L. Meade - A Plucky Girl

I was born a month after my father's death, and my mother called me after him. His name was John Westenra Wickham, but I was Westenra Wickham alone. It was a strange name for a girl, and as I grew up people used to comment on it. Mother loved it very much, and always pronounced it slowly. She was devoted to father, and never spoke of him as most people do of their dead, but as if he were still living, and close to her and to me. When a very little child, my greatest treat was to sit on her knee and listen to wonderful stories of my brave and gallant father. He was a handsome man and a good man, and he must have possessed, in a large degree, those qualities which endear people to their fellows, for surely it was no light cause which made my mother's beautiful brown eyes sparkle as they did when she spoke of him, and her whole face awake to the tenderest life and love and beauty when she mentioned his name.

I grew up, therefore, with a great passionate affection for my dead father, and a great pride in his memory. He had been a Major-General in a Lancer regiment, and had fought many battles for his country, and led his men through untold dangers, and performed himself more gallant feats than I could count. He received his fatal wound at last in rescuing a brother-officer under fire in Zululand, and one of the last things he was told was that he had received his Victoria Cross.

During my father's lifetime mother and he were well off, and for some years after his death there did not appear to be any lack of money. I was well educated, partly in Paris and partly in London, and we had a pretty house in Mayfair, and when I was eighteen I was presented to Her Gracious Majesty by mother's special friend, and my godmother, the Duchess of Wilmot, and afterwards I went a great deal into society, and enjoyed myself as much as most girls who are spirited and happy and have kind friends are likely to do. I was quite one and twenty before the collapse came which changed everything. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but our gold vanished like a dream, and we found ourselves almost penniless.

"Now what are we to do, Westenra?" said mother.

"But have we nothing?" I replied.

"Only my pension as your dear father's widow. Your pension as his child ceased when you came of age, and I believe, for so our lawyers tell me, that there is about fifty pounds besides. I think we can count on a hundred and fifty a year. Can we live on that sum, Westenra?"

"No," I answered proudly.

I was standing behind one of the silk curtains in the drawing-room as I spoke. I was looking down into the street. The room was full of luxury, and the people who passed backwards and forwards in their luxurious carriages in the street below were many of them our friends, and all more or less moved in what was called nice society. I was full of quite unholy pride at that moment, and poverty was extremely distasteful, and to live on a hundred and fifty pounds a year seemed more than impossible.

"What is it, West? What are you thinking of?" said mother, in a sad voice.

"Oh, too many things to utter," I replied. "We can't live on the sum you mention. Why, a curate's wife could scarcely manage on it."

"Don't you think we might just contrive in a very small cottage in the country?" pleaded mother. "I don't want much, just flowers round me and the country air, and your company, darling, and – and – oh, very small rooms would do, and the furniture of this house is ours. We could sell most of it, and send what we liked best down to the cottage."

"It can't be done," I answered. "Listen, mother, I have a proposal to make."

"What is it, my darling? Don't stand so far away – come and sit near me."

I walked gravely across the room, but I did not sit down. I stood before mother with my hands tightly locked together, and my eyes fastened on her dear, lovely, delicate old face.

"I am glad that the furniture is ours," I began.

"Of course it is."

"It is excellent furniture," I continued, looking round and appraising it quickly in my mind's eye: "it shall be part of our capital."

"My dear child, our capital? What do you mean?"

"We will take a house in Bloomsbury, put the furniture in, and have paying guests."

"West, are you mad? Do you remember who I am – Mrs. Wickham, the widow of – or no, I never will allow that word – the wife of your dear, dear, noble father."

"Father would approve of this," I answered. "He was a brave man and died fighting, just as I mean to die fighting. You are shocked at the idea to-night, mother, because it is fresh to you, but in a week's time you will grow accustomed to it, you will take an interest in it, you will even like it. I, bury myself in the country and starve! – no, no, no, I could not do it. Mother, darling, I am your slave, your devoted slave, your own most loving girl, but don't, don't ask me to vegetate in the country. It would kill me – it would kill me."

I had dropped on my knees now and taken both her hands in mine, and I spoke with great excitement, and even passion.

"Don't stir for a moment," said mother; "how like your father you look! Just the same eyes, and that straight sort of forehead, and the same expression round your lips. If your father were alive he would love you for being brave."

As mother looked at me I think she forgot for the moment the terrible plunge we were about to make into the work-a-day strata of society, but the next instant the horrid fact was brought back to her, for Paul, our pretty little page, brought in a sheaf of letters on a salver. Of course they were unpaid bills. Mother said sadly —

"Put them with the others, Westenra."

"All these bills must be met," I said stoutly, after Paul had closed the door behind him. "There will be just enough money for that purpose, so we need not start handicapped. For my part, I mean to enjoy our scheme vastly."

"But, my child, you do not realise – you will be stepping down from the position in which you were born. Our friends will have nothing to do with us."

"If they wish to give us up because we do something plucky they are not worthy to be called friends," was my reply. "I don't believe those friends we wish to keep will desert us, mother. On the contrary, I am certain they will respect us. What people cannot stand in these days is genteel poverty – its semi-starvation, its poor mean little contrivances; but they respect a hand-to-hand fight with circumstances, and when they see that we are determined to overcome in the battle, then those who are worth keeping will cling to us and help us; and if all our friends turn out to be the other sort, mother, why" – and here I rose and stretched out my arms wide – "let them go, they are not worth keeping. Those who won't be fond of us in our new home in Bloomsbury we can do without."

"You are enthusiastic and – and ignorant," said mother.

"I grant that I am enthusiastic," I answered. "It would be a great pity if I had none of that quality at one and twenty; but as to my ignorance, well, time will prove. I should like, however, to ask you a straight question, mother. Would father have sat beside his guns and done nothing when the fight was going against him? Was that the way he won his Victoria Cross?"

Mother burst out crying. She never could bear me to allude to that fatal and yet glorious occasion. She rose now, weak and trembling, and said that she must defer the discussion of ways and means until the next day.

I put on my hat and went for a walk alone. I was full of hope, and not at all depressed. Girls in these days are always glad to have something new to do, and in the first rush of it, the idea of leaving the humdrum path of ordinary society and of entering on a new and vigorous career filled me with ecstacy.