Читать книгу The Threatening Eye - E. F. Knight - Страница 15

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Mary slept well after her long day of adventure and did not wake until the sun was high.

The laundresses had poured into the Temple, and were pretending to dust their master's chambers and performing the rest of their desultory duties, prior to the bustle of business commencing in those "dusty purlieus of the law."

It was indeed nearly nine o'clock when Mary woke. She heard the plashing of the fountain outside, saw she was in a strange room, and gradually recalled all that had occurred on the previous day.

Like most people, she did not feel quite so brave in the morning as in the evening, and her heart sank as her position, her hopeless future, flashed across her mind. She could distinguish by the noises that her host was up and about in the adjacent room, and she heard him instructing his laundress to lay breakfast for two, an order which that worthy received without exhibiting the slightest surprise.

"If the lady puts her boots outside the door I will clean them before I go," she merely said as she carried out his commands.

Mary overheard this. "Good heavens!" she said to herself, "the servant has divined that there is a woman in her master's bed-room, on being merely told to lay breakfast for two instead of one. Such an event then is not extraordinary in Mr. Hudson's home—what has the horrid old woman mistaken me for, then?" and the blood rushed to her cheeks as she thought of it.

"Out of here I must go at once," she muttered to herself—"at once;" and after dressing rapidly she opened the door of the sitting-room, and not without exhibiting some signs of discomposure, found herself face-to-face with the young barrister.

He came up beaming and asked her politely how she had slept.

"Very well, thanks," she replied, taking his proffered hand, rather mollified by his kind manner, and by the knowledge that the laundress had gone. She had looked quickly round the room and grasped this fact; a great relief to her, as she considerably dreaded the gaze of a woman under the present, to be confessed rather compromising, circumstances.

She had intended to bid the barrister farewell, and hurry off at once; but his honest manner, and the comfortable appearance of the breakfast-table with its eggs, its rolls, its rashers of bacon, and its coffee, prevailed on her. She came to the conclusion that to stay a little longer could do no harm, and it would be well to start this day of unknown work with a good breakfast. So it will be seen that this young lady was practical, one result of her rough education; and her anxiety had not diminished her usually healthy appetite.

So the two sat down and breakfasted merrily enough, their conversation being far more unrestrained than it had been on the previous evening.

"Now, Mary," he no longer called her Miss Grimm, "we won't talk any business till breakfast is over; then we will discuss your plans."

Mary assented to this, and really began to feel so comfortable in her new quarters, that she was getting quite loth to leave them; and who can tell what decision the two counsellors might have come to—a dangerous game, two young people, both free, discussing such a matter—had not Mary's good genius, in the shape of the dirty and hideous old charwoman, come in just as the breakfast was over?

The hag performed a sort of awkward curtesy, while she gave Mary a look, half of curiosity, half leer of evident speculation as to whether the girl was likely to be a constant visitor, and so to be won over by politeness to a liberality in the way of tips.

Mary read all this, she realised how near she was to the edge of the precipice, the fear returned to her, she started up and said with fierce decision:

"Mr. Hudson, I must go—at once."

He stared at her, and the laundress raised her eyebrows and smiled as she cleared away the breakfast things.

"But we are going to talk over your plans."

"No! I will go at once. It is better. I must."

Mr. Hudson now began to perceive more or less clearly what was the reason of this sudden haste, but he temporised.

"Now sit down quietly and let us talk things over. Believe me, I really wish you well. Do you mistrust me?"

"No! no!" with her eyes filling with tears—"no, I do not. It is not that."

"You can go, Mrs. Jones," he said to the laundress who still loitered about.

When this woman was outside the chambers Mary continued, half sobbing, and in tones that made the young man's heart feel very queer.

"You are very good to me, but I know our talk will end in nothing; how can it? I am very grateful to you. Please don't think I am ungrateful, Mr. Hudson; but I feel we had better separate at once."

He looked steadily into the beautiful frank eyes for quite a minute, then said sadly, in a low voice,

"Miss Grimm, Mary, I think you are quite right; a talk will do little good, it may do harm. Yes, it is sure to do harm."

The young man, though a rake, was far from devoid of generosity, and yet it may be that he would not have given her up like this were it not for certain after thoughts.

The girl, he imagined, poor little thing, would in all probability soon be his, but he would not tempt her. To deliberately ruin her was a crime his conscience rather stuck at. No, he would let her have her chance of being respectable. If she could not find any honest employment, as was most likely, why he would look after her and make her as happy as he could as his mistress. Mr. Hudson was a casuist, as indeed are ninety-nine men out of a hundred in these matters.

So he continued, "Mary, you are right. I respect your motives. I am not a good man and you are better out of my way. But remember you have a friend in me. You must promise to come to me if you are in any distress."

"Promise," he said, taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes, "promise."

She returned his gaze with one candid and earnest, and after a pause, perhaps knowing exactly what she was undertaking, what this coming back to him in case of failure to find employment meant, she replied in a half-inaudible voice:

"I promise."

"Thank you; remember that I will always help you. Write if you don't like to come here. And now I am going to lend you a little money which will keep you going till something turns up," and he put a sovereign, all he had just then, in her hand.

She took it. For a few moments she could say nothing, then she cried out, "God bless you! you are indeed good to me. I don't deserve such kindness, I shall never forget you. I don't know how I—" and she burst into tears.

She, Mary Grimm, the cold and hardened child, who had never cried through long years of cruel treatment, was now softened and wept like a woman.

Hudson felt his blood boiling within him as he looked at the girl. Short as had been the acquaintance, he was filled with a real passion, he was beginning to be vehemently in love with the little waif.

He took her hand and kissed it, and would have covered her face with fiery kisses next, for he had lost all his self-control, when Mary tore herself away from him, rushed through the door, and was gone.

Hudson's was, as has been stated, an impetuous and amorous nature. To be in love with some woman had become a necessity of his existence. Now this weak-minded young gentleman did not happen at this period to have an object for his affections, a condition that made him restless and unhappy. He had been vainly trying to fill up this want of late, so that it is not so very wonderful that he fell, at such short notice, into an infatuated passion for this piquante young girl.

Throughout the day his thoughts were always of her—"Shall I see her again?—Yes, she has promised to come if she fails to find work—She must fail … but no, I have a presentiment that she will never come."

His restlessness, his changing fits of depression and exultation, were the marvel of all his friends who met him that afternoon; but this love-sick mood did not trouble his volatile mind for long, and subsided rapidly, as might be expected under all the circumstances.

Mary wiped her eyes and hurried down the stairs, blushing deeply, and bitterly feeling her degradation when two young clerks, standing outside a room on the second floor, laughed and made some remark as she passed by.

She knew that appearances were against a young girl coming out of a barrister's chambers at 10 a.m.; and not till she was well out of the Temple, and away from the glances of the lawyers, porters, and laundresses did she collect her wits and walk with due calmness of mien.

She went slowly up the Strand deliberating—she had one pound. This would keep her for some time—until she found something to do; but she must busy herself at once to find this vague something.

She knew where there was a small registry office for domestics in a street in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Grimm had on one occasion procured a servant from it, and Mary, who had always entertained some vague idea of running away at some time or other—the sole hope that buoyed up her youth—had treasured up the address.

So she went to this place and found there a motherly old lady in blue spectacles, who happened not to be one of those grasping hags who keep so many of the inferior class of registry offices, defrauding poor servant girls of their hard-earned wages.

Mary told her wants—she wished a place as housemaid, or even maid-of-all-work if the family was a small one.

The old lady looked kindly at the girl, explained the system on which her business was conducted, and opening a large ledger asked:

"Your name, my dear?"

"Mary Barnes." The answer came out readily enough considering that it had not occurred to her before to choose a new name.

"Your address?" continued the dame, who transcribed the answers in a deliberate round hand in the book before her.

This staggered Mary, and unable to draw on her imagination quickly enough, she blurted out her father's address.

"Ah indeed," said her interlocutor, "Mrs. Grimm; I once provided her with a girl—let me see—three years ago I think; and how long have you been in her service?"

"Two years, ma'am."

"As housemaid?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That is very good, my dear; and why are you leaving her?"

To this query her reply was a fairly truthful one, though she stammered over it a good deal.

"The work was too hard; my step——Mrs. Grimm was very unkind, indeed cruel."

"Yes," went on the old lady thoughtfully, "yes, I remember her. She appeared a disagreeable woman—very much so indeed; that's how I haven't forgotten all about her, what with the many hundreds of mistresses I see—and let me see, you are still living with her you say?"

"Yes, my month is not up for three days yet," replied Mary, who was now getting into a good glib way of lying—small blame to the poor thing.

"Will she give you a good character?"

"Oh yes."

"Well, I do think I know of a place for you, a very kind lady living alone with only her crippled son; she wants just such a one as you seem to be. She's a friend of mine. I know her well, and if you do well by her, she'll do well by you, my dear. Here is her address; you can go and see her for yourself," and she wrote on a piece of note-paper the address, which was somewhere in the direction of Maida Vale.

Mary thanked her and went out. How vexed she was that she had been such a fool as to be surprised into giving her father's address. It would be no good going to the place after that. Fancy her employer writing to her stepmother for her character, and she laughed aloud at the idea, to the great scandal of an old maid and two pug dogs who were passing her at the moment of this indecent ebullition.

But on second thoughts Mary decided that she would go to the address. If the lady in question was really so kind, might she not take her without a character? Why not tell her the whole story and throw herself on her generosity? Anyhow, she would call and see what she could make of it—there could be no harm in that.

Poor Tommy Hudson would have hardly liked to know how little he was in this girl's thoughts this day, genuinely grateful though she was.

He would not have confessed it to himself, but he would have preferred had she been miserable on his account.

How selfish at the bottom this love of a man often is; yet after all, a woman will love him even for the very selfishness of his love; so as all parties are suited there is nothing to complain of.

Mary walked all the way by the splendid shops of Oxford Street, up the long Edgware Road, then to the left along the canal which brought her to the vicinity of the address she sought.

While yet some few hundred yards from it, and uncertain of the way, she found herself in a street of small two-storied houses, somewhat like that in which her father lived.

The street was quite deserted save for a little group in front of one of the houses, the door of which was open.

The group consisted of a cabman on a hansom, a rough-looking man and a tall pale woman on the pavement, seemingly engaged in lively altercation.

Mary determined to ask her way of the woman and crossed the street to do so.

On approaching she perceived that the rough-looking man had placed his foot in the doorway, thus preventing the woman from shutting him out as she evidently wished to do.

"No!" he was shouting in a menacing voice. "Bli' me if I move till you give me a bob! D'ye think I've follered this ere cab at a run all the way from Paddington, and lifted down that 'ere 'eavy box for a blooming tanner? Not I, marm."

Mary, being a London girl, grasped the situation at once. The lady had arrived by train, had driven home with her luggage in this cab, which had been followed by one of those pests of suburban London, the cab-runners—ruffians that are on the look out for unwary travellers, pursue the cabs to help take the baggage down—go away civilly enough with their just pay if they have to deal with men; but, as in the present instance, when they have to deal with women in lonely streets with none to defend them, put on the bully and extort double their due.

The cabman was leaning over the box of his hansom, looking pensively on the fray, waiting to see how it would end, but not interfering, remaining strictly neutral.

Mary arrived at this juncture, and taking all in, was inspired to address the woman with these words, spoken in a confident tone.

"It's all right, ma'am, I've seen the policeman. He's coming on now; he's just round the corner."

The rough on hearing this stared at the girl, and thinking that she was someone belonging to the house who had slipped out for the police unobserved by him, considered it prudent, after an oath and a growl or two, to shuffle off slouchingly but not slowly. The cabman too drove off with alacrity, not being anxious to enter into explanations with his natural enemy, the man in the blue coat.

"Why, child!" exclaimed Catherine King in amazement, for she was the tall pale woman, and had just returned from her expedition to the North in search of a pupil. "Why, child!"

"Well, ma'am, I saw what was up and I knew that tale would move the fellows."

"A sharp girl!" scrutinising her closely, "a clever girl! and you can lie very fairly."

Sister Catherine said this in an appreciative way, as if allotting discriminate praise for some creditable accomplishment.

"It is a good thing to know how to lie now and then," remarked Mary with a hard laugh.

"It is," replied the other woman thoughtfully. It did not take long for an idea to possess Catherine King. Now, this young girl's face had impressed her. "What, have I undertaken this long journey for nothing?" she thought. "Have I travelled about in a vain search for a pupil of the aim, only on my return to find the very prize I am seeking, on my own door-step? It may be so by some wonderful chance. I have a sort of inspiration that it is so." And this impulsive half-mad woman was just thinking how best to open the question to Mary, when the latter cleared the way by saying:

"Can you direct me, please ma'am, to this address?" and she handed to Mrs. King the paper that had been given her at the servant's registry office.

"It is close here," Catherine replied: then noticing at the head of the paper the lithographed words, Mrs. Anderson's registry for servants, she went on: "You are not looking out for a place are you?"

She asked this doubtfully after glancing at Mary; for the girl, though plainly dressed, had anything but the appearance of a domestic servant.

"Yes, ma'am, I am."

On hearing this the enthusiastic woman felt a joy as if her wildest ambition had been realised. She certainly could read character well, and she distinguished the power that lay in Mary Grimm. She felt almost certain that she had found her pupil at last. Providence had sent her—but I forget, Catherine King did not recognize a Providence, though she, like many wiser sceptics, entertained a sort of sneaking half-belief in its workings at times.

"As it happens, I want a servant; will you come in, and then we can see if we shall do for each other?"

Mary followed her into the house, wondering what this new adventure would lead to.

"I live here by myself," said Catherine, when they were in the little parlour I have before described, "with one servant who has been with me for years. I am in want of another—a younger one to help her. Now tell me all about yourself—your name, age, character, and so forth."

This women awed Mary. There was something in that flashing thought-reading eye, lofty pale brow, and curt masterful speech, that compelled her to tell the truth. Was it that the head of the Secret Society was possessed of some mesmeric influence that gave her this strange power over other women? Anyhow, by dint of a few carefully chosen questions, she extracted from Mary her whole story, even to the fact of her having passed the previous night in the Temple, though the girl had firmly intended to preserve this secret from all.

Catherine watched her closely as she spoke, and knew that her narrative was correct in every detail. "And you hate," she said, "hate bitterly, your father and stepmother?"

"I cannot help it: I do indeed," and the girl's dilating eye and compressed lips showed how the passion of her youth possessed her as soon as it was suggested.

"Humph! you can hate well and you can lie well; I begin to think you will do for me."

Mary opened her eyes in genuine amazement. Was this woman speaking sarcastically—sneering at her? for she could hardly conceive how lying and hating could seem to any mistress as desirable qualifications for a domestic. But Mrs. King looked perfectly serious, and was evidently wrapped in deep thought; there was no pleasantry about her.

"This is a curious sort of a woman," thought the girl. "I wonder what next she wants in a servant? Will she like me all the better if I tell her I am a thief? or perhaps she'll think me perfect if I say I've murdered all my little half-brothers and sisters?" She little expected how nearly her fancies had hit upon Catherine King's true state of mind.

"Such an education so far!" meditated the strange woman. "Hate and nothing else; clever too—of pleasing face to beguile fools with—why this is the very girl."

Then she said impatiently, for she was apt to be hasty in her plans when they were once well considered, brooking no delay: "Mary, you can stay with me if you like—not exactly as a servant though. I wish to educate you—this is a hobby of mine. I am a lonely woman, you shall be my companion. You shall have your board lodging and thirty shillings a month. What do you say?"

"What can I say to such a generous offer?" cried poor Mary, overjoyed. "You are very good to have pity on me," and tears started to her eyes. It is curious, by-the-way, how much more tearful she found this new liberty and kindness than her old life of slavery and cruelty; but that is an old experience in this world.

Mrs. King looked savage and annoyed when she saw these marks of tenderness. "Now, for goodness sake, don't cry," she exclaimed, "don't be grateful. No gratitude here mind. You won't do for me at all if you have affection or that sort of nonsense in you. It won't do here, no softness for me."

Thus it happened that Mary was engaged in a rather non-descript capacity by this dreamer, who sent her off that very afternoon with a few pounds to buy herself some necessary clothing; for she had, of course, nothing but what she stood in.

The next morning Mr. Hudson found a letter on his breakfast table. It enclosed a post office order for one pound, and the following note, which had no address at the head of it: