Books: Little Lucy\'s Wonderful Globe
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> Little Lucy\'s Wonderful Globe
"Have you not talked to him?" asked Lucy.
"What should I do that for?" said Amina.
"Aunt Bessie used to like to talk to nobody but Uncle Frank before
they were married," replied Lucy.
"I shall talk enough when I am married," replied the little Turk.
"I shall make him give me plenty of sweetmeats, and a carriage with
two handsome bullocks, and the biggest Nubian black slave in the
market to drive me to Sweet Waters, in a thin blue veil, with all
my jewels on. Father says that Selim Bey will give me everything,
and a Frank governess. What is a governess? Is it anything like
the little gold case you have round your neck?"
"My locket with Mamma's hair? Oh, no, no," said Lucy, laughing; "a
governess is a lady to teach you."
"I don't want to learn any more," said Amina, much disgusted; "I
shall tell him I can make sweetmeats, and roll rose-leaves. What
should I learn for?"
"Should you not like to read and write?"
"Teaching is only meant for men," replied Amina. "They have got to
read the Koran, but it is all ugly letters; I won't learn to read."
"You don't know how nice it is to read stories all about different
countries," said Lucy. "Ah! I wish I was in the schoolroom, at
home, and I would show you how pleasant it is."
And Lucy seemed to have her wish all at once, for she and Amina stood
in her own schoolroom, but with no one else there. The first thing
Amina did was to scream, "Oh, what shocking windows! even men can
see in; shut them up." She rolled herself up in her veil, and Lucy
could only satisfy her by pulling down all the blinds, after which
she ventured to look about a little. "What have you to sit on?" she
asked with great disgust.
"Chairs and stools," said Lucy, laughing and showing them.
"These little tables with four legs! How can you sit on them?"
Lucy sat down and showed her. "That is not sitting," she said, and
she tried to curl herself up cross-legged.
"Our teacher always makes us write a long grammar lesson if she sees
us sitting with our legs crossed," said Lucy, laughing with much
amusement at Amina's attempts to wriggle herself up on the stool
from which she nearly fell.
"Ah, I will never have a governess!" cried Amina. "I will cry and cry,
and give Selim Bey no rest till he promises to let me alone. What a
dreadful place this is! Where can you sleep?"
"In bed, to be sure," said Lucy.
"I see no cushions to lie on."
"No; we have bedrooms, and beds there. We should not think of taking
off our clothes here."
"What should you undress for?"
"To sleep, of course."
"How horrible! We sleep in all our clothes wherever we like to lie
down. We never undress but for the bath. Do you go to the bath?"
"I have a bath every morning, when I get up, in my own room."
"Bathe at home! Then you never see your friends? We meet at the
bath, and talk and play and laugh."
"Meet bathing! No, indeed! We meet at home, and out of doors,"
said Lucy; "my friend Annie and I walk together."
"Walk together! what, in the street? Shocking! You cannot be a lady."
"Indeed I am," said Lucy, coloring up. "My papa is a gentleman. And
see how many books we have, and how much we have to learn! French, and
music, and sums, and grammar, and history, and geography."
"I WILL not be a Frank! No, no! I will not learn," said the
alarmed Amina on hearing this catalogue poured forth.
"Geography is very nice," said Lucy; "here are our maps. I will
show you where you live. This is Constantinople."
"I live at Stamboul," said Amina, scornfully.
"There is Stamboul in little letters below--look."
"That Stamboul! The Frank girl is false; Stamboul is a large, large,
beautiful place; not a little black speck. I can see it from my
lattice. White houses and mosques in the sun, and the blue Golden
Horn, with the little vessels gliding along."
Before Lucy could explain, the door opened, and one of her brothers
put in his head. At once Amina began to scream and roll herself in
the window curtain. "A man in the harem! Oh! oh! oh! Were there
no slippers at the door?" And her screaming awoke Lucy, who found
herself at her Uncle Joe's again.
CHAPTER XI. SWITZERLAND.
"I liked the mountain girl best of all," thought Lucy. "I wonder
whether I shall ever get among the mountains again. There's a
great stick in the corner that Uncle Joe calls his alpenstock.
I'll go and read the names upon it. They are the names of all
the mountains where he has used it."
She read Mount Blanc, Mount Cenis, the Wengern, and so on; and of
course as she read and sung them over to herself, they lulled her
off into her wonderful dreams, and brought her this time into a
meadow, steep and sloping, but full of flowers, the loveliest
flowers, of all kinds, growing among the long grass that waved
over them. The fresh, clear air was so delicious that she almost
hoped she was back in her dear Tyrol; but the hills were not the
same. She saw upon the slope quantities of cows, goats, and sheep,
feeding just as on the Tyrolese Alps; but beyond was a dark row of
pines, and above, in the sky as it were, rose all round great sharp
points--like clouds for their whiteness, but not in their straight,
jagged outlines. And here and there the deep gray clefts between
seemed to spread into white rivers, or over the ruddy purple of the
half-distance came sharp white lines darting downwards.
As she sat up in the grass and looked about her, a bark startled
her. A dog began to growl, bark, and dance round her, so that she
would have been much frightened if the next moment a voice had not
called him off--"Fie, Brilliant, down; let the little girl alone.
He is good, Madamoiselle, never fear. He helps me keep the cows."
"Who are you, then?"
"I am Maurice, the little herd-boy. I live with my grandmother, and
work for her."
"What, in keeping cows?"
"Yes; and look here!"
"Oh, the delicious little cottage! It has eaves and windows, and
balconies, and a door, and little cows and sheep, and men and women,
all in pretty white wood! You did not make it, Maurice?"
"Yes, truly I did; I cut it out with my knife, all myself."
"How clever you must be. And what shall you do with it?"
"I shall watch for a carriage with ladies winding up that long road;
and then I shall stand and take off my hat, and hold out my cottage.
Perhaps they will buy it, and then I shall have enough to get
grandmother a warm gown for the winter. When I grow bigger I will
be a guide, like my father."
"A guide?"
"Yes, to lead travellers up to the mountain-tops. There is nowhere
you English will not go. The harder a mountain is to climb, the
more bent you are on going up. And oh, I shall love it too! There
are the great glaciers, the broad streams of ice that fill up the
furrows of the mountains, with the crevasses so blue and beautiful
and cruel. It was in one of them my father was swallowed up."
"Ah! then how can you love them?" said Lucy.
"Because they are so grand and so beautiful," said Maurice. "No
other place has the like, and they make one's heart swell with
wonder, and joy in the God who made them."
And Maurice's eyes sparkled, and Lucy looked at the clear, stern
glory of the mountain points, and felt as if she understood him.
CHAPTER XII. THE COSSACK.
Caper, caper; dance, dance. What a wonderful dance it was, just as
if the little fellow had been made of cork, so high did he bound
the moment he touched the ground; while he jerked out his arms and
legs as if they were pulled by strings, like the Marionettes that
had once performed in front of the window. Only, his face was all
fun and life, and he did look so proud and delighted to show what
he could do; and it was all in clear, fresh, open air, the whole
extent covered with short, green grass, upon which were grazing
herds of small lean horses, and flocks of sheep without tails, but
with their wool puffed out behind into a sort of bustle or _panier_.
There was a cluster of clean, white-looking houses in the distance;
and Lucy knew that she was in the great plains called the Steppes,
that lie between the rivers Volga and Don.
"Do you live there?" she asked, by way of beginning the conversation.
"Yes; my father is the hetman of the Stantitza, and these are my
holidays. I go to school at Tcherkask the greater part of the
year."
"Tcherkask! Oh, what a funny name!"
"And you would think it a funny town if you were there. It is built
on a great bog by the side of the river Volga; all the houses stand
on piles of timber, and in the spring the streets are full of water,
and one has to sail about in boats."
"Oh! that must be delicious."
"I don't like it as much as coming home and riding. See!" and as he
whistled, one of the horses came whinnying up, and put his nose over
the boy's shoulder.
"Good fellow! But your horses are thin; they look little."
"Little?" cried the young Cossack. "Why, do you know what our little
horses can do? There are not many armies in Europe that they have not
ridden down, at one time or another. Why, the church at Tcherkask is
hung all round with Colors we have taken from our enemies. There's the
Swede--didn't Charles XII. get the worst of it when he came in his big
boots after the Cossack?--ay, and the Turk, and the Austrian, and the
French? Ah! doesn't my Grandfather tell how he rode his good little
horse all the way from the Volga to the Seine, and the good Czar
Alexander himself gave him the medal with "Not unto us, but unto Thy
Name be the praise'? Our father the Czar does not think so little of
us and our horses as you do, young lady."
"I beg your pardon," said Lucy; "I did not know what your horses
could do."
"Oh, you did not! That is some excuse for you. I'll show you."
And in one moment he was on the back of his little horse, leaning
down on its neck, and galloping off over the green plain like the
wind; but it seemed to Lucy as if she had only just watched him
out of sight on one side before he was close to her on the other,
having whirled round and cantered close up to her while she was
looking the other way. "Come up with me," he said; and in one
moment she had been swept up before him on the little horse's neck,
and was flying so wildly over the Steppes that her breath and sense
failed her, and she knew no more till she was safe by Mrs. Bunker's
fireside again.
CHAPTER XIII. SPAIN.
"Suppose now I go to sleep again; what should I like to see next?
A sunny place, I think, where there is sea to look at. Shall it
be Spain, and shall it be among the poor people? Well, I think I
should be where there is a little lady girl. I hope they are not
all as lazy and conceited as the Chinese and the Turk."
So Lucy awoke in a large, cool room with a marble floor and heavy
curtains, but with little furniture except one table, and a row of
chairs ranged along the wall. It had two windows, one looking out
into a garden,--such a garden!--orange-trees with shining leaves
and green and golden fruit and white flowers, and jasmines, and
great lilies standing round about a marble court. In the midst of
this court was a basin of red marble, where a fountain was playing,
making a delicious splashing; and out beyond these sparkled in the
sun the loveliest and most delicious of blue seas--the same blue
sea, indeed, that Lucy had seen in her Italian visit.
That window was empty; but the other, which looked out into the
street, had cushions laid on the sill, an open-work stone ledge
beyond, and little looking-glasses on either side. Leaning over this
sill there was seated a little maiden in a white frock, but with a
black lace veil fastened by a rose into her jet-black hair, and the
daintiest, prettiest-shaped little feet imaginable in white satin
shoes, which could be plainly seen as she knelt on the window-seat.
"What are you looking at?" asked Lucy, coming to her side.
"I'm watching for the procession. Then I shall go to church with
mamma. Look! That way we shall see it come; these two mirrors
reflect everything up and down the street."
"Are you dressed for church?" asked Lucy. "You have no hat on."
"Where does your grace come from not to know that a mantilla is
what is for church? Mamma is being dressed in her black silk and
her black mantilla."
"And your shoes?"
I could not wear great, coarse, hard shoes," said the little Dona
Ines; "It would spoil my feet. Ah! I shall have time to show the
Senorita what I can do. Can your grace dance?"
"I danced with Uncle Joe at our last Christmas party," said Lucy,
with great dignity.
"See now," cried the Spaniard; "stand there. Ah! have you no
castanets?" And she quickly took out two very small ivory shells
or bowls, each pair fastened together by a loop, through which she
passed her thumb so that the little spoons hung on her palm, and
she could snap them together with her fingers.
Then she began to dance round Lucy in the most graceful swimming
way, now rising, now falling, and cracking her castanets together
at intervals. Lucy tried to do the same, but her limbs seemed like
a wooden doll's compared with the suppleness and ease of Ines. She
made sharp corners and angles, where the Spaniard floated so like a
sea-bird that it was like seeing her fly or float rather than merely
dance, till at last the very watching her rendered Lucy drowsy and
dizzy; and as the church bells began to ring, and the chant of the
procession to sound, she lost all sense of being in sunny Malaga,
the home of grapes.
CHAPTER XIV. GERMANY.
There was a great murmur and buzz of learning lessons; rows upon
rows of little boys were sitting before desks, studying; very few
heads looked up as Lucy found herself walking round the room--a
large clean room, with maps hanging on the walls, but hot and weary-
feeling, because there were no windows open and so little fresh air.
"What are you about, little boy?" she asked.
"I am learning my verb," he said; "moneo, mones, monet."
Lucy waited no longer, but moved off to another desk. "And what are
you doing?"
"I am writing my analysis."
Lucy did not know what an analysis was, so she went a little further.
"What are you doing here?" she said timidly, for these were somewhat
bigger boys.
"We are writing an essay on the individuality of self."
That was enough to frighten any one away, and Lucy betook herself to
some quite little boys, with fat rosy faces and light hair. "Are
you busy, too?"
"Oh, yes; we are learning the chief cities of the Fatherland."
Lucy felt like the little boy in the fable, who could not get either
the dog, or the bird, or the bee, to play with him.
"When do you play?" she asked.
"We have an hour's interval after dinner, and another at supper-time,
but then we prepare our work for the morrow," said one of the boys,
looking up well satisfied.
"Work! work! Are you always at work?" exclaimed Lucy; "I only study
from nine to twelve, and half an hour to get my lessons in the
afternoon."
"You are a maiden," said the little boy with civil superiority;
"your brothers study more hours."
"More; yes, but not so many as you do. They play from twelve till
two, and have a holiday on Saturday."
"So, you are not industrious. We are. That is the reason why we
can all act together, and think together, so much better than any
others; and we all stand as one irresistible power, the United
Germany."
Lucy have a little gasp! it was all so very wise.
"May I see your sisters?" she said.
The little sisters, Gretchens and Katchens, were learning away
almost as hard as the Hermanns and Fritzes, but the bigger sisters
had what Lucy thought a better time of it. One of them was helping
in the kitchen, and another in the ironing; but then they had their
books and their music, and in the evening all the families came out
into the pleasure gardens, and had little tables with coffee before
them, and the mamma knitted, and the papas smoked, and the young
ladies listened to the band. On the whole, Lucy thought she should
not mind living in Germany, if they would not have so many lessons
to learn.
CHAPTER XV. PARIS IN THE SIEGE.
"And Uncle Joe is in France, where the fathers and brothers of those
little Prussian boys have been fighting. I wish I could see it."
There was a thunder and a whizzing in the air and a sharp rattling
noise besides; a strange, damp unwholesome smell too, mixed with
that of gunpowder; and when Lucy looked up, she found herself down
some steps in a dark, dull, vaulted-looking place, lined with stone,
however, and open to the street above. A little lamp was burning
in a corner, piles of straw and bits of furniture were lying about,
and upon one of the bundles of straw sat a little rough-haired girl.
"Ah! Madamoiselle, good morning," she said. "Are you come here to
take shelter from the shells? The battery is firing now; I do not
think Mamma will come home till it slackens a little. She is gone
to my brother who is weak after his wounds. I wish I could offer
you something, but we have nothing but water, and it is not even
sugared."
"Do you live down her?" asked Lucy, looking round at the dreary
place with wonder.
"Not always. We used to have a pretty little house over this, but
the cruel shells came crashing in, and flew into pieces, tearing
everything to splinters, and we are only safe from them down here.
Ah, if I could only have shown you Mamma's pretty room! But there
is a great hole in the floor now, and the ceiling is all tumbling
down, and the table broken."
"But why do you stay here?"
"Mamma and Emily say it is all the same. We are as safe in our
cellar as we could be anywhere, and we should have to pay elsewhere."
"Then you cannot get out of Paris?"
"Oh no, while the Prussians are all around us, and shut us in. My
brothers are all in the Garde Mobile, and, you see, so is my doll.
Every one must be a soldier, now. My dear Adolphe, hold yourself
straight." (And there the doll certainly showed himself perfectly
drilled and disciplined.) "March--right foot forward--left foot
forward." But in this movement, as may be well supposed, little
Coralie had to help her recruit a good deal.
Lucy was surprised. "So you can play even in this dreadful place?"
she said.
"Oh yes! What's the use of crying and wearying one's self? I do
not mind as long as they leave me my kitten, my dear little Minette."
"Oh! what a pretty, long-haired kitten! But how small and thin!"
"Yes, truly, the poor Minette! The cruel people ate her mother, and
there is no milk--no milk, and my poor Minette is almost starved,
though I give her bits of my bread and soup; but the bread is only
bran and sawdust, and she likes it no more than I."
"Ate up her mother!"
"Yes. She was a superb Cyprus cat, all gray; but, alas! one day she
took a walk in the street, and they caught her, and then indeed it
was all over with her. I only hope Minette will not get out, but
she is so lean that they would find little but bones and fur."
"Ah! how I wish I could take you and her home to Uncle Joe, and give
you both good bread and milk! Take my hand, and shut your eyes, and
we will wish and wish very hard, and, perhaps, you will come there
with me. Paris is not very far off."
CHAPTER XVI. THE AMERICAN GUEST.
No; wishing very hard did not bring poor little French Coralie home
with Lucy; but something almost as wonderful happened. Just at the
time in the afternoon when Lucy used to ride off on her dream to
visit some wonderful place, there came a ring at the front door; a
quite real substantial ring, that did not sound at all like any of
the strange noises of the strange worlds that she had lately been
hearing, but had the real tinkle of Uncle Joe's own bell.
"Well," said Mrs. Bunker, "what can that be, coming at this time of
day? It can never be the doctor coming home without sending orders!
Don't you be running out, Miss Lucy; there'll be a draught of cold
air right in."
Lucy stood still; very anxious, and wondering whether she should see
anything alive, or one of her visitors from various countries.
"There is a letter from Mr. Seaman," said a brisk young voice, that
would have been very pleasant if it had not gone a little through
the nose; and past Mrs. Bunker there walked into the full light a
little boy, a year or two older than Lucy, holding out one hand as
he saw her and taking off his hat with the other. "Good morning,"
he said, quite at ease; "is this where you live?"
"Good morning," returned Lucy though it was not morning at all; "where
do you come from?"
"Well, I'm from Paris last; but when I'm at home, I'm at Boston. I
am Leonidas Saunders, of the great American Republic."
"Oh, then you are not real, after all?"
"Real! I should hope I was a genuine article."
"Well, I was in hopes that you were real, only you say you come from
a strange country, like the rest of them, and yet you look just like
an English boy."
"Of course I do! my grandfather came from England," said Leonidas; "we
all speak English as well, or better, than you do in the old country."
"I can't understand it!" said Lucy; "did you come like other people,
by the train, not like the children in my dreams?"
And then Leonidas explained all about it to her: how his father had
brought him last year to Europe and had put him to school at Paris;
but when the war broke out, and most of the stranger scholars were
taken away, no orders came about him, because his father was a
merchant and was away from home, so that no one ever knew whether
the letters had reached him.
So Leonidas had gone on at school without many tasks to learn, to be
sure, but not very comfortable: it was so cold, and there was no wood
to burn; and he disliked eating horses and cats and rats, quite as
much as Coralie did, though he was not in a part of the town where
so many shells from the cannons came in.
At last when Lucy's uncle and some other good gentlemen with the red
cross on their sleeves, obtained leave to enter Paris and take some
relief to the poor, sick people in the hospitals, the people Leonidas
was with, told the gentleman that there was a little American left
behind in their house.
Mr. Seaman, which was Uncle Joe's name, went to see about him, and
found that he had once known his father. So, after a great deal of
trouble, it had been managed that the boy should be allowed to leave
the city. He had been driven in a coach, he told Lucy, with some
more Americans and English, and with flags with stars and stripes
or else Union Jacks all over it; and whenever they came to a French
sentry, or afterwards to a Prussian, they were stopped till he called
an officer who looked at their papers and let them go on.
Mr. Seaman had taken charge of Leonidas, and given him the best
dinner he had eaten for a long time, but as he was going to another
city to other hospitals, he could not keep the boy with him; so he
had put him in charge of a friend who was going to London, to send
him down to Mrs. Bunker.
Fear of Lucy's rash was pretty well over now, and she was to go home
in a day or two; so the children were allowed to be together, and
enjoyed it very much. Lucy told about her dreams, and Leonidas had
a good deal to tell of what he had really seen on his travels. They
wished very much that they could both see one of these wonderful
dreams together, only--what should it be?
CHAPTER XVII. THE DREAM OF ALL NATIONS.
What should it be? She thought of Arabs with their tents and horses,
and Leonidas told her of Red Indians with their war-paint, and
little Negroes dancing round the sugar-boiling, till her head began
quite to swim and her ears to buzz; and all the children she had
seen seemed to come round her, and join hands and dance.
Oh, such a din! A little Highlander in his tartans stood on a barrel
in the middle, making his bagpipes squeal away; a Chinese with a bald
head and long pigtail beat a gong, and capered with a solemn face;
a Norwegian herd-boy blew a monstrous bark cow-horn; an Indian
juggler twisted snakes round his neck to the sound of the tom-tom;
and Lucy found herself and Leonidas whirling round with a young
Dutch planter between them, and an Indian with a crown of feathers
upon the other side of her.
"Oh!" she seemed to herself to cry, "what are you doing? How do
you all come here?"
"We are from all the nations who are friends, brethren," said the
voices; "we all bring our stores: the sugar, rice, cotton of the
West; the silk and coffee and spices of the East; the tea of China;
the furs of the North: it is all exchanged from one to the other,
and should teach us to be all brethren, since we cannot thrive one
without the other."
"It all comes to our country, because we are clever to work it up,
and send it out to be used in its own homes," said the Highlander;
"it is English and Scotch machines that weave your cottons, ay, and
make your tools."
"No; it is America that beats you all," cried Leonidas; "what had
you to do but to sit down and starve, when we sent you no cotton?"
"If you send cotton, 'tis we that weave it," cried the Scot.