Anne's Terrible Good Nature (Collection)/The Ring of Fortitude
THE RING OF FORTITUDE
When Priscilla had been a very good girl her mother allowed her as a special treat to play with her jewel-case. Of course Priscilla had to be very careful, which, indeed, she was by nature, having for the most part a place for everything, and everything in its place. She used to sit on the floor with the jewel-case before her, and take the rings and brooches and pendants and necklaces and bracelets and pins out one by one, and hold them up to the light and make them flash, and then put them on. There were diamonds and pearls, and a large opal in which you saw deep down in its milky depths little glints of burning crimson and dancing green. But of all the jewels Priscilla liked best a turquoise ring, which her mother had ceased to wear. Priscilla would very much have liked this ring for her own; but her mother did not care for little girls to wear rings at all, except—but that is what I am going to tell you.
One day, soon after Priscilla was eleven, she had a bad toothache. It grew no better as the time went on, although she rubbed the tooth with medicine which her mother sent for; and afterwards she held a clove in her mouth, according to the advice of a charwoman who happened to be working in the house that day; and then lay down with a piece of brown paper against her cheek, soaked in vinegar and then peppered, according to the advice of the cook; and later sat close to the fire with the heat on the toothache side, according to the advice of the housemaid; and finally sponged her cheek with almost boiling water, according to the advice of the nurse. Nothing did the tooth any good. It ached most of the night, and the next morning poor Priscilla, with very red eyes, was led away to the dentist's by her nurse.
Of course directly she found herself on the terrible doorstep waiting for the horrible door to open, her toothache went away absolutely; but none the less she had to go into the waiting-room, and look at old Punches and old Illustrated London Newses for a long time until the dentist was ready, while fresh people came in and sat down with a sigh, including one old gentleman with a left cheek like the glass of a bull's-eye lantern; and then Priscilla's turn came and she went upstairs and for half an hour the dentist tortured her.
It was a tooth which, he said, must be saved and not extracted, and so he got out his little needles and his little looking-glass, and was exceedingly cruel—although by nature one of the kindest men living, who would not wittingly hurt a fly except for its own good—as in the case of Priscilla. And when the half-hour was finished he had only just begun, and he told her to come again in four days' time and he would try and finish it.
"Will it hurt again then?" Priscilla asked.
"I'm afraid it will," said the dentist.
Poor Priscilla! The tooth went on steadily grumbling with pain, and Priscilla's nerves were all upset, so that, although she was naturally brave, she could think of nothing but the next dreadful time, and as it drew nearer and nearer she broke down completely.
"I'm very sorry, mother," she said, "but I really don't think I can," and so saying she burst into sobs.
"If you will get on your things and come with me to the Stores," said her mother, "I think I can help you."
Priscilla brightened at once. She liked going to the Stores, not only because it was exciting to buy things and be among so much to buy, but also because she was always interested in the fat commissionaire with the dog-chains at the top of the steps, who knew all the dogs of Westminster intimately.
When they got to the Stores, and Smike had been chained up, Priscilla's mother led the way to the jewellery department, and, singling out one of the assistants, she said, "Is my ring done yet?"
"Yes," said he; "it has just come back." And he took out of a drawer a little box, and out of the box a ring, and handed it to Priscilla's mother. And Priscilla's mother handed it to Priscilla and said, "See if it fits, dear." And, behold! it was the turquoise-ring she had always loved so much, and, although it was rather loose, it fitted well enough for Priscilla to refuse to let the Stores have it again to alter it. In this decision she was supported by her mother, who said that it should come back again after a day or two. And so the assistant gave Priscilla the little box, and off they went home.
On their way Priscilla's mother explained to Priscilla the value of the ring.
"It is for you to wear," she said, "only when you feel you want some extra help to enable you to bear up, as you do to-day. Let us call it the ring of fortitude, and every time you look down and see it, or feel it on your finger, you will remember what it means and why it is there, and that will give you courage. Why, you are much braver already."
And it is true that Priscilla was. She almost skipped along beside her mother, and all that day she fondled the ring and forgot all about her tooth and the dentist, even about the perfectly hateful buzzing thing that he drills holes with.
She had a good night, and went off to him in the morning almost smiling, and whether it was that the ring helped her not to feel, or whether the dentist really did not hurt, I don't know, but it is certain that she had almost a pleasant sitting in his detestable chair.
In addition to the ring of fortitude, Priscilla had been given a shilling to buy some cakes for tea from a little shop oft Regent Street that was famous in her family for a certain kind of scone. The dentist's man called a cab, and she and her nurse drove off very happily for the cakes and then all down Regent Street and through St. James's Park home.
It was upon hearing her mother's first words, "Was the ring good to you?" that Priscilla realized that she was no longer wearing it!
Her heart stood still.
She searched her gloves and her clothes and the bag with the cakes in it, and then she searched them again; but to no purpose.
Priscilla was the most miserable child in London. She would rather, she felt, have forty toothaches.
Directly after lunch, which she had the utmost difficulty in eating, she and her mother hurried off to the confectioner's to see if the ring was there; but it was not.
Then they went off to Scotland Yard to describe it to the police and see if the cabman had by any chance found it and taken it there.
The Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard is divided into two parts, one for umbrellas and the other for miscellaneous things. Every day hundreds of persons seem to make a point of leaving something in a cab, and the doors of these offices are swinging continuously to let the losers in and out. A very nice policeman took down the particulars of the ring—what it was like, when and where Priscilla remembered seeing it last, the time she got into the cab and the time she left it, and so forth. Then he told them that if it were brought in they should have a letter.
But the letter did not come, and day after day passed, and Priscilla grew so tired of looking at cabmen in the hope of seeing her own cabman again that she slept badly and became pale and nervous, for she dreamed every night of nothing but hansoms, not only in the streets, but indoors too, and even upstairs, driven by men without faces at all. And they ne\»er said anything to her, but just drove on and on, never stopping to pick up passengers or put them down. The world was full of cabmen, cabmen, cabmen....
The doctor said that unless something happened to divert her mind Priscilla would be really ill.
But something did happen.
One evening, nearly a fortnight later, Priscilla's father was sitting by the fire reading a book he had bought at a book-stall that afternoon. It was the life of an actor named Charles Mayne Young, who lived a hundred years ago, and it was full of odd and interesting things. Suddenly he said, "Listen to this," and read to Priscilla and her mother the following story, which was told to Mr. Young's son by a Brighton magistrate after dinner on Christmas Day, 1827:
- "Some few years ago, a gentleman, a bachelor, residing in lodgings on the first floor of a respectable but small house in this town, appeared before the bench of magistrates with a charge against the maid of his lodging of having robbed him of a ring.
- "It appeared that he occupied the front drawing-room on the first floor and slept in the back; that one night, having undressed by the drawing-room fire and wound up his watch, he deposited it, with his chain, two seals, and a ring attached to it, on the chimney-piece, and jumped into bed in the next room. In the morning, on dressing himself and going to the chimney-piece for his watch, he discovered that the ring, which he valued, was gone. As he was in the habit of sleeping with the folding-doors between the rooms ajar, and was always a light sleeper, he felt confident that no one had entered the room since he had left it overnight except the maid, who had come in early, as usual, to dust and sweep the room and lay the table for breakfast. The servant was so neat in her person, so pretty, gentle, and well conducted, that he felt loath to tell her his suspicions; but the moral certainty he entertained of her guilt, and the great value he set on the ring, determined him to conquer his scruples. On hearing herself charged with the theft, she started and stared, as if doubting the evidence of her ears, indignantly denied the charge, burst into tears, and told her mistress that she would not remain another hour under her roof, for that her lodger had taxed her with dishonesty. The landlady espoused the cause of her maid, and used such strong language against her accuser, that his blood in turn was roused, and he resolved to bring the matter to a determinate issue before the magistrates. My friend said he was on the bench, and that, prepossessed as he and his coadjutors were by the girl's looks and manners, they felt quite unable to resist the weight of circumstantial evidence produced against her, and never had a moment's hesitation in committing her for trial at the next assizes.
- "Five or six weeks after she had been in jail the prosecutor went into Shaw's, the pastry-cook's in the Old Steyne, for an ice. While he was pausing deliberately between each spoonful, the sun burst forth in all its strength, and darted one of its beams along the floor of the shop, bringing into light an object which glistened vividly between the joists of the flooring. He took out his penknife, inserted the point of it between the boards, and, to his utter amazement, fished up his lost ring. He ran back to his lodgings, and, on referring to his diary, he found that, on the evening of the very night on which he had left his watch and its appendages on the chimney-piece, he had been at Shaw's having some refreshment; and he conjectured that, as half the split ring from which his seals hung had been for some time a good deal wrenched apart, it must have come into contact with the edge of the counter, and thus liberated the ring from its hold; that it had fallen on the ground, been trodden under the feet of some of the visitors to the shop, and in this way been wedged in between the boards of the flooring. Stung to the quick by self-reproach, at the thought of having tarnished the good name of an innocent girl by false accusation, and of having exposed her to the unmerited sufferings of prison life, he instantly took a post-chaise and drove off to the jail in which she was confined, asked every particular about her from the governor, and found him enthusiastic in his admiration of her, and utterly incredulous of her guilt. 'She's the gentlest, sweetest-tempered creature we have ever had within these walls, and nothing shall make me believe she is a thief,' said he. 'No more she is,' was the eager answer. 'She has been falsely charged by me, and I have come to make her every reparation in my power.' In one brief word, he offered her his hand, and married her."
"There!" said Priscilla's father, when he had finished. "Why shouldn't our ring have fallen into a crack at the pastry-cook's in just the same way? You say it was a little bit loose, and Priscilla remembers taking off her glove in the shop. It's an old shop, isn't it?' he added.
"Yes," said Priscilla's mother, "very old."
"Then very likely there are wide cracks in the floor, or even holes?"
"Quite likely," said Priscilla's mother.
"Then I think I'll go at once and see." Priscilla's father was very impulsive, and when he thought of a thing he liked to do it.
"Oh, father, may I come too?" cried Priscilla.
"It will make you so late for bed,'" said her father.
"Only this once," Priscilla urged.
"And the shop will be shut," said her mother.
"Oh, I'll get them to let me in!" said her father.
"Do let me go, do!" said Priscilla. "I may, mayn't I?"
"Very well," said her father; "but you must wrap up very warm."
So Priscilla's father filled his pipe, and Maggie stood on the steps and blew twice, and soon a cab came, and off they bowled to the little street off Regent Street.
Priscilla s mother was quite right. The shop was shut; but Priscilla's father hammered on the side door, and soon it was opened by a very little servant in a cap all on one side.
"Is Mr. Dear in?" asked Priscilla's father.
"No, he's not," said the very little servant.
"Is Mrs. Dear in?" asked Priscilla's father.
"There isn't a Mrs. Dear," said the very little servant.
"Then who is there?" asked Priscilla's father.
"There's Miss Dear," said the very little servant. "Mrs. Dear died years ago, on the day after the Diamond Jubilee."
"Is Miss Dear in?" asked Priscilla's father.
"No; Mr. Dear and Miss Dear have both gone to Maskelyne and Devant's," said the very little servant, with a husky note in her voice that suggested she wished she was there too. "They have free seats," she added, quite unnecessarily, "for putting the bill in the window."
"Then there's no one at home but you?" said Priscilla's father.
"Only the bakers," said the very little servant, "but they're busy at the back."
"May I go into the shop for a minute?" said Priscilla's father.
WILL YOU TELL ME WHAT MR. DEAR IS LIKE?"
"No, you mayn't," said the very little servant very decidedly, half closing the door as she spoke, and Priscilla's father saw at once that it would be quite useless to try and get her to believe that he was not a thief.
"All right," he said; "don't be frightened. But will you tell me what Mr. Dear is like, because I am going to Maskelyne and Devant's to try and find him."
The very little servant, keeping the door nearly shut and speaking through the crack, was willing to sketch her master and mistress. Mr. Dear, she said, had white whiskers on each cheek and a pair of perfectly round spectacles. ("Like an owl," Priscilla thought.) And Miss Dear was wearing a hat with about half a pint of cherries on it, she should think. And they would be in the balcony.
So off went Priscilla and her father to Maskelyne and Devant's, and they had no difficulty in distinguishing Mr. and Miss Dear, but as the performance was going on, it was some time before there was an interval in which they could be approached. Priscilla did not mind that at all, for the most wonderful things were happening on the stage, where people were appearing and disappearing at the word of command, and, no matter how carefully you watched them, the conjuror always turned out to be somebody else. And there was a Japanese juggler who climbed up a pole that was balanced on another Japanese juggler's shoulder.
When the interval came at last—all too soon—Priscilla's father squeezed along the seats and introduced himself to Mr, Dear, and Priscilla saw them talking very intently, and now and then they looked at her, and then her father beckoned to her to come, and she squeezed along too, and Mr. Dear and Miss Dear made room for her, and they all sat together for the rest of the performance, and Miss Dear offered her a bag of sweets from time to time, with
O. W. DEAR,
Pastrycook and Confectioner,
printed on it. And all the time, no matter what was happening on the stage. Miss Dear was saying, "Well, there!" "Oh, dad, did you see that!" "Well I never!" And once, when Mr. Devant drew a rabbit out of a gentleman's collar, she cried, "Oh, actuality!"
And then "God save the King" was played, and they all trooped out into Regent Street, and Miss Dear and Priscilla followed Mr. Dear and Priscilla's father (who were talking about the Government) down to the shop. When the very little servant saw them all together her eyes grew twice as big as before. But her master told her to get them the key of the shop quickly, and while she was gone they all stood there in the narrow passage, surrounded by the smell of new bread. Then Mr. Dear unlocked the door into the shop, and lit the gas, and then he fetched a candle, and Priscilla showed them where she was standing when she bought the cakes, and her father and Mr. Dear went down on their hands and knees and groped about very carefully, moving only a very few inches at a time.
"What about this hole?" said Priscilla's father at last.
"Yes," said Mr. Dear, "it is rather a big one. Can you see anything shine?"
Priscilla's father screwed his head down and twisted every way, while he held the candle so as to throw light into the blackness.
"No, I can't," he said. "But how about opening it up?"
"Lizzie," said Mr. Dear to his daughter, "run and get a hammer."
Miss Dear hurried off,
"And you, little Missie," said Mr. Dear to Priscilla, "you lift down that jar at the end of the second row, and you'll find something nice to go on with while we're busy."
Priscilla found the jar and opened it, and it was full of chocolates with "hundreds and thousands" sprinkled on the top.
When Miss Dear returned with the hammer and the very little servant, Mr. Dear began to wrench up the board. It was very rotten, and came away easily, leaving plenty of room for his hand to grope about. Mr. Dear dipped into the black dust several times, and placed a heap on the floor each time, until the place was empty.
"Now," he said, "what shall we find?" And, placing the two candles close to the heap of dirt, he began to examine it, while Priscilla's father and Priscilla and Miss Dear and the very little servant all crouched down on the floor and looked on. Priscilla's heart beat like a motor-car standing still.
"Bless my soul," said Mr. Dear suddenly, "if here isn't half a sovereign?"
"Fancy that!" said Miss Dear.
"Yes," said Priscilla's father, "and here's a halfpenny."
"Well, I never!" said Miss Dear.
"Pins," said Mr. Dear, "by the hundred."
"And here's a pencil," said Priscilla's father.
"And—yes—no—yes—if it isn't a ring?" cried Mr. Dear, holding something up.
"Oh, actuality!" said Miss Dear.
Priscilla seized it with a gasp of joy. "It is!" she exclaimed. "Yes, it is."
It was the ring. Priscilla rubbed it clean, and the gold was as golden as ever, and the turquoise had the same darling blue.
"Well," said Mr. Dear, "if that isn't the queerest go?"
Priscilla was so happy she nearly cried; and Miss Dear kissed Priscilla, and kissed dad, and the very little servant jumped about, and Mr. Dear kissed Miss Dear, and kissed Priscilla, and wrung Priscilla's father's hand. They both said, "What an extraordinary coincidence!" And Priscilla's father promised Mr. Dear a copy of the book as soon as he could get one, and Mr. Dear said it ought to be in the Daily Mail.
And then Priscilla and her father said "Good night" and "Thank you" several times, and at last got away and hurried home to relieve the mind of Priscilla's mother, who, as you may suppose, was wondering what had become of them.
That is only one story of the ring of fortitude. There are several others, which I may tell you at another time—how it comforted Priscilla in other times of need, and gave her strength, and how now and then she lent it to others, and it helped them too. But if you are inclined to doubt such a strange coincidence as I have related, you have only to go into Mr. Dear's shop—O. W. Dear, Pastrycook and Confectioner—and just mention the topic of a lost ring, and he will not only tell you the whole story from beginning to end, but show you the Life of Young, and also the crack in the floor; and Miss Dear will bear him out.
But don't forget to buy a teacake, for he makes the best in London.
THE END
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