Sunset ^beta

It never ceased to vex Mr. Carrisford, just the smallest bit, that “home” always meant the house on the square to Sara. Take her he might to Paris, Florence, Istanbul, and beyond, but upon returning to London, she would breathe a sigh and explain that while she had very much enjoyed the Medici Palace and the Hagia Sofia – they had given her so much to think about, and many more things to put into the stories she still told herself from time to time – there was nothing like coming back to one’s own front door, sitting down for tea in one’s own back parlor, and going to sleep in one’s own bed.

He even purchased a lovely country estate that had once belonged to generations of titled nobility, going back to old King James’s time, and while Sara loved to wander its galleries (it had been purchased with all of the previous owner’s art collection, in order to give her many subjects for her fancies) and read in its gardens, she stubbornly continued to call it “Thornwood Hall” and to think of it as a wonderful fairy palace to escape to every summer rather than her home.

After he and Sara had lived together for several years, he had attempted to find another place for them to live within London, but desisted when she implored him not to make her leave.

“My dear princess,” he told her, “I am only thinking of you. This dark, dreary square is the place where you were at your most miserable, and I want to make sure that you never think of that time again.”

Sara was sitting, as she liked to do, at his feet in front of the fire. She turned around to face him and clasped her hands on his knee.

“I don’t think about it, Uncle Tom,” she said frankly. “I did when I first came here, because it was such a great change, but now it doesn’t come to mind very often. When it does, it feels like a bad dream that I’m remembering, and it doesn’t hurt me.”

This was not quite true. Sara never lied, but it was her first instinct to protect those she loved, even from emotional pain. It was clear to her from the first time she met Mr. Carrisford that he inflicted agonies upon himself at the thought of his culpability in the tragedies of her life, so she was wont to put her bravest face on things. She didn’t think of it often and it was like a bad dream, but a sufficiently bad dream can leave one shaking in bed and nervous the next day, and each dreadful memory was like its own bad dream.

What she said next, however, was the absolute truth. “This house reminds me of all the nice thoughts I had about you and Ram Dass and the monkey before I even really knew you – and of how happy I was to come here and love you. I don’t mind going away and traveling, but I must be able to consider this my home. Don’t you see?”

He did see, and he rested his hand on her hair as she nestled into his legs, hungry for closeness and affection.

In the months that had passed since Sara had left Miss Minchin’s Seminary, she had actually changed very little, physically. She would always be slender, with serious eyes that were too large for her face – she would always be beautiful, although she could only see her own beauty upon occasion. Becky, on the other hand, quite bloomed in her new hothouse. On her entry into Mr. Carrisford’s house to be Sara’s companion, she took a comfortable, hot bath for perhaps the first time in her life and had her hair washed and combed, and just those small measures were enough to make quite a difference. She was given a new wardrobe, too, which was fine enough for her new station: not as sumptuous as her mistress’s, of course, but it contained white muslin dresses for the summer and good merino ones for colder months, cut fashionably but not flashily. Within a few weeks, regular meals helped to fill out her face and body, and in a year’s time, nobody who had known her before would have recognized the plump, pretty intimate of Sara Crewe as the former unattractive, underfed skivvy.

Once Becky had been raised to her new position, however, she began to feel that she was not quite right for it. She had never before even thought about the tidiness of her hair and clothes, the roughness of her hands, or the coarseness of her accent. At the very bottom of the seminary’s hierarchy, it had made sense to her that she should be the lowest of the low – but with Sara, she was now placed above the kitchen staff and parlormaids, and alongside the lady’s maid. None of the staff would dare to make fun of her to her face in such a high position. Still, she soon felt the difference between how she was and how she ought to be, and she began to labor to correct what she felt were her deficiencies.

Becky also benefited from her travel with Sara, and her access to Sara’s books. What she felt most of all was the benefit of Sara’s love and trust, and eventually the respect of the rest of the household. Even Mr. Carrisford, who once saw her as a kind of pet for his ward, came to treat her with great kindness as a person in her own right. After a few more years, she was so happy and comfortable and refined that persons who met her in Sara’s company thought that the two were intimate friends rather than mistress and servant, and indeed, by the time she was twenty-six and Sara twenty-three, her position was much more subtly defined than it had been. “Companion” would have certainly been a more appropriate term than “servant”. No-one thought that they had had any connection to the school next door even as students, let alone as a scullery maid and charity girl.

It was shortly after Sara’s twenty-third birthday that the connection would be re-opened. The day had been cool, and Sara sat dreamily in front of the fire with Boris’s head on her knee while Becky knitted a jumper.

“Becky,” Sara said at last, “I want to ask you something.”

“Yes, miss?”

“Yesterday, I happened to be at the window when the girls next door went out for their walk. The Misses Minchin were with them and they looked so old. I don’t know how old they might be,” she added, reflecting. “They always seemed old to me when – when we were there, but when you are that young, everyone grown-up seems old. Now they really do seem to be getting on in years, though. And it occurred to me that they must be wanting not to teach anymore, and I might be able to buy the seminary from them.”

“You haven’t asked a question yet, miss,” said Becky as she deftly passed a slipped stitch over. Sara’s lips curled into one of her secret smiles, and her eyes glowed. After giving Boris one last scratch, she crawled over to Becky and took up her favorite pose at her companion’s feet, with one arm around Becky’s legs and her chin on Becky’s knee.

“I want to know, fair servitor, if it would bother you very much if we were to take it over.” Becky’s needles stopped moving, and Sara clasped her hands.

“I don’t know enough about anything to teach young ladies,” Becky said doubtfully.

“We wouldn’t really teach,” Sara added hastily. “I would be the headmistress, and you would be my assistant, and we would engage capable teachers and matrons to take care of the students. But the two of us would really be in charge.”

Imagination was still not Becky’s strong suit (which she always said was all right since Sara had enough for two), and so it took her a moment to construct a picture of the idea in her head. “I could be an assistant to a headmistresses, I think,” she said. “But could the students be …”

“Be what, Becky?”

“Girls who are not quite young ladies. Young ladies can go to any school, you see, but other girls – can’t always.”

“You are so good!” cried Sara. “That would be the most wonderful thing, to help little girls who truly need a friend and some assistance. Just like we did, once upon a time. We shall give them the sort of education they deserve. It will be just like …”

“Scattering largesse, miss?” asked Becky archly, taking up her knitting again.

“Exactly,” said Sara. “I should enjoy it very much.”

“And wouldn’t it be one in Miss Minchin’s eye.” As she did whenever Becky slyly resorted to one of her old turns of phrase, Sara laughed, delighted.

“I do think it would be rather wonderful,” said Sara, and before Becky could say anything else in jest, she rose up on her knees and kissed her on her full, rosy lips. They quirked into a smile for a moment before returning the kiss with equal ardor, and her hands dropped her needles in order to cradle Sara’s face. “It will be nice to think of them as ours,” she said when they parted a little. “We could be like mothers to them, together. Would you like that, too?” She was a little wistful, an expression that Becky rarely saw on her face anymore.

“Oh, yes, miss,” her companion said in response.