Читать книгу So Evil My Love: Based on a True Crime Story - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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The luxurious drive was a keener pleasure than Mrs. Sacret had believed it could be; not only did she enjoy the comfort and the distinction of her position, she felt as if at last she was in her rightful place and that the social aspirations of the haberdasher’s daughter and the squire’s son, frustrated in themselves, had now been realized in her. This was what she really was, a lady, not a missionary’s widow. Her marriage, the chapel, Jamaica, seemed now not to matter, even never to have happened.

But her present elevation was a delusion; soon she would return to Minton Street and the search for a “situation.”

Susan chattered, but with a certain shrewdness, arising, Mrs. Sacret thought, from desperation.

She tried to discover her friend’s prospects and hopes of employment and was not easy to mislead on these subjects.

“It must be very difficult for you, Olivia,” she insisted. “It will be hard for you to find a position you like—you have been searching for months, haven’t you? And though you are so clever, you haven’t those horrid, dull qualifications needed for a good post.”

“Why do you think I am clever?” asked Mrs. Sacret sweetly. “I haven’t been very fortunate, have I? Not done much with myself!”

“I don’t think,” replied Susan, with one of those uncomfortable flashes of insight that even stupid people will show, “that you ever bothered enough with yourself. You were always rather tired and just did the easiest things.”

Yes, that was it, Mrs. Sacret agreed. She had always lacked enterprise, boldness; she had never made anything of herself. Oppressed by poverty and the frustration it brought, she had slipped into the only marriage that was offered, done her duty in an insipid way, tried to earn a living in a timid fashion, yet she had always felt a surge of rebellion, a potential daring. I must have been, truly, as Susan says, tired.

“Yes,” she agreed aloud. “I have been lacking in—much. And I am rather weary.” Suddenly she disclosed herself. “I have been walking about London for months, looking for work, always disappointed.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Susan, grasping her friend’s hand affectionately. “You must come with me and rest—even if only for a short time.”

“I might, dear,” agreed Mrs. Sacret, as the horses turned out of the park, toward Minton Street. “That would not commit either of us to anything, would it?”