He said, 'That's London. Known for its fogs, ain't it? Been much down to the country before?'
'Not much,' I said.
'Been maiding in the city, have you? Good place, your last one?' 'Pretty good,' I said.
35
'Rum way of speaking you've got, for a lady's maid,' he said then. 'Been to France ever?'
I took a second, smoothing the blanket out over my lap. 'Once or twice,' I said.
'Short kind of chaps, the French chaps, I expect? In the leg, I mean.'
Now, I only knew one Frenchman— a housebreaker, they called him Jack the German, I don't know why. He was tall enough; but I said, to please William Inker, 'Shortish, I suppose.' 'I expect so,' he said.
The road was perfectly quiet and perfectly dark, and I imagined the sound of the horse, and the wheels, and our voices, carrying far across the fields. Then I heard, from rather near, the slow tolling of a bell— a very mournful sound, it seemed to me at that moment, not like the cheerful bells of London. It tolled nine times.
'That's the Briar bell, sounding the hour,' said William Inker. We sat in silence after that, and in a little time we reached a high stone Wall and took a road that ran beside it.
Soon the wall became a great arch, and then I saw behind it the roof and the pointed windows of a greyish house, half-covered with ivy. I thought it a grand enough crib, but not so grand nor so grim perhaps as Gentleman had painted it. But when William Inker slowed the horse and I put the blanket from me and reached for my trunk, he said,
'Wait up, sweetheart, we've half a mile yet!' And then, to a man who had appeared with a lantern at the door of the house, he called: 'Good night, Mr Mack. You may shut the gate behind us. Here is Miss Smith, look, safe at last.'
The building I had thought was Briar was only the lodge! I stared, saying nothing, and we drove on past it, between two rows of bare dark trees, that curved as the road curved, then dipped into a kind of hollow, where the air— that had seemed to clear a little, on the open country lanes— grew thick again. So thick it grew, I felt it, damp, upon my face, upon my lashes and lips; and closed my eyes.
Then the dampness passed away. I looked, and stared again. The road had risen, we had broken out from between the lines of trees into a gravel clearing, and here— rising vast and straight and stark out of the woolly fog, with all its windows black or shuttered, and its walls with a dead kind of ivy clinging to them, and a couple of its chimneys sending up threads of a feeble- looking grey smoke— here was Briar, Maud Lilly's great house, that I must now call my home.
We did not cross before the face of it, but kept well to the side, then took up a lane that swung round behind it, where there was a muddle of yards and out- houses and porches, and more dark walls and shuttered windows and the sound of barking dogs.
High in one of the buildings was the round white face and great black hands of the clock I had heard striking across the fields. Beneath it, William Inker pulled the horse up, then helped me down. A door was opened in one of the walls and a woman stood gazing at us, her arms folded against the cold.
'There's Mrs Stiles, heard the trap come,' said William. We crossed the yard to join her.
Up above us, at a little window, I thought I saw a candle- flame shine, and flutter, and then go out.
The door led to a passage, and this led to a great, bright kitchen, about five times the size of our kitchen at Lant Street, and with pots set in rows upon a whitewashed wall, 36
and a few rabbits hanging on hooks from the beams of the ceiling. At a wide scrubbed table sat a boy, a woman and three or four girls— of course, they looked very hard at me. The girls studied my bonnet and the cut of my cloak. Their frocks and aprons being only servants' wear, I didn't trouble myself to study them.
Mrs Stiles said, 'Well, you're about as late as you could be. Any longer and you should've had to stay at the village. We keep early hours here.'
She was about fifty, with a white cap with frills and a way of not quite looking in your eye as she spoke to you. She carried keys about her, on a chain at her waist. Plain, old-fashioned keys, I could have copied any one of them.
I made her half a curtsey. I did not say— which I might have— that she should be thankful I had not turned back at Paddington;
that I wished I had turned back; and that for anyone to have had the time that I had had, in trying to get forty miles from London, perhaps went to prove that London wasn't meant to be left— I did not say that. What I said was:
'I'm sure, I'm very grateful that the trap was sent at all.' The girls at the table tittered to hear me speak. The woman who sat with them— the cook, it turned out— got up and set about making me a supper-tray. William Inker said,
'Miss Smith've come from a pretty fine place in London, Mrs Stiles. And she've been several times in France.' 'Has she,' said Mrs Stiles.
'Only one or two times,' I said. Now everyone would suppose I had been boasting.
'She said the chaps there are very short in the leg.' _ Mrs Stiles gave a nod. The girls at the table tittered again, and one of them whispered something that made the boy grow red. But then my tray was made, and Mrs Stiles said,
'Margaret, you can carry this through to my pantry. Miss Smith, I suppose I should take you to where you might splash your hands and face.'
I took this to mean that she would show me to the privy, and I said I wished she would.
She gave me a candle and took me down another short passage, to another yard, that had an earth closet in it with paper on a spike.
Then she took me to her own little room. It had a chimney-piece with white wax flowers on it, and a picture of a sailor in a frame, that I supposed was Master Stiles, gone off to Sea; and another picture, of an angel, done entirely in black hair, that I presumed was Mr Stiles, gone off to Glory. She sat and watched me take my supper. It was mutton, minced, and bread-and-butter; and you may imagine that, being so hungry as I was, I made very short work of it. As I ate, there came the slow chiming of the clock that I had heard before, sounding half-past nine. I said, 'Does the clock chime all night?'
Mrs Stiles nodded. 'All night, and all day, at the hour and the half. Mr Lilly likes his days run very regular. You'll find that out.'
'And Miss Lilly?' I said, picking crumbs from the corner of my mouth. 'What does she like?'
She smoothed her apron. 'Miss Maud likes what her uncle likes,' she answered.
Then she rearranged her lips. She said,
'You'll know, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud is quite a young girl, for all that she's mistress of this great house. The servants don't trouble her, for the servants answer to 37
me. I should have said I had been a housekeeper long enough to know how to secure a maid for my own mistress— but there, even a housekeeper must do as she is bid, and Miss Maud've gone quite over my head in this matter. Quite over my head. I shouldn't have thought that perfectly wise, in a girl of her years; but we shall see how it turns out.'
I said, 'I am sure whatever Miss Lilly does must turn out well.'
She said, 'I have a great staff of servants, to make sure that it does. This'is a well-kept house, Miss Smith, and I hope you will take to it. I don't know what you might be used to in your last place. I don't know what might be considered a lady's maid's duties, in London. I have never been there'— she had never been to London!— 'so cannot say. But if you mind my other girls, then I am sure they will mind you. The men and the stable-boys, of course, I hope I shall never see you talking with more than you can help
She went on like that for a quarter of an hour— all the time, as I have mentioned, never quite catching my eye. She told me where I might walk in the house, and where I must take my meals, and how much sugar I should be allowed for my own use, and how much beer, and when I could expect my underclothes laundered. The tea that was boiled in Miss Maud's teapot, she said, it had been the habit of the last lady's maid to p a s s o n t o t h e g i r l s i n t h e k i t c h e n . L i k e w i s e t h e w a x -ends from Miss Maud's candle- sticks: they were to be given to Mr Way. And Mr Way would know how many wax-ends to expect, since it was him who doled out the candles. Corks went to Charles, the knife-boy. Bones and skins went to Cook.
'The pieces of soap that Miss Maud leaves in her wash-stand, however,' she said, 'as being too dry to raise a lather from: those you may keep.'
Well, that's servants for you— always grubbing over their own little patch. As if I cared, about candle-ends and soap! If I had never quite felt it before, I knew then what it was, to be in expectations of three thousand pounds.
Then she said that if I had finished my supper she would be pleased to show me to my room. But she would have to ask me to be very quiet as we went, for Mr Lilly liked a silent house and couldn't bear upset, and Miss Maud had a set of nerves that were just like his, that wouldn't allow of her being kept from her rest or made fretful.
So she said; and then she took up her lamp, and I took up my candle, and she led me out into the passage and up a dark staircase. 'This is the servants' way,' she said, as we walked, 'that you must always take, unless Miss Maud directs you otherwise.'
Her voice and her tread grew softer the higher we went. At last, when we had climbed three pairs of stairs, she took me to a door, that she said in a whisper was the door to my room. Putting her finger before her lips, she slowly turned the handle.
I had never had a room of my own before. I did not particularly want one, now. But, since I must have one, this one I supposed would do. It was small and plain— would have looked better, perhaps, for a paper garland or two, or a few plaster dogs. But there was a looking- glass upon the mantel and, before the fire, a rug. Beside the bed— William Inker must have brought it up— was my canvas trunk.
Near the head of the bed there was another door, shut quite tight and with no key in it.
'Where does that lead?' I asked Mrs Stiles, thinking it might lead to another passage or 38