The Baker’s Daughter (3 page)

The morning passed quite quickly, for Sue had much to do. She looked over all her clothes and decided what to take with her and what to leave behind. She washed and ironed and mended industriously and was considerably cheered and strengthened by the doleful prognostications of Grace. Sue was an obstinate creature and she disliked her stepmother a good deal, so the more Grace predicted disasters and discomforts the better Sue felt. It was not until she had said good-bye to her family and was sitting on the bus with her suitcase beside her on the floor that her spirits began to fall again like a barometer in a typhoon.

The bus stopped at the top of the hill about two hundred yards from her destination, and Sue got out and stood for a few moments while the bus rattled out of sight. It was growing dark now, for dusk falls early in November. The sky was still luminous—pale primrose and orange near the horizon and lilac overhead—but the land was all dark with the coming of night, and the trees and hedges stood out against the brightness, black as charcoal.

Sue lifted her suitcase and walked down the rough track that led to Tog's Mill. She saw it as a dark huddle of buildings jaggedly outlined against the bright sky and she heard the rushing sound of the river as it leaped over the rocks. An owl hooted dismally as she approached, and, although she was by no means easily frightened, Sue shivered involuntarily at the sound. What an eerie place it was! What a strange place to choose to live in! Surely the people who chose to live here must be queer themselves! It was so lonely, so deserted looking that it was hard to believe that the brightly lit streets of Beilford were no more than two miles away.

The door was opened to Sue by a sallow-faced woman with dark hair and black beady eyes. She was dressed in black satin with a filmy lace apron. Sue noted that she wore silk stockings—almost as fine as Mrs. Darnay's own—and wondered how she could do any work in them.

“
Mon Dieu
, so you 'ave come at last!” cried the woman. “Come in queeck—do you sink I want to keep ze door open all night in zis dreadful cold?”

It was not a very pleasant welcome, but Sue comforted herself by reflecting that at least the woman seemed glad she had come. “I didn't know I was expected sooner,” she said humbly as she followed the woman into the kitchen.

“Sooner! Why not come at once, yesterday, or two days ago? 'Ere, zere is all to do an' only me to do it—one pair of 'ands—ze fires, ze meals, ze washing up ze dishes.
Mon Dieu, quel horreur!
Me, Ovette, washing ze dishes an' making ze fires! Nevaire 'ave I 'ad to do such work. Oh, it is not you to blame,” she added with a sudden, somewhat wolfish grin. “I am not reasonable, but 'oo could be reasonable wis all zat work to do.”

It had never occurred to Sue that there could be any excuse for unreason, but she was much too bewildered to reply, and indeed, it would have been difficult for her to get a word in edgeways if she had wanted to do so.

The Frenchwoman gabbled on, her broken English liberally sprinkled with French words, and Sue thought it was the strangest language she had ever heard, for she was used to the slow quiet speech of her own people. She had not been an hour in the house before she knew all about her employers. It was against her principles to pry into their affairs, but unless she had stuffed her ears with cotton wool, she could not have avoided hearing about them.

“We do not like zis Scotland,” Ovette told her, pursuing her into the scullery, where she was peeling the potatoes for the Darnays' dinner. “Bah, wot a 'ole! No vairs to go—no lights—no fun. Paree is wot we likes, Missus Darnay an' me. Paree is so gay. Mistaire Darnay 'e drag us 'ere to live in zis awful 'ole.”

Sue pursed her lips. She was indignant at the insult to her country, but she decided not to reply to the Frenchwoman's taunts. It was no good quarreling with the woman before she had been two hours in the house.

“You not zink zis is a 'ole,” Ovette declared, “but you not know any bettaire—see? You not know Paree. You 'ave nevaire been at Londres—ze streets, an' se lights, an' ze preetty shops—ze preetty 'ats in ze windows an' ze gowns—all so lovely—but 'ere all is cold an' meeserable.”

“Why do you stay, then?” inquired Sue, losing all patience with the woman's complaints.

“Per'aps we not stay so vairy long as you sink,” replied Ovette with that wolfish smile of hers. “Missus Darnay, she not like it 'ere any more zan me, an' it is Missus Darnay zat 'as all ze money—see? Ze one zat pays ze piper calls ze tune, an' she choose ze gay tune like me. It was zis morning she say to me—”

Sue looked up from her task, surprised at the sudden silence, and she saw a strange look sweep over the sallow face.

“…nevaire mind,” Ovette continued. “Zat is none of your beesness, Sue. Your beesness is to cook ze nice dinner,
n'est-ce pas
?”

Sue did not answer. She carried her pot of potatoes into the kitchen and put it on the fire (there was no gas at Tog's Mill nor any other modern convenience), but if she thought she had escaped from Ovette, she was mistaken.

“We were so 'appy at Londres,” said the Frenchwoman's voice at her elbow. “Missus Darnay she was 'appy wis all ze parties, an' Mistaire Darnay 'e paint ze preetty peektures, an' all ze people say 'e is great artist. 'E make a lot of money too, but 'e is selfish as ze devil, zat man! Eet is not enough zat people say 'e is great artist an' buy 'is peektures—no—'e must leave ze town an' stop painting ze preetty peektures zat everybody likes, an 'e must come to Scotland.
Mon Dieu, qu'il est bête
!”

“Are there any children?” Sue inquired, hoping to divert the woman's flow of talk into a more comfortable channel.

“No, 'an zere will not be,” Ovette told her with a sly leer. “Missus Darnay she know too much.”

Sue disliked Ovette thoroughly by this time. She was a horrible creature, disloyal and sly. Sue felt almost physically unclean after contact with her and had begun to wonder how she could possibly remain a whole week in the same house. And yet the woman was quite kind to Sue in her own way. She declared that the cheese soufflé was “
à ravir
” and that Mr. Darnay had asked for a second helping, and when dinner was over and the dishes washed up, she urged Sue to go up to bed.

“You are tired—yes—it is natural,” she said. “Me, I will put ze 'ot bottles in,” and she came upstairs to see that Sue had everything she wanted.

The top floor of the house consisted of a tiny passage with three doors opening off it. “Zis is my room,” Ovette said, pointing to a half-open door, “an' zat is yours. If you desire any sing—but no, you will not.”

“No, of course not,” Sue declared.

She had no wish to see Ovette's room, but it seemed rude to show no interest at all, so she looked in and was somewhat surprised to find that it was in a state of the utmost confusion. Clothes lay about on the bed and on the floor, and a bulging dress basket was pushed under the washing stand. Sue was all the more surprised because the untidy room did not seem to fit in with Ovette's personality—she was meticulously neat.

“I 'ave been tidying up,” explained Ovette, shutting the door hastily, “an' when I tidy up all ze sings gets untidy first. 'Ow you say, ‘It must be worse before it is better,'” and she laughed.

Sue did not know what to say.

“Come zen,” Ovette continued. “Zis is your room. You will be comfortable 'ere, yes?”

“Oh yes, it's a nice wee room,” Sue declared. It was a small but very pleasant room, with a low, sloped ceiling and a wide window seat let into the thick wall. The window looked onto the river. She could see the gleam of it in the darkness and could hear the rushing sound it made as it swept past the wall of the house.

“I will wake you in ze morning,” Ovette said. “Do not rise till I come—it will be early enough, I promise—an' if zere is noise in ze 'ouse do not trouble. Sometimes zey are vairy late. Missus Darnay will speak to you in ze morning. You will sleep sound, eh?”

“Very sound,” Sue replied. She was so exhausted by Ovette's chatter that she felt as if she could sleep for a week.

It was daylight when Sue woke, and for a moment she could not think where she was. The window was in the wrong place, and the ceiling had come closer down—then suddenly she remembered all that had happened. The sun had risen and was shining in at the window and Sue realized that it must be late—why had not Ovette wakened her? It was most annoying, for there was a great deal to be done before breakfast. She rose and flung on her clothes, but in spite of her desperate haste, she could not help glancing out of the window, for it had been dark the night before and she had not seen the view.

Her window was at the end of the house and looked eastward, downstream, and, in the glow of the rising sun, she saw the water leaping and glinting and hurrying away from the mill. At the other side of the river was a steep slope, well wooded with mixed trees. There were still a few brown withered leaves clinging to their branches, waiting for an easterly breeze to blow them away. The river had fallen considerably in the night and passed with a lapping, rippling sound, and the black rocks in its bed were surrounded by tiny frills of foam.

Sue hurried downstairs. The house was very quiet—too quiet somehow—it gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness and dread. In the kitchen, which faced the gate into the road, she could not even hear the sound of the river—there was no sound at all, save the sounds she was making herself. She stopped once or twice in her preparations for breakfast and listened for movement overhead, but there was nothing to be heard.

It was difficult to know what to do, for the bacon would get spoiled if she cooked it before they were ready—she had done everything else.
I'll have to waken Ovette
, she decided.
I'll just have to.

There was no answer to her timid knock on Ovette's door, and when she opened the door and peeped in, the room was empty—it was not only empty of its human occupant, but it was swept bare of all her belongings. There was no brush or comb on the table, no washing materials on the washstand, and the door of the cupboard stood open, showing empty shelves. A breeze swept in at the window and fluttered a torn piece of tissue paper that was lying on the floor.

Ovette had gone! Sue was absolutely dumbfounded at the discovery. She stood in the middle of the room and looked around her in dismay. Ovette had gone in the night and obviously did not mean to return—so that was why her room had been in such a state of confusion!

Sue was still standing there (trying to make up her mind whether to wake the Darnays and tell them the news or to wait until they wakened themselves) when she heard the front door slam so violently that it shook the house. She ran downstairs to see who it was, arriving so early in the day, and saw a man in the hall taking off his coat—a big fur-lined coat of heather-mixture tweed—his soft hat lying on the hall table where he had thrown it.

“Hallo!” he said, looking up at Sue as she hesitated on the stairs. “Hallo.
Where on earth
have you come from?”

Somehow or other Sue was aware that this was Mr. Darnay himself. She did not know how she knew it, and it was all the more odd because, until a moment ago, she had imagined Mr. Darnay lying asleep behind that closed door upon which she had been afraid to knock. He was not at all like her conception of what an artist should be, for he was tall and straight with a lean brown face and piercing gray eyes—he was more like a soldier than an artist, Sue thought—but all the same, she was sure that this man was Mr. Darnay and no other. She stopped on the stair and gazed at him, and he gazed back.

“Well, well,” he said at last. “Who are you, may I ask, and what in heaven's name are you doing here?”

“I'm the cook,” said Sue.

“The devil you are!” Mr. Darnay exclaimed. He was silent for a moment, and then he continued, “I'd forgotten all about you—and Elise must have forgotten too. Of course, that fiend, Ovette, took care not to say anything about it.”

“I only came yesterday,” Sue pointed out. “That's why you haven't seen me before.”

Mr. Darnay looked at her in a strange way. “What are you going to do?” he inquired.

“I was just going to fry the bacon.”

He threw back his head and laughed—it was a curious mirthless laugh.

“Unless you want me to do something else,” Sue added in a bewildered voice.

“Dear me, no,” Mr. Darnay replied. “What else should I want you to do? Fry the bacon, by all means. Though dynasties fall we must eat—eat or die—and I have no intention of dying yet,” he added.

Sue thought he was very strange. She came down a few steps and hesitated. “Will I wake Mrs. Darnay, or will you?” she inquired.

He had turned away, but now he stopped and looked back. “My good girl, they've gone,” he said quietly. “D'you mean to say you didn't know? Yes, they've both gone—I took them to the station. There's nobody left in the house but me—and you. Of course I don't expect you to stay. I had forgotten all about you.”

Sue went into the kitchen and fried the bacon. She worked mechanically, her brain busy with the extraordinary behavior of her employers.
It's as if they were daft
, she thought as she laid the rashers of bacon tenderly in the pan.
Yes, it's just as if they were daft, engaging me to come cook for them and then haring off in the middle of the night, but it's none of my business, of course.

It was none of her business how her employers chose to behave, but her own future was her business, and she viewed it with dismay. She saw herself returning to Beilford with her tail between her legs and producing this absolutely incredible tale to account for her dismissal.

Sue set the table and rang the gong, and almost immediately Mr. Darnay came strolling up from the river over the close turf. She left him and went to have her own meal, and she had barely finished when he came into the kitchen to find her. He was frowning, she noticed, and biting the stem of an unlit pipe.

“Look here—er—of course I must pay you,” he said, stammering a little with obvious embarrassment. “I don't know much about…but you've come here, and I suppose you were led to believe that—that you would be kept on—so—so—”

“It doesn't matter,” she put in hastily.

“Mrs. Darnay was called away suddenly—er—on business.”

“Yes,” said Sue. She looked up and met his eyes, and he flushed under his tan. Mr. Darnay was an extremely bad liar.

“You don't believe a word of it,” he exclaimed somewhat bitterly. “Why should you believe it? But all the same, I should be much obliged if you will give that explanation to your friends. I'm not particularly keen for the whole of Beilford to know that I've quarreled with my wife. They think I'm mad already.”

Sue was embarrassed by the way he spoke. She realized that he scarcely knew what he was saying. He was all on edge, wounded and bitter at heart. He would regret his frankness later when he had time to consider it.

“I suppose you heard the row,” he continued, “and all the fuss of packing—it lasted most of the night.”

“I didn't hear anything,” Sue assured him. “I was tired, so I went to bed at nine. Ovette never told me they were going away. I saw her box packed when I went up to bed, but I never thought—”

“What!” he cried, turning upon her so suddenly that she started back in alarm. “You saw her box packed at nine o'clock! But it wasn't until after that they decided to go. Wait a moment. We must get to the bottom of this.”

“Maybe it would be best if we didn't. Maybe it would be best if I just went home—I'll not say a word to anybody.”

He looked at her for the first time as if he really saw her and the hard lines of his face softened. “That's damned good of you,” he declared. “I appreciate that, but I must
know
, you see. There's something odd here, and I must understand it.

“The fact is this place does not suit my wife. She always hated it. But I had to get away from everything—the parties, the late nights, and all the other stupid waste of time and energy—I had to get away from all that,” said Mr. Darnay, starting to walk up and down, speaking more to himself than to Sue. “Last night things flared up and we both said things—things we had been thinking for some time—and the end of it was Elise decided to go back to her people. She got Ovette out of bed and they packed—”

“But Ovette knew they were going,” Sue cried in a breathless voice. “Her clothes were half packed. I saw her box.”

“You're sure?” he asked her. “You're quite sure you saw that woman's box half packed when you went to bed? It's important to me, you know.”

“Yes,” said Sue. “Oh dear, I wish I could say no, Mr. Darnay. I see how it was—they had settled to go—before—”

“And the whole row was engineered,” he added bitterly. “Oh well, I suppose it doesn't make much difference.”

She waited for a little while, and then she said timidly, “You'll be shutting up the house, of course.”

“No, why should I?” he answered. “I'm just beginning to—there's something about this place that suits me. I'm getting the feel of it. No, I shall stay on here by myself. I shall manage all right—I'm used to camping—and it will be good to be alone with nothing to distract me from my work.”

Sue wanted to offer to stay and “do” for him, for it seemed to her impossible that he should “manage.” He might be used to camping, but it was quite different living in a big old-fashioned house. She trembled to think what the place would be like after he had lived in it alone for a week—but that was none of her business, of course. He had said she was to go, so she must just go. Before she went she would cook his dinner and put the place to rights.

Sue glanced at him again and saw that he was far away, lost in dreams, and had forgotten her existence. She was quite sure that he was not even thinking about his wife or the mean trick she had played on him. Sue did not know what artists thought about when their faces wore that strange rapt expression, and, because she was interested to know, she followed his eyes and saw that he was gazing out of the window. A cloud, white and billowy as eiderdown, was sailing across the sky, trailing its gray shadow across the sunlit hill.

“Gorgeous!” he said softly. “Could you ever get the feeling of that softness—even Constable—but you might try—”

I don't believe he would notice whether I was here or not
, said Sue to herself with a little secret smile.