I opened my trunk, to look at all the things that I had brought with me from Lant Street— but then, none of them were really mine, they were only the petticoats and shimmies that Gentleman had made me take. I took off my dress, and for a second held it
against my face. The dress was not mine, either; but I found the seams that Dainty had made, and smelled them. I thought that her needle had left the scent there, of John Vroom's dog-skin coat.
I thought of the soup that Mrs Sucksby would have made, from the bones of that pig's head; and it was quite as strange as I knew it would be, to imagine them all sitting 39
eating it, perhaps thinking of me, perhaps thinking of something else entirely.
If I had been a crying sort of girl, I should certainly have cried then, imagining that.
But I was never a girl for tears. I changed into my nightgown, put my cloak back on above it, and stood in my stockings and my unbuttoned shoes. I looked at the shut door at the head of the bed, and at the key- hole in it. I wondered if Maud kept a key on her side and- had it turned. I wondered what I would see, if I went and bent and looked— and who can think a thing like that, and not go and do it? But when I did go, on tiptoe, and stoop to the lock, I saw a dim light, a shadow— nothing clearer than that, no sign of any kind of sleeping or wakeful or fretful girl, or anything.
I wondered, though, if I might hear her breathing. I straightened up, and held my breath, and put my ear flat to the door. I heard my heart-beat, and the roaring of my blood. I heard a small, tight sound, that must have been the creeping of a worm or a beetle in the wood.
Beyond that, there was nothing— though I listened for a minute, maybe two. Then I gave it up. I took off my shoes and my garters and got into bed: the sheets were cold and felt damp, like sheets of pastry. I put my cloak over the bed-clothes— for extra warmth; and also so that I might quickly seize it, if someone came at me in the night and I wanted to run. You never knew. The candle I left burning. If Mr Way was to complain that that was one stub less, too bad.
Even a thief has her weak points. The shadows still danced about. The pastry sheets s t a y e d c o l d . T h e g r e a t c l o c k s o u n d e d h a lf-p a s t t e n — eleven— half-past eleven— twelve. I lay and shivered, and longed with all my heart for Mrs Sucksby, Lant Street, home.
C h a p t e r T h r e e
They woke me at six in the morning. It seemed still the middle of the night to me, for my candle of course had burned to nothing, and the window-curtains were heavy and kept the thin light out. When the maid, Margaret, came knocking at my door, I thought I was in my old room at Lant Street. I was sure she was a thief, broke out from gaol and needing her fetters filed free by Mr Ibbs. That happened, sometimes; and sometimes the thieves were kind men, who knew us, and sometimes they were desperate villains. Once a man put a knife to Mr Ibbs's throat, because he said the file went too slow. So, hearing Margaret's knock now, I started from the bed, crying out,
'Oh! Hold!'— though what I meant to be held, and who ought to have done it, I could not tell you; and neither, I suppose, could Margaret. She put her face about the door, whispering, 'Did you call, miss?' She had a jug of warm water for me, and she came and set my fire; then she reached beneath the bed and took the chamber-pot, and emptied it into her bucket of
slops, and wiped it clean with a damp cloth that hung against her apron.
40
I had used to wash the chamber-pots, at home. Now, seeing Margaret tip my piddle into her bucket, I was not sure I liked it. But I said, 'Thank you, Margaret'— then wished I hadn't; for she heard it and tossed her head, as if to say, Who did I think I was, thanking her?
Servants. She said I should take my breakfast in Mrs Stiles's pantry. Then she turned and left me— getting a quick look, I thought, at my frock and my shoes and my open trunk, on the way.
I waited for the fire to take, then rose and dressed. It was too cold to wash. My gown felt clammy. When I drew the window-curtain back and let the daylight in, I saw— what I had not been able to see the night before, by the candle— that the ceiling was streaked brown with damp, and the wood at the walls stained white.
From the next-door room there came the murmur of voices. I heard Margaret saying,
'Yes, miss.' Then there was the shutting of a door.
Then there was silence. I went down to my breakfast— first losing my way among the dark passages at the bottom of the servants' stairs, and finding myself in the yard with the privy in it. The privy, I saw now, was surrounded by nettles, and the bricks in the yard broken up with weeds. The walls of the house had ivy on them, and some of the windows wanted panes. Gentleman was right, after all, about the place being hardly worth cracking. He was right, too, about the servants. When I found Mrs Stiles's pantry at last there was a man there, dressed in breeches and silk stockings, and with a wig on his head with powder on it. That was Mr Way. He had been steward to Mr Lilly for forty- five years, he said; and he looked it. When a girl brought the breakfasts, he was served first. We had gammon and an egg, and a cup of beer. They had beer with all their meals there, there was a whole room where it was brewed. And they say Londoners can lush!
Mr Way said hardly a word to me, but spoke to Mrs Stiles about the running of the house. He asked only after the family I was supposed to have just left; and when I told him, the Dunravens, of
Whelk Street, Mayfair, he nodded and looked clever, saying he thought he knew their man. Which goes to show you what a humbug he was.
He went off at seven. Mrs Stiles would not leave the table before he got up. When she did she said,
'You will be glad to hear, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud slept well.'
I didn't know what to say to that. She went on, anyway:
'Miss Maud rises early. She has asked that you be sent to her. Should you like to wash your hands before you go up? Miss Maud is like her uncle, and particular.'
My hands seemed clean enough to me; but I washed them anyway, in a little stone sink she had there in the corner of her pantry.
I felt the beer I had drunk, and wished I had not drunk it. I wished I had used the privy when I came across it in the yard. I was certain I should never find my way to it again.
I was nervous.
She took me up. We went, as before, by the servants' stairs, but then struck out into a handsomer passage, that led to one or two doors. At one of these she knocked. I didn't catch the answer that came, but suppose she heard it. She straightened her back and 41
turned the iron handle, and led me in.
The room was a dark one, like all the rooms there. Its walls were panelled all over in an old black wood, and its floor— which was bare, but for a couple of trifling Turkey carpets, that were here and there worn to the weave— was also black. There were some great heavy tables about, and one or two hard sofas. There was a painting of a brown hill, and a vase full of dried leaves, and a dead snake in a glass case with a white egg in its mouth. The windows showed the grey sky and bare wet branches. The window-panes were small, and leaded, and rattled in their frames.
There was a little spluttering fire in a vast old grate, and before this— standing gazing into the weak flames and the smoke, but turning as she heard my step, and starting, and blinking— there was Miss Maud Lilly, the mistress of the house, that all our plot was built on.
I had expected her, from all that Gentleman had said, to be quite out of the way handsome. But she was not that— at least, I did not think her so as I studied her then, I thought her looks rather commonplace. She was taller than me by an inch or two— which is to say, of an ordinary height, since I am considered short; and her hair was fairer than mine— but not very fair— and her eyes, which were brown, were lighter. Her lip and her cheek were very plump and smooth— she did lick me there, I will admit, for I liked to bite my own lip, and my cheeks had freckles, and my features as a rule were said to be sharp. I was also thought young- looking; but as to that— well, I should have liked the people who thought it to have studied Maud Lilly as she stood before me now. For if I was young, then she was an infant, she was a chick, she was a pigeon that knew nothing. She saw me come, and started, as I have said; and she took a step or two to meet me, and her pale cheek fired up crimson. Then she stopped, and put her hands before her, neatly, at her skirt. The skirt— I had never seen such a thing before, on a girl her age— the skirt was full and short and showed her ankles; and about her waist— that was astonishingly narrow— there was a sash. Her hair was caught in a net of velvet. On her feet were slippers, of red prunella. Her hands had clean white gloves upon them, buttoned up tight at the wrist. She said,