Gertie was frightened. She told me that she had indeed “cooked her goose.” Now she was waiting for the blow to fall.
“She didn’t say much,” she went on. “But if looks could have killed, I would have dropped down stone dead. It’s just that I know she’ll be watching me all the time … looking for trouble. I know she is just waiting to pounce … and I don’t know what I’ll do, miss, I really don’t. You see, how will I get another place? Stands to reason, she wouldn’t give me a reference, would she?
And there’s all them at home … too young to go out and earn. You see, miss?”
I did see and I was desperately sorry for her.
I also had some pity for Lady Constance, for I felt I knew what had helped to make her what she was. I could not stop thinking of how she must have felt for all those years. She must have loved Charlie. I had sensed that. Charlie and Roderick were everything to her. And through the years she had known of her husband’s devotion to Desiree. Naturally she had wanted to know as much as possible about her rival. She had made a scrapbook about her career. It was pitiable. Poor Lady Constance! And poor Gertie!
The accident to the bust on the stairs happened three days later.
The bust was of one of the members of the family in the uniform of a general. It was placed on a carved mahogany pedestal and stood on a landing in between the second flight of stairs and the third.
It was one of Gertie’s duties to clean the stairs. I had heard her refer to the bust as “the old un with the cap and the whiskers.” The whiskers had been sculpted with skill and the peaked cap and uniform suggested a somewhat formidable general of great dignity.
“He gives me the creeps,” Gertie said of him. “I always think he’s watching if I do the corners right and that he’s just about to give me a telling-off. Yesterday he wobbled. That thing’s not strong enough for him. He’s too grand for it.”
As I came onto the stairs, Gertie was beside the bust with a feather duster in her hand.
“Hello, miss,” she said. “Off out?”
I said I was.
“Going to that Miss Vance, I reckon. You like those old bits and pieces they’ve found, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
She was smiling at me rather indulgently. She moved a little closer to the bust and, as she did so, she swayed slightly and clutched at the pedestal for support. The figure swayed for a fraction of a second, then it clattered to the floor. I jumped back, for it was very heavy. I stared at it in horror while Gertie looked on in utter dismay.
“Gawd help me! This is the end,” she murmured.
We both must have noticed at the same time that the tip of the general’s nose was lying on the carpet beside a piece of his ear. I thought flippantly: The general will never look the same again.
My flippancy was short-lived when I looked at poor Gertie’s face, which was woebegone with hopeless fear. I was ashamed that I could have been amused even for an instant.
I made a sudden decision.
“I’ll say I did it,” I told Gertie. “I’ll say I was passing the plinth. It was insecure, I brushed against it accidentally and immediately it toppled off.”
Hope shone in Gertie’s face. “Oh, miss, you couldn’t do that!” she said.
“I could.”
“Her ladyship will be very angry.”
“I shall have to accept that.”
“She don’t like you very much already, miss … not any more than she likes me.”
“But you would lose your job. As for me … well, she can’t dislike me more than she does already, and if she asks me to go, I can do so. It’s different with me.”
“The master wouldn’t let you go. Nor would Mr. Roderick. They like you too much. And she does take notice of them.”
“Leave it to me, Gertie.”
“Oh, miss, you’re just wonderful!”
“I’d better see her right away.”
Resolutely I went up the stairs. Gertie was looking at me with something like adoration in her eyes.
I knocked at the door of Lady Constance’s sitting room and she called: “Come in.”
“Good afternoon,” she said coldly.
“Good afternoon,” I replied. “I am afraid there has been an accident.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I am very sorry,” I went on. “As I was passing the bust on the stairs, I must have touched it and it fell off the pedestal. I am very much afraid that it has been damaged.”
“The bust? You mean the general?”
“Yes,” I said. “The bust on the landing.”
“I’d better see what harm has been done.”
I followed her down the stairs and, as I did so, saw Gertie making a hasty exit.
Lady Constance stared at the statue in dismay.
“Dear me,” she said. “It has been in the family ever since it was made.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
She was staring at the tip of the general’s nose.
“It is most unfortunate.”
I felt deflated, but all the time I was thinking of Gertie, who was saved—at least for a time.
After that, I was very much aware of Lady Constance’s eyes upon me. She seemed to be watching me at every moment. Although nothing more was said about the broken bust, it was constantly on our minds. I thought she was gloating over my discomfiture, hoping I would commit some other offence, something which would make it impossible for me to stay on.
I promised myself that, as soon as Charlie returned, I would tell him I must get away. I had, however, promised to stay until his return, so I must do so. On the other hand, I could go to London for a short visit again. The truth was that I did not want to. I did not know which was worse: to stay here, under the resentful eyes of Lady Constance, or to return to the perpetual memories of London.
I was living in a world of despair in which there was a faint glimmer of hope that, through Roderick, I might escape to a brighter future.
I confessed to myself that I stayed because of him.
All the same, I began to get an obsession about Lady Constance. I had nightmares and in my dreams I was afraid of her. In one, she came to my bedside and offered me a glass of wine, which I knew was poisoned. I awoke screaming: “No … no!”
In daylight I could laugh at myself. I reasoned: You have suffered a great shock … far greater than you realize. You are not your normal self. Lady Constance naturally does not want you here. It was a mistake on Charlie’s part to bring you here and when you realized the position you should have retired gracefully, even though it did mean hurting Charlie. And let’s admit it, it was not really what you wanted to do. It was all because you needed affection, reassurance, and Charlie, who had been your mother’s friend of long standing, was the best able to give it—so she had thought. Moreover, there was Roderick. But, for all that, you had to accept the animosity—even malevolence—of Lady Constance.
But the situation was decidedly uncomfortable and, in addition, I had allowed the vague warnings of Mrs. Carling to unnerve me a little. When I was out in the fresh air, I thought of her as a harmless old lady who liked to imagine herself a seer. There was no harm in listening to her, humouring her, when I was in her company; but in the middle of the night, after a frightening dream, she seemed a significant figure, and I told myself I should listen to her prophecies of the evil which was overhanging my life, and I could not stop thinking of the hatred which I was sure Lady Constance felt towards me.
When I looked at the matter calmly, I could tell myself that I was in a vulnerable state, and just because one terrible tragedy had overtaken me, that did not mean that others were waiting to beset me. I must wait patiently for Charlie’s return and then make plans. Meanwhile, I must forget the dislike Lady Constance felt for me and the mystic warnings of a fanciful old woman.