Chapter: Ram Dass


There were fine sunsets even in the square, sometimes.  One could only
see parts of them, however, between the chimneys and over the roofs.
From the kitchen windows one could not see them at all, and could only
guess that they were going on because the bricks looked warm and the
air rosy or yellow for a while, or perhaps one saw a blazing glow
strike a particular pane of glass somewhere. There was, however, one
place from which one could see all the splendor of them: the piles of
red or gold clouds in the west; or the purple ones edged with dazzling
brightness; or the little fleecy, floating ones, tinged with rose-color
and looking like flights of pink doves scurrying across the blue in a
great hurry if there was a wind. The place where one could see all
this, and seem at the same time to breathe a purer air, was, of course,
the attic window. When the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in
an enchanted way and look wonderful in spite of its sooty trees and
railings, Sara knew something was going on in the sky; and when it was
at all possible to leave the kitchen without being missed or called
back, she invariably stole away and crept up the flights of stairs,
and, climbing on the old table, got her head and body as far out of the
window as possible.  When she had accomplished this, she always drew a
long breath and looked all round her.  It used to seem as if she had
all the sky and the world to herself.  No one else ever looked out of
the other attics.  Generally the skylights were closed; but even if
they were propped open to admit air, no one seemed to come near them.
And there Sara would stand, sometimes turning her face upward to the
blue which seemed so friendly and near--just like a lovely vaulted
ceiling--sometimes watching the west and all the wonderful things that
happened there: the clouds melting or drifting or waiting softly to be
changed pink or crimson or snow-white or purple or pale dove-gray.
Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep
turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark
headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of
wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together.  There were
places where it seemed that one could run or climb or stand and wait to
see what next was coming--until, perhaps, as it all melted, one could
float away.  At least it seemed so to Sara, and nothing had ever been
quite so beautiful to her as the things she saw as she stood on the
table--her body half out of the skylight--the sparrows twittering with
sunset softness on the slates.  The sparrows always seemed to her to
twitter with a sort of subdued softness just when these marvels were
going on.

There was such a sunset as this a few days after the Indian gentleman
was brought to his new home; and, as it fortunately happened that the
afternoon's work was done in the kitchen and nobody had ordered her to
go anywhere or perform any task, Sara found it easier than usual to
slip away and go upstairs.

She mounted her table and stood looking out.  It was a wonderful
moment.  There were floods of molten gold covering the west, as if a
glorious tide was sweeping over the world. A deep, rich yellow light
filled the air; the birds flying across the tops of the houses showed
quite black against it.

"It's a Splendid one," said Sara, softly, to herself.  "It makes me
feel almost afraid--as if something strange was just going to happen.
The Splendid ones always make me feel like that."

She suddenly turned her head because she heard a sound a few yards away
from her.  It was an odd sound like a queer little squeaky chattering.
It came from the window of the next attic.  Someone had come to look at
the sunset as she had.  There was a head and a part of a body emerging
from the skylight, but it was not the head or body of a little girl or
a housemaid; it was the picturesque white-swathed form and dark-faced,
gleaming-eyed, white-turbaned head of a native Indian man-servant--"a
Lascar," Sara said to herself quickly--and the sound she had heard came
from a small monkey he held in his arms as if he were fond of it, and
which was snuggling and chattering against his breast.

As Sara looked toward him he looked toward her.  The first thing she
thought was that his dark face looked sorrowful and homesick. She felt
absolutely sure he had come up to look at the sun, because he had seen
it so seldom in England that he longed for a sight of it. She looked at
him interestedly for a second, and then smiled across the slates.  She
had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may
be.

Hers was evidently a pleasure to him.  His whole expression altered,
and he showed such gleaming white teeth as he smiled back that it was
as if a light had been illuminated in his dusky face. The friendly look
in Sara's eyes was always very effective when people felt tired or dull.

It was perhaps in making his salute to her that he loosened his hold on
the monkey.  He was an impish monkey and always ready for adventure,
and it is probable that the sight of a little girl excited him. He
suddenly broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them
chattering, and actually leaped on to Sara's shoulder, and from there
down into her attic room.  It made her laugh and delighted her; but she
knew he must be restored to his master--if the Lascar was his
master--and she wondered how this was to be done.  Would he let her
catch him, or would he be naughty and refuse to be caught, and perhaps
get away and run off over the roofs and be lost? That would not do at
all.  Perhaps he belonged to the Indian gentleman, and the poor man was
fond of him.

She turned to the Lascar, feeling glad that she remembered still some
of the Hindustani she had learned when she lived with her father. She
could make the man understand.  She spoke to him in the language he
knew.

"Will he let me catch him?" she asked.

She thought she had never seen more surprise and delight than the dark
face expressed when she spoke in the familiar tongue. The truth was
that the poor fellow felt as if his gods had intervened, and the kind
little voice came from heaven itself.  At once Sara saw that he had
been accustomed to European children.  He poured forth a flood of
respectful thanks.  He was the servant of Missee Sahib. The monkey was
a good monkey and would not bite; but, unfortunately, he was difficult
to catch.  He would flee from one spot to another, like the lightning.
He was disobedient, though not evil. Ram Dass knew him as if he were
his child, and Ram Dass he would sometimes obey, but not always.  If
Missee Sahib would permit Ram Dass, he himself could cross the roof to
her room, enter the windows, and regain the unworthy little animal.
But he was evidently afraid Sara might think he was taking a great
liberty and perhaps would not let him come.

But Sara gave him leave at once.

"Can you get across?" she inquired.

"In a moment," he answered her.

"Then come," she said; "he is flying from side to side of the room as
if he was frightened."

Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as
steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life.  He
slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound.
Then he turned to Sara and salaamed again.  The monkey saw him and
uttered a little scream.  Ram Dass hastily took the precaution of
shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very
long chase.  The monkey prolonged it a few minutes evidently for the
mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's
shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird
little skinny arm.

Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly.  She had seen that his quick native
eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but
he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a
rajah, and pretended that he observed nothing.  He did not presume to
remain more than a few moments after he had caught the monkey, and
those moments were given to further deep and grateful obeisance to her
in return for her indulgence.  This little evil one, he said, stroking
the monkey, was, in truth, not so evil as he seemed, and his master,
who was ill, was sometimes amused by him.  He would have been made sad
if his favorite had run away and been lost. Then he salaamed once more
and got through the skylight and across the slates again with as much
agility as the monkey himself had displayed.

When he had gone Sara stood in the middle of her attic and thought of
many things his face and his manner had brought back to her.  The sight
of his native costume and the profound reverence of his manner stirred
all her past memories.  It seemed a strange thing to remember that
she--the drudge whom the cook had said insulting things to an hour
ago--had only a few years ago been surrounded by people who all treated
her as Ram Dass had treated her; who salaamed when she went by, whose
foreheads almost touched the ground when she spoke to them, who were
her servants and her slaves.  It was like a sort of dream. It was all
over, and it could never come back.  It certainly seemed that there was
no way in which any change could take place. She knew what Miss Minchin
intended that her future should be. So long as she was too young to be
used as a regular teacher, she would be used as an errand girl and
servant and yet expected to remember what she had learned and in some
mysterious way to learn more.  The greater number of her evenings she
was supposed to spend at study, and at various indefinite intervals she
was examined and knew she would have been severely admonished if she
had not advanced as was expected of her.  The truth, indeed, was that
Miss Minchin knew that she was too anxious to learn to require
teachers. Give her books, and she would devour them and end by knowing
them by heart.  She might be trusted to be equal to teaching a good
deal in the course of a few years.  This was what would happen: when
she was older she would be expected to drudge in the schoolroom as she
drudged now in various parts of the house; they would be obliged to
give her more respectable clothes, but they would be sure to be plain
and ugly and to make her look somehow like a servant. That was all
there seemed to be to look forward to, and Sara stood quite still for
several minutes and thought it over.

Then a thought came back to her which made the color rise in her cheek
and a spark light itself in her eyes.  She straightened her thin little
body and lifted her head.

"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing.  If I am a
princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be
easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a
great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows
it.  There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne
was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and
they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more
like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand.
I like her best then.  Those howling mobs of people did not frighten
her.  She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off."

This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time.  It had
consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the
house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not
understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it
seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above
the rest of the world.  It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and
acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them
at all.  Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh,
domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes
fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them.  At such
times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself:

"You don't know that you are saying these things to a princess, and
that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only
spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind,
vulgar old thing, and don't know any better."

This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer
and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing
for her.  While the thought held possession of her, she could not be
made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her.

"A princess must be polite," she said to herself.

And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were
insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply
to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her.

"She's got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham
Palace, that young one," said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes.
"I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never
forgets her manners.  'If you please, cook'; 'Will you be so kind,
cook?'  'I beg your pardon, cook'; 'May I trouble you, cook?'  She
drops 'em about the kitchen as if they was nothing."

The morning after the interview with Ram Dass and his monkey, Sara was
in the schoolroom with her small pupils.  Having finished giving them
their lessons, she was putting the French exercise-books together and
thinking, as she did it, of the various things royal personages in
disguise were called upon to do:  Alfred the Great, for instance,
burning the cakes and getting his ears boxed by the wife of the
neat-herd. How frightened she must have been when she found out what
she had done. If Miss Minchin should find out that she--Sara, whose
toes were almost sticking out of her boots--was a princess--a real one!
The look in her eyes was exactly the look which Miss Minchin most
disliked. She would not have it; she was quite near her and was so
enraged that she actually flew at her and boxed her ears--exactly as
the neat-herd's wife had boxed King Alfred's. It made Sara start. She
wakened from her dream at the shock, and, catching her breath, stood
still a second.  Then, not knowing she was going to do it, she broke
into a little laugh.

"What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin
exclaimed.

It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember
that she was a princess.  Her cheeks were red and smarting from the
blows she had received.

"I was thinking," she answered.

"Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin.

Sara hesitated a second before she replied.

"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then;
"but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."

"What were you thinking?" demanded Miss Minchin.
"How dare you think?  What were you thinking?"

Jessie tittered, and she and Lavinia nudged each other in unison. All
the girls looked up from their books to listen.  Really, it always
interested them a little when Miss Minchin attacked Sara.  Sara always
said something queer, and never seemed the least bit frightened. She
was not in the least frightened now, though her boxed ears were scarlet
and her eyes were as bright as stars.

"I was thinking," she answered grandly and politely, "that you did not
know what you were doing."

"That I did not know what I was doing?"  Miss Minchin fairly gasped.

"Yes," said Sara, "and I was thinking what would happen if I were a
princess and you boxed my ears--what I should do to you. And I was
thinking that if I were one, you would never dare to do it, whatever I
said or did.  And I was thinking how surprised and frightened you would
be if you suddenly found out--"

She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke
in a manner which had an effect even upon Miss Minchin. It almost
seemed for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must
be some real power hidden behind this candid daring.

"What?" she exclaimed.  "Found out what?"

"That I really was a princess," said Sara, "and could do
anything--anything I liked."

Every pair of eyes in the room widened to its full limit.  Lavinia
leaned forward on her seat to look.

"Go to your room," cried Miss Minchin, breathlessly, "this instant!
Leave the schoolroom!  Attend to your lessons, young ladies!"

Sara made a little bow.

"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out
of the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the
girls whispering over their books.

"Did you see her?  Did you see how queer she looked?"  Jessie broke
out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be
something. Suppose she should!"

 Sara spends her time up in the attic looking out onto the roof and into the sky. She's watching the sun set one day when she sees a Lascar with a monkey climb out onto the roof. They smile at each other. The monkey suddenly breaks loose and runs over to Sara's roof, where it lands on her shoulder and scurries into her attic room. Sara volunteers to help--in Hindustani. The manservant is delighted and tells her that the monkey is disobedient. The manservant's name is Ram Dass, and he works for the man next door. Ram Dass comes over to Sara's attic, catches the monkey, and leaves. Sara is a little embarrassed about how bare and sad her room is, and she thinks about how Miss Minchin will make her stay at the school as a servant forever. The only thing she can do is be princess-like even when she's in rags, because it is that much more of a triumph . She is exceptionally polite to all the servants even when they're awful to her. The next day, she is in the classroom and she suddenly starts laughing. No, there's no joke: she's just thinking about how Miss Minchin would feel if she suddenly found out that Sara was actually a princess. When Miss Minchin demands to know why she's laughing, she tells the truth. Not a good move. Miss Minchin orders her out of the room.

