Mary Reilly (8 page)

My poor head seemed about to burst. I knew I could not say any of the sentences I had thought out so careful. I couldn’t even bring myself to say the name of Mrs. Farraday, much less tell my feelings of shock and concern for Master, that she should speak of him so
disrespectful and talk to me, too, as she had, so rude, seeing as I was connected to him and to his house. I heard myself say only, “The answer is yes, sir, though she says you must wait two weeks.”

Master sighed. “Good,” he said. “That will be quite convenient.” Nor did he turn toward me or even open his eyes, seeming to be nearly asleep, and so I went out.

I went down the stairs feeling as weary as if I had worked all day, instead of as I should after my half-day, refreshed and ready to shine up a palace if the chance arose. In the kitchen Cook was just putting out some eggs and rashers. I took my plate with a heavy heart and sat down next to Mr. Bradshaw, who was in a jovial mood, teasing me about my young man in the park, with whom I must be spending my half-day pretty “vigorous,” as he put it, for I seemed worn out in his view.

I only looked up from my food to say, with my whole heart behind it, “Mr. Bradshaw, I do wish that was the truth,” and we all had a dry laugh at my expense.

T
wo weeks has passed since last I writ, and I thought this morning that today is the day Master’s business with Mrs. Farraday must begin. I have spent many hours trying to coach myself on what that business might be, and I think I must have a good imagination
when I consider just how many stories I’ve come up with, some to Master’s credit and some that shock me for having appeared in my own head. Indeed I am in a bad way and weary from it all. Master is occupied much of the time, in his laboratory or visiting or having his friends in, and seems to think on those occasions when I am in the room with him that everything is as it has always been. I try to believe this myself and do my work with a good will, but I don’t believe it no matter how much I might try.

It does seem to me that what Master has done is take rooms in that house, or perhaps the whole house, and that he has done this for someone else, someone Mrs. Farraday (if that is her name, for I doubt everything in my worst moments) knows and does not like.

The only thing I do that lifts my spirits is work in the garden with Cook. We have managed several times to get in an hour in the early morning, or late in the day as the days is so long now, and many of our plants has their heads above the soil. Now an hour of work can make a noticeable order. The weather has been grey, unseasonable cold and wet, the coldest summer in many years, but our herbs and flowers seem to thrive upon it. We have parsley of two kinds—one curly, which Cook says she will use for garnish, and one with a flat leaf for cooking—rosemary, thyme, mint—a most hardy plant this is, as goes underground to jump up again in a space not its own, which Cook says is the nuisance of it and if we went away the whole garden would be only mint in no time—sage, garlic, and marigolds to prevent bugs,
one border of pansies, not bloomed yet, and another of poppies, which are just coming up and so delicate I fear they won’t prosper, and two edges, one of lavender and one of foxglove. Cook has a little place in the centre for a boxwood, which she is looking out for, she says, as a present for me because it will bring a good marriage.

Nothing is big enough to pick yet but we can see how it will look. There’s a deal of feeding and pinching and always weeding to be done, which Cook directs me in.

Sometimes, if I’m not too busy, I go out after dinner just to look at it, and to smell the pleasant scent of the herbs which the damp air seems to blend into something that is all one, though I feel I can separate out each herb if I try. Yesterday as I was doing this, feeling it really is a blessing at such times to have a nose, though at others one may wish to close up a nose as we do our eyes when we don’t want to see, I heard Master passing along the closed passage that leads to the side street. I knew it must be Master as the passage has only one other door, which opens into the old theatre, yet the step did not sound like his but rather too heavy and uneven, dragging a little. Still, it must have been him, only my ears misled me or the hard flags of the passage mun distort the sound. He went along from the theatre, opened the door to the street, then went out.

Why did this surprise me so, and why did I have a feeling of such gloom at the thought that Master comes and goes in his own house without our always knowing?
Certain it would be unnecessary steps and trouble to cross the yard and walk through the house to the front door when this door is so much the more convenient.

But, I thought, how much of the time that we think Master is in his laboratory, not to be disturbed, is he perhaps not there at all?

I stood still, listening, but there were no sounds, then a fine rain began to fall and the sound of it seemed to fill up my head so that I couldn’t move. I hoped Master had remembered to take his umbrella—a foolish thought, but it seemed important and I went over it a few times as if thinking on it could put the umbrella in his hands. And I was getting wet myself but didn’t care. I looked down at my hands, which no matter how I scrub them are always lined with blacking and lately, because of the odd weather, have been full of twinges and pains that feel like hearts throbbing. I remembered what seemed like so long ago, when Master took my hands in his own and looked at them in the lamplight, of how shy and embarrassed I felt, but yet, I cannot deny it, pleased as well to be noticed by him, to feel I was of interest to him. As I was having these sad thoughts Mr. Poole put his head out the kitchen door and called to me. “Mary,” he said. “Have you no more sense than to stand there dreaming in the rain?” I went in, thinking how I must seem to Mr. Poole, who knows nothing of me, and less of Master than he could ever suspect, I’ve no doubt.

T
his morning I was polishing the tables in the drawing room, in fact on my knees on the floor to do the legs which stand on great carved animal feet I like to think is lion’s feet, when Master come in suddenly and seeming in a hurry, threw himself down on the settee so that his long legs stretched out before him on the carpet, and heaved a great sigh as if he was at the end of a struggle. Then he saw me, or rather saw the back of me and said, “Mary, good. You are the person who should hear of this.”

So I had to back out from under the table and turn myself around to him on my knees. Then I thought it wouldn’t do to stand, as he was nearly lying down, so I sat back on my heels and said, “Yes, sir.”

“It’s inconceivable to me,” he went on. “They want to close my school.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” I said.

“The commissioners are of the opinion that educating the poor is a dangerous pastime.”

“I can’t see how that could be,” I said.

“It seems two of our scholars haven’t done very well, though we can’t say they didn’t profit, for they got themselves up to be assistants at the school and then disappeared with all the funds they could lay their hands upon.” Here Master laughed abruptly, rolling his eyes upward as if he’d never heard of anything so ridiculous.

“That’s a pity, sir,” I said, “if it makes your friends feel their good effort has come to a bad end.”

“They say we’ve only taught pickpockets to be embezzlers.”

“Surely sir,” I said, “they must expect something like that now and then.”

“Exactly what I told them. Naturally we must lose a few along the way, but why does that lead to the conclusion that we should give up the whole enterprise? And I brought you up, Mary, as an example of one who has come through our school with her moral capabilities intact. I told them my housemaid can read and write as well as any of you, and I’ve no doubt is a far better critic of reason and morality than any of you seem to be.”

This made me blush and I could only stammer, “You flatter me, sir.”

“No, Mary, I don’t, and you’d agree with me if you had five minutes of conversation with these fools. Littleton, whose name is surely a description of the size and density of his brain, said he for one wouldn’t care to have a housemaid with any moral sense at all—and the whole group of asses brayed out loud over that for a full minute.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” I said.

“I’m not so naïve as to think we can solve the world’s problems by having a school, but surely we’ve an obligation to relieve suffering when we can. And ignorance
is
suffering, though the poor brutes who are driven to our doors may not know it. Any school, simply by existing, must be a force for good.”

I smiled, both at the excitement in Master’s speech
and the strange idea he’d brought to my mind. “What makes you smile, Mary?” he said at once. “Am I wrong? Speak frankly.”

“I was thinking that there can never be such a thing as a force for good, sir,” I said. “And there’s the pity of it.”

Master opened his eyes wide and protested, “But, Mary, I try to be just such a force.”

“Well that’s it, sir, isn’t it,” I said. “That good is what always needs trying, as it is work for us and don’t seem to come natural, whereas havoc comes of its own accord. And also it does seem to me that the two words won’t go together, as force can never do aught but evil.”

Master paused, mulling over my words. “Surely this is a grim view, Mary. If this is true then we must despair of our efforts—indeed, there is no point in any effort.”

“Oh, I suppose, sir,” I said, “it does little harm to try. Your wicked boys is really no wickeder for learning to rob a school instead of a pocket.”

Master smiled. “And it seems to me also, Mary, that there are many who have no difficulty in being good. Yourself, for example.”

“Being and doing is different, sir,” I said. “I have no will to cause pain and suffering, as some do, if that’s what you mean. But as for
doing
good, I confess I don’t think of it. I only think of doing what I mun to stay as I am.”

“Which
is
good,” Master said, as if to pay me a compliment.

But my answer sprang to my lips, and I knew Master mun understand it as no one else might.

“No, sir,” I said. “Which is safe.”

Master leaned forward, propping his chin on one hand and gave me a long look, full of sympathy, so that there was no need to speak. We heard, though only because we had fallen silent, Mr. Poole’s step in the hall, for he walks like a ghost and often as not appears in a doorway as if he just sprang up from the floorboards. Master and I exchanged a look of warning, for if Mr. Poole saw me on my knees talking to Master, he would not approve and Master knows this as well as I. I went back to my lion’s feet and Master fell back on the settee. In the next moment Mr. Poole looked in, seeming surprised to see Master, and said, “Ah, sir, I did not know you had come in.”

I
t is very late. I’m weary but won’t sleep I know until I puzzle out my poor feelings, which has been in an uproar all day so that there is a chorus of voices in my head, each one demanding to be heard against the others. When Master is gay and kind to me, as he was today, asking my opinion and listening to me as no one has ever listened to me, then all the sadness I feel lifts as suddenly as a bird, leaves me entirely, and I know such a soaring of spirits as I think mun
come to few in this life. Though I tell myself this is only a gentleman having idle conversation with his housemaid for want of a better pastime, I don’t believe it, have no will to believe it, but respond, no, he wants
my
company and not another’s. When he talks to me of doing good, of how his efforts is blocked by those who only think of money or prestige, then my worry about his sending me out on an errand to Soho, my distrust of the woman he has chosen to help him, seems the worst sort of suspicious mind, to imagine that Master means anything but good or that he owes me some explanation of his intentions. I feel ashamed of myself and resolve to accept my place as
Master
makes it out for me, and not as I might want it to be. When he tells me he trusts me and shows me he trusts me more than anyone else in this house, my heart leaps and I think, I am of use to him and mun keep that trust, that my obligation is clear, yet there is another voice that will put in, he means nothing by it, he is gay and it pleases him to say such things to one who cannot but obey him. This, I’ve no doubt, is Mr. Poole’s view of the matter and though he says nothing to me, his coolness is such as mun be felt by everyone in the house, except, of course, for Master, who cares nothing about it. When I went down to the kitchen after speaking with Master this morning, Mr. Poole was sitting at the table with Mr. Bradshaw, who did not fail to notice the cold look he gave me as I come in or the tone of his words to me, which was to suggest that I find a way to do the
drawing room in the afternoon, when it is less likely to be in use.

There. I hear Master coming in from his laboratory, climbing through the dark, still house and thinking we are all of us asleep in our beds while he is left alone, awake. Can he feel that I am here, listening to him, sleepless on his account? Will he think of me as he goes into his room, lights the lamp I trimmed for him, sits on the bed I made for him, drinks the water I brought up for him, or perhaps lights the fire I laid for him and stands gazing at the burning coals until sleep finally finds us both?

A
fter we finished our tea today, Mr. Poole had a bell to the drawing room, but come back at once to say that Master had asked we all gather in Mr. Poole’s parlour, as he wished to speak to us as a group. Of course we was all taken by surprise, Cook saying it mun be something serious and perhaps Master had suffered a reverse in fortunes and couldn’t keep so grand a house, which had happened to her in her last position, but Mr. Poole told her to hold her tongue as no such thing was likely, only Master mun want some small change in the running of things, or perhaps he was going abroad.

So we put up the tea things quickly, Mr. Poole opened his parlour door and we all filed in—Cook, Mr. Bradshaw, Annie, myself, Mr. Poole, and the knife boy, Peter, who was very nervous as this is his first position and he is scarce more than a child and shan’t find another with ease. We stood about, not wanting to take seats nor feeling we should be together in a group nor queued up, so we milled about the table, giving each other worried looks and Cook said she did not like it at all.