woman of sordid mind could easily believe that most people would not refuse to allow their children to remain friends with a little heiress of diamond-mines. And if Mr. Carrisford chose to tell certain of her patrons how unhappy Sara Crewe had been made, many unpleasant things might happen.
“You have not undertaken an easy charge,” she said to the Indian gentleman, as she turned to leave the room; “you will discover that very soon. The child is neither [252] truthful nor grateful. I suppose”—to Sara—“that you feel now that you are a princess again.” ”

“ With a broken whisper Craven caught his frail burden closer, as though seeking by the strength and warmth of his own body to animate the fragile limbs lying so cold and lifeless in his arms, and he bent low over the pallid lips he craved and yet did not dare to kiss. ”

“ Miss Minchin reddened and drew herself up.
“You ought to have known it,” said she; “but children, unfortunately, never know what is best for them. Amelia and I always said you were the cleverest child in the school. Will you not do your duty to your poor papa and come home with me?”
Sara took a step toward her and stood still. She was [251] thinking of the day when she had been told that she belonged to nobody, and was in danger of being turned into the street; she was thinking of the cold, hungry hours she had spent alone with Emily and Melchisedec in the attic. ”

“ I was a passive instrument in wiser hands." "As we all are, more often than we think—-well, good- by, and when you long for a sight of the old home, and the sea, you will always be welcome here."
It was Sara's only visit to the cottage, for her stay in Killamet was necessarily short. She spent all the time possible with her dear old friend, who she could plainly see, was losing in vigor daily. But though she frankly referred to her approaching marriage, and discussed her future plans in detail, it was not till the last day that either touched upon the subject as affecting Jasper. ”

“ Sara was their first child, and upon her the young mother lavished untold tenderness. When, at the birth of the twins, nearly seven years later,—two infants having died between,—she yielded up her own gentle life, her last words had been,—
"Don't forget, Reuben, that Sara is to have an education. I can see already that she is going to care for books, and she'll need it more than ever, now—promise me, husband!" and the good man would sooner have cut off his weather-beaten spear-hand than break his promise to that dying wife. ”

“ Sara advanced a step toward her.
“I want her because I know she will like to see the presents,” she explained. “She is a little girl, too, you know.”
Miss Minchin was scandalized. She glanced from one figure to the other. [74]
“My dear Sara,” she said, “Becky is the scullery-maid. Scullery-maids—er—are not little girls.”
It really had not occurred to her to think of them in that light. Scullery-maids were machines who carried coal-scuttles and made fires.
“But Becky is,” said Sara. “And I know she would enjoy herself. Please let her stay—because it is my birthday.” ”

“ His fingers clenched on the soft hat he held.
“But it does not do at all,” she was saying, and the racking cough that accompanied her words struck through Craven's heart like a knife, “it is the expression that is wrong. If you look like that I can never believe that you are what you say you are. ”

“ He knew that this young human being sitting on the red footstool would not jump up and terrify him with wild, sharp noises or throw heavy objects at him which, if they did not fall and crush him, would send him limping in his scurry back to his hole. He was really a very nice rat, and did not mean the least harm. When he had stood on his hind legs and sniffed the air, with his bright eyes fixed on Sara, he had hoped that she would understand this, and would not begin by hating him as an enemy. ”

“ I fear that a certain person has too great, and that not a happy, influence over her. But Sara is a richly gifted and truly interesting girl, out of whom something very good may be made, if—if——She gives us, indeed, anxiety at times, for we are as much attached to her as if she were our own child. She has a most extraordinary talent for music—you must hear her. There really is much that is very distinguished and truly amiable in her; you will see it, as you remain so much longer time with us."
"Yes, thank God!" said Henrik, "I can now reckon on that, on remaining some months at home." ”

“ CHARTERIS. I feel as if my body had turned into the toughest of hickory. That is what comes of reminding me of Julia Craven. (Brooding, with his chin on his right hand and his elbow on his knee.) I have sat alone with her just as I am sitting with you—
GRACE (shrinking from him) . Just!
CHARTERIS (sitting upright and facing her steadily) . Just exactly. She has put her hands in mine, and laid her cheek against mine, and listened to me saying all sorts of silly things. (Grace, chilled to the soul, rises from the sofa and sits down on the piano stool, with her back to the keyboard.) ”

“ Don't you think he will?"
"Well, Sara, after his letter of last night, my hopes upon the point are not very strong."
"O papa! I want to see him! I must see him before he sails."
"Hush, child!" She had spoken in a distressed tone, and her small white hands were trembling. "Agitating yourself will not bring him."
By and by the letters came in: two. Neal handed one to his master, the other to Sara. Both bore the same handwriting--Captain Davenal's. Sara, in her bitter disappointment, let hers lie by her plate untouched, but the doctor opened his.
Miss Bettina looked up. "Is he coming, Richard?" ”

“ She felt that day as if all the rampart of will, which ten years’ labour had built up between her and the dangers and miseries attendant upon such a temperament as hers, were beginning before her eyes to crumble into dust, touched by the wand of a maleficent enchanter.
And it was Craven’s fault. He should have been like other young men, obedient to the call of beauty and youth; he should have been wax in Beryl Van Tuyn’s pretty hands. ”

“ They were accustomed to being rich and comfortable, and as Sara’s frocks grew shorter and shabbier and queerer-looking, and it became an established fact that she wore shoes with holes in them and was sent out to buy groceries and carry them through the streets in a basket on her arm when the cook wanted them in a hurry, they felt rather as if, when they spoke to her, they were addressing an under servant.
“To think that she was the girl with the diamond-mines,” Lavinia commented. “She does look like an object. And she’s queerer than ever. ”

“ It had, in fact, nothing in common with cold baths, marmalade, rugby football, and musical comedy.
On the present occasion the remark was especially unpleasant because Craven had made it in so odd a manner. During the last few weeks it had been very generally noticed that Craven had not been himself—so pleasant and healthy a fellow he had always been, but now this Carfax business was too much for him. "Look out for young Craven" had been the general warning, implied if not expressed. Persons who threatened to be unusual were always marked down in Cambridge. ”

“ And today the sight of the men's straining limbs and heaving chests moved him more than usual. He used a rickshaw of necessity, and had never overcome his distaste for them.
Emerging from a grove of pines they neared the little gateway and as the men flung themselves backward with a deep grunt at the physical exertion of stopping, Craven leaped out and dashed up the path, panic-driven. He took the verandah steps in two strides and then stopped abruptly, his face whitening under the deep tan. ”

“ Sara hid her face on her arms and sobbed. Some rats in the wall began to fight and bite each other, and squeak and scramble. But, as I have already intimated, Sara was not in the habit of crying. After a while she stopped, and when she stopped she looked at Emily, who seemed to be gazing at [Pg 24] her around the side of one ankle, and actually with a kind of glassy-eyed sympathy. Sara bent and picked her up. Remorse overtook her.
"You can't help being a doll," she said, with a resigned sigh, "any more than those girls downstairs can help not having any sense. We are not all alike. ”

“ After the miniature women of Japan you take my breath away. The modern Englishwoman is really a glorious creature.”
Pat laughed amiably. “I’m a sort of yard-measure, aren’t I? It’s a nuisance really, except when you get in a crowd. Mother winces every time she sees me, and father says my feet are larger than his.”
But Image looked admiringly at her over the edge of his tea-cup. To him this fine young girl, so amazingly [97] fresh and healthy, Saxon in colouring, with the limbs of an athlete, was most attractive, though he knew she made his own lack of inches more conspicuous. ”

“ It was the Garden of Enchantment, peopled with a thousand djinns and demons of Old Japan. The atmosphere was mysterious, the air was saturated with sweet heavy scents.
Craven was a passionate lover of the night. The darkness, the silence, the mystery of it appealed to him. He was familiar with its every phase in many climates. It enticed him for long solitary rambles in all the countries he had visited during the ten years of his wanderings. Nature, always fascinating, was then to him doubly attractive, doubly alluring. ”

“ He and Becky and Lottie lived at Miss Minchin’s, and I cannot understand why they did not mention themselves to me at first. They were as real as Sara, and it was careless of them not to come out of the story shadowland and say, “Here I am—tell about me.” But they did not—which was their fault and not mine. People who live in the story one is writing ought to come forward at the beginning and tap the writing person on the shoulder and say, “Hallo, what about me?” If they don’t, no one can be blamed but themselves and their slouching, idle ways. ”

“ By this time Beautiful Sara had somewhat awakened from her dreams, and she gazed at the hills on the shore, on the summits of which lights of castles were gleaming, and at the foot of which the mist, shimmering in the moonlight, was beginning to rise. Suddenly she seemed to see her friends and relatives, as they, with corpse-like faces and flowing shrouds, passed in awful procession along the Rhine.... The world grew dark before her eyes, an icy current ran through her soul, and, as if in sleep, she only heard the Rabbi repeating the night-prayer slowly and painfully, as if at a deathbed. ”

“ Oh, Sara, I could never have done it! 'A son?' he would have said, perplexed. 'But there is only little Scar.' It would have been cruelty, he believes in me so!" Her voice quivered, and she stopped.
"He has never had more cause to believe in you than now, mamma—to believe in your love for him; he does not know it, but some day he will. You have been so unswerving in your determination to make secure, first of all, his happiness and tranquillity, so unmindful of your own pain, that it seems to me, his daughter, as if you had never been so faithful a wife to him as now." ”

“ It was just then that Miss Minchin entered the room. She was very like her house, Sara felt: tall and dull, and respectable and ugly. She had large, cold, fishy eyes, and a large, cold, fishy smile. It spread itself into a very large smile when she saw Sara and Captain Crewe. She had heard a great many desirable things of the young soldier from the lady who had recommended her school to him. Among other things, she had heard that he was a rich father who was willing to spend a great deal of money on his little daughter. ”

“ If there was time only for a few words, they were always friendly, merry words that put heart into one; and if there was time for more, then there was an instalment of a story to be told, or some other thing one remembered afterward and sometimes lay awake in one’s bed in the attic to think over. Sara—who was only doing what she unconsciously liked better than anything else, Nature having made her for a giver—had not the least idea what she meant to poor Becky, and how wonderful a benefactor she seemed. If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart ”