'I'm sure, I'm very grateful that the trap was sent at all.' The girls at the table tittered to hear me speak. The woman who sat with them— the cook, it turned out— got up and set about making me a supper-tray. William Inker said,
'Miss Smith've come from a pretty fine place in London, Mrs Stiles. And she've been several times in France.' 'Has she,' said Mrs Stiles.
'Only one or two times,' I said. Now everyone would suppose I had been boasting.
'She said the chaps there are very short in the leg.' _ Mrs Stiles gave a nod. The girls at the table tittered again, and one of them whispered something that made the boy grow red. But then my tray was made, and Mrs Stiles said,
'Margaret, you can carry this through to my pantry. Miss Smith, I suppose I should take you to where you might splash your hands and face.'
I took this to mean that she would show me to the privy, and I said I wished she would.
She gave me a candle and took me down another short passage, to another yard, that had an earth closet in it with paper on a spike.
Then she took me to her own little room. It had a chimney-piece with white wax flowers on it, and a picture of a sailor in a frame, that I supposed was Master Stiles, gone off to Sea; and another picture, of an angel, done entirely in black hair, that I presumed was Mr Stiles, gone off to Glory. She sat and watched me take my supper. It was mutton, minced, and bread-and-butter; and you may imagine that, being so hungry as I was, I made very short work of it. As I ate, there came the slow chiming of the clock that I had heard before, sounding half-past nine. I said, 'Does the clock chime all night?'
Mrs Stiles nodded. 'All night, and all day, at the hour and the half. Mr Lilly likes his days run very regular. You'll find that out.'
'And Miss Lilly?' I said, picking crumbs from the corner of my mouth. 'What does she like?'
She smoothed her apron. 'Miss Maud likes what her uncle likes,' she answered.
Then she rearranged her lips. She said,
'You'll know, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud is quite a young girl, for all that she's mistress of this great house. The servants don't trouble her, for the servants answer to 37
me. I should have said I had been a housekeeper long enough to know how to secure a maid for my own mistress— but there, even a housekeeper must do as she is bid, and Miss Maud've gone quite over my head in this matter. Quite over my head. I shouldn't have thought that perfectly wise, in a girl of her years; but we shall see how it turns out.'
I said, 'I am sure whatever Miss Lilly does must turn out well.'
She said, 'I have a great staff of servants, to make sure that it does. This'is a well-kept house, Miss Smith, and I hope you will take to it. I don't know what you might be used to in your last place. I don't know what might be considered a lady's maid's duties, in London. I have never been there'— she had never been to London!— 'so cannot say. But if you mind my other girls, then I am sure they will mind you. The men and the stable-boys, of course, I hope I shall never see you talking with more than you can help
She went on like that for a quarter of an hour— all the time, as I have mentioned, never quite catching my eye. She told me where I might walk in the house, and where I must take my meals, and how much sugar I should be allowed for my own use, and how much beer, and when I could expect my underclothes laundered. The tea that was boiled in Miss Maud's teapot, she said, it had been the habit of the last lady's maid to p a s s o n t o t h e g i r l s i n t h e k i t c h e n . L i k e w i s e t h e w a x -ends from Miss Maud's candle- sticks: they were to be given to Mr Way. And Mr Way would know how many wax-ends to expect, since it was him who doled out the candles. Corks went to Charles, the knife-boy. Bones and skins went to Cook.
'The pieces of soap that Miss Maud leaves in her wash-stand, however,' she said, 'as being too dry to raise a lather from: those you may keep.'
Well, that's servants for you— always grubbing over their own little patch. As if I cared, about candle-ends and soap! If I had never quite felt it before, I knew then what it was, to be in expectations of three thousand pounds.
Then she said that if I had finished my supper she would be pleased to show me to my room. But she would have to ask me to be very quiet as we went, for Mr Lilly liked a silent house and couldn't bear upset, and Miss Maud had a set of nerves that were just like his, that wouldn't allow of her being kept from her rest or made fretful.
So she said; and then she took up her lamp, and I took up my candle, and she led me out into the passage and up a dark staircase. 'This is the servants' way,' she said, as we walked, 'that you must always take, unless Miss Maud directs you otherwise.'
Her voice and her tread grew softer the higher we went. At last, when we had climbed three pairs of stairs, she took me to a door, that she said in a whisper was the door to my room. Putting her finger before her lips, she slowly turned the handle.
I had never had a room of my own before. I did not particularly want one, now. But, since I must have one, this one I supposed would do. It was small and plain— would have looked better, perhaps, for a paper garland or two, or a few plaster dogs. But there was a looking- glass upon the mantel and, before the fire, a rug. Beside the bed— William Inker must have brought it up— was my canvas trunk.
Near the head of the bed there was another door, shut quite tight and with no key in it.
'Where does that lead?' I asked Mrs Stiles, thinking it might lead to another passage or 38
a closet.
'That's the door to Miss Maud's room,' she said.
I said, 'Miss Maud is through there, asleep in her bed?'
Perhaps I said it rather loud; but Mrs Stiles gave a shudder, as if I might just have shrieked or sprung a rattle.
'Miss Maud sleeps very poorly,' she answered quietly. 'If she wakes in the night, then she likes her girl to go to her. She won't call out for you, since you are a stranger to her now: we will put Margaret in a chair outside her door, and Margaret shall take her her breakfast tomorrow, and dress her for the day. After that, you ust be ready to be called in and examined.' She said she hoped Miss Maud would find me pleasing. I said I
did, too.
She left me, then. She went very softly, but at the door she paused, to put her hand to the keys at her chain. I saw her do it, and grew quite cold: for she looked all at once like nothing so much as the matron of a gaol. I said, before I could stop myself:
'You're not going to lock me in?'
'Lock you in?' she answered, with a frown. 'Why should I do
that?'
I said I didn't know. She looked me over, drew in her chin, then shut the door and left me.
I held up my thumb. Kiss that! I thought.
Then I sat upon the bed. It was hard. I wondered if the sheets and blankets had been changed since the last maid left with the scarlatina. It was too dark to see. Mrs Stiles had taken her lamp and I had set my candle down in a draught: the flame of it plunged about and made great black shadows. I unfastened my cloak, but kept it draped about my shoulders. I ached, from the cold and the travelling; and the mince I had eaten had come too late— it sat in my stomach and hurt. It was ten o'clock. We laughed at people who went to bed before midnight, at home.
I might as well have been put in gaol, I thought. A gaol would have been livelier. Here, there was only an awful silence: you listened, and it troubled your ears. And when you got up and went to the window and looked outside, you nearly fainted to see how high you were, and how dark were the yard and the stables, how still and quiet the land beyond.
I remembered the candle I had seen, fluttering at a window as I walked with William Inker. I wondered which room it was that that light had shone from.