FREDA BREAKS SILENCE.
Half an hour later we were sitting at a pleasant meal, and I was only
sorry not to be hungrier, for the Magnolia Cottage of my imagination
could not have provided more inviting viands than the cold fowl, and
rolls and butter, and honey and fragrant coffee, which made our
lunch. Freda flushed with pleasure when I said so.
"Ah!" she said, looking towards her friend, "if anybody can make a
shilling go as far as a pound, it is Mary Vincent."
"Hardly that, my dear, but I am not an old campaigner for nothing,
and the advantage of living in a slum is, that food is sold at prices
within reach of the poor. Then I spent a couple of years of my
girlhood in a French convent, and learned from Sister St. Genevieve
to make coffee," said Freda's friend.
I liked Mrs. Vincent uncommonly well. She was quite plain-looking,
but had, I thought, one of the sweetest expressions imaginable. Her
hair, too, was very pretty, white, and with a wave in it, a striking
contrast to her olive-hued cheeks and quick, brown eyes. But looking
at her one only got an impression of the goodness of the face; the
irregular features and small eyes and colourless skin faded into
insignificance as compared with that.
Master Jacky, too, had his chair at the table, beside Mrs. Vincent.
I must say he behaved very well for so small a boy, and one evidently
so much petted. Except for an occasional indiscretion, such as
asking why wasn't there chicken and honey every day, his conduct was
exemplary. Indeed, with regard to her training of him it was evident
that Mrs. Vincent had not been a soldier's wife for nothing. She had
a number of military words of command, which she uttered with an
immovable face whenever the young gentleman seemed on the point of
becoming obstreperous. It amused me very much to see the boy's
prompt obedience to them; but that was, as she explained to me,
because Jacky was to be a soldier when he grew up, and he had already
begun his training.
I couldn't help thinking that she was probably better for the young
pickle than his own dear little mother, whose eyes danced and
twinkled with such merriment when Jacky forgot that he was a soldier
acting under orders. Mrs. Vincent's face never lost its sweet
seriousness for one moment, even when Freda and I were visibly merry.
After lunch Mrs. Vincent carried the boy off and left us to our chat
There were so many things we had yet to say to each other. After I
had told all the home news I came back to Freda herself.
"Now tell me," I asked, "what a 'nasty place' is like, such as your
last 'place'?"
I made a wry face over the word, which seeing, Freda laughed.
"Well, I'll tell you, dear," she said. "In taking my last place,
which was to be for a short time, I thought I'd depart from the
beaten path of governessing, which is really a very sad and lonely
life. So I answered an advertisement for a lady to act as hostess at
a Bayswater boarding-house, to take the head of the table, receive
people who came on business, and all that kind of thing. The salary
was miserable, but the place sounded an easy one, and there was one
great inducement. I could have Jacky to stay with me whenever I
liked, and oh, my dear, if you could know the pangs of loneliness I
have suffered for want of my boy at times! The thought of a 'place'
where Mary could fetch him to me now and again for a few hours was
like heaven."
"Poor Freda!"
"Oh, poor Freda indeed! You shall hear how it turned out. I found
the woman a coarse, red-faced, cunning-eyed person, not at all more
prepossessing because of her oily smile. I took a dislike to her at
once, though she meant to be very amiable. She said that her
business was so large that she could no longer carry out all the
duties of hostess herself,--she required another 'lydy' to help her.
The real truth was that she was conscious of her own deficiencies,
and had come to see that she lost clients by receiving them herself.
She really did want a lady to coax people to come in."
"She must have had common-sense anyhow," said I.
"Oh, my dear, she knew well! She wasn't sensitive, even with regard
to herself. She told me that my duties would be, besides presiding
at table, receiving visitors, &c., to do such small household tasks
as a lady would naturally do in her own house. She hoped, she said,
that I wouldn't mind doing a little mending."
"Well?"
"Well, I said I didn't mind anything in reason. Then she took me
upstairs and showed me my bedroom. It was the merest attic, but I
could see a tree or two from it, and at the foot of my bed there was
a little old cot, which clinched the matter for me, for I imagined
Jacky in it, and the joy of undressing and dressing him myself, and
listening to his soft breathing all night. So I said I'd come,
without further ado."
"Is it so seldom you have Jacky to yourself, Freda?"
"Well, you see, Hilda, Mary Vincent has been like his mother so long
that when I come home I don't like to disturb the existing order of
things. She, dear woman, would utterly efface herself if she had the
least suspicion of my longing to do everything for Jacky once in a
while. But when I come home she thinks I need rest, and am to be
waited upon, and will have me lie in bed in the morning while she
does everything for both of us."
She sighed a little wistful sigh, and then smiled.
"But I always say to myself that I am Jacky's mother, and that is
enough happiness for me. I can yield the rest to her who loves him
so much also, and has never had a child of her own. It is so long
since I have had things to do for Jacky that I daresay I should be
awkward and unaccustomed now."
"Poor Freda!" I said again.
"And rich Freda," she laughed. "I will confess to you, Hilda, that I
got over my first great pang when I let my friend bathe Jacky while
he was yet a baby. That was--"
She broke off abruptly, and I knew she had been going to say "after
Jim died", and then had choked over it.
"She had been so good to us--to me and Jim--that when I saw she was
hungry for the child, I stood aside. She never guessed that it cost
me anything, dear soul! I cannot understand now how mothers give up
the personal care of their babies to anyone else if they can help it.
In that way, at least, rich women are not so happy as poor women."
"But the boarding-house, Freda?" I said.
"Ah, yes! I was forgetting. The money was very small, but having
Jacky whenever I wished, as the woman said I might, outweighed
everything, so I went. Mary thought, too, that the duties, being
light, would not wear me out, as I have been worn out where there
were half-a-dozen energetic children. But I soon found that I was to
be a kind of white slave. I was to be housemaid and housekeeper and
hostess all rolled into one. Even at the hour when a servant's
duties are over, mine were going on. If Mrs. Tatlow--that was her
name--saw me sitting still for a moment she found new work for me.
Why, after a hard day I have sat up till two in the morning mending
house-linen. There were years of arrears of mending, all waiting for
me."
"Why did you stay when you found what it was like?"
"I couldn't come home at once, because I had been having a long rest,
and the money was all spent. And Lady A. had promised to secure me
the place I am now going to in Devonshire, so I thought I would stay
on, and endure it without complaint for a while. Then the summer
came, and there was an unusual demand for rooms, and Mrs. Tatlow came
to me one day with her oily smile, and said she had been obliged to
take my room for a time, and if I would not mind the inconvenience of
sleeping downstairs she thought she could make me very comfortable.
I said I shouldn't mind, for I had not then seen the room, and my
attic, since the hot weather set in, had been so hot that I thought I
couldn't be much worse off. But, oh, Hilda, if you had seen the
room! It had no window, but was lit by a grating in the door. It
ran under the street. It was dark, noisome, unwholesome in the last
degree, for it had only been intended to put brushes and such things
in. My wretched little bed almost filled it completely. I protested
when I saw the place, but quite in vain. My own room was already
taken."
"And you slept in it, Freda?" I cried out, horrified.
"I could do nothing else. Mary had taken Jacky to Broadstairs--we
have always managed to give him a month at the sea every summer.
This little house is taken for that period by two maiden ladies,
friends of Mary's, who like to come up once a year to see the
pictures and shops. I had nowhere to turn to. I sat down in the
horrible little hole and cried bitterly. Then I concluded that I
could stand it till Mary came home, and so I set my teeth to it."
"The woman ought to have been put in prison," I said angrily.
Freda laughed.
"That is precisely what Susan, the kitchen-maid, said. 'She did
ought to be in 'Olloway, that's wot she ought.' Indeed I got plenty
of sympathy from the overworked, badly-fed, worse-housed, kitchen
staff. I often wondered at the warmth of their partizanship, poor
dears. They were worse off, as far as sleeping accommodation went,
than myself, though, of course, a servant has always this advantage
over an untrained lady, that she can leave. There are so many of
us," said Freda, with a watery little smile.
"You had some friends, anyhow?" I said.
"Yes; though I wouldn't listen to their sympathy; not so much for my
dignity's sake--that sort of thing levels human beings somehow--as
that I couldn't bear it at the time."
"You poor darling!" I cried, embracing her.
Again the rainbow smile flitted over her face, and she went on.
"The sympathy that really touched me most came from the ostensible
master of the house. Before this time I had only seen Mr. Tatlow
flitting along a corridor, or diving into a doorway to get out of my
way. He was the most absurd little man to look at--pale-faced,
tearful-eyed, with long red weepers of whiskers, and a general
miserableness of expression."
"So well he might have," said I acridly. "Well--"
"So well he might, my dear. Susan informed me that he had to clean
all the boots, sometimes forty pairs a day, in the season. He was
the most oppressed of all his wife's victims."
"Why didn't he assert himself, then?"
"Oh, Hilda, you should have seen him! Poor little soul! He was one
of those men who make you feel it to be so tragic that they should be
men and yet like that. Coventry Patmore makes his plain heroine talk
of the sadness--
"That God should e'er
Make women, and not make them fair".
But the tragedy of men like poor little Mr. Tatlow is sadder still."
"How did he show his sympathy?" I asked.
"Oh, poor little soul! by facing his wife for me with the spirit of a
lion. He was miserably afraid of her, yet he did that. And he
apologized to me with a delicacy and good feeling that showed he had
the heart of a gentleman in his poor little frame."
"He could do nothing?"
"No, only get himself into hot water by his championship of me. I
believe the woman was horribly violent when she was angry. She
vented all her violence on him, for though she was savagely angry
with me she said nothing. I only knew it by her glance of
malevolence when she thought herself unnoticed."
"And you slept a month in that dog-hole?"
"No, I'm ashamed to say I didn't. I'm not made of the martyr-stuff.
I had been ten days or so in it when Lucy, the chamber-maid, told
Miss Dahlia Warner, an American who was staying in the house, about
my habitation. Miss Warner was very rich, very pretty, and very
spirited. She came down and saw the place for herself. 'Now, why
did you do it, Mrs. Hazeldine?' she asked; 'don't you know it was
self-murder? Look at yourself in the glass!' I did so, and saw a
very white face and very big eyes. 'Besides, you are encouraging
that wretch to treat some other helpless, poor creature in just the
same way.'
"Then I burst out crying, and she suddenly put her arms about me
affectionately. 'There, I am worrying you, you poor little thing!'
she cried; 'as if you had not had enough to bear already. Come up to
my room and tell me all about it. The woman is out, but if she were
not, she wouldn't dare to question me."
So I went with her, and, being broken down by her sympathy, I told
her everything. When I had finished, she said to me, 'There! Can
you get your things together in a quarter of an hour? Yes, I am sure
you can, for that kind creature downstairs will help you. You are
coming with me to the Cecil as my guest for a fortnight, and as long
afterwards as you will stay.'
And so she carried me off. She returned later on for her own
luggage, paid Mrs. Tatlow for her board, and gave that good lady a
stinging little bit of her mind. The woman was obsequious to her,
for her main business is with Americans, and she dreaded the mischief
Miss Warner might do her. But for all that she kept my pretty
things."
"Your pretty things, Freda?"
"Yes. She came here on some excuse after I had promised to go to
her, and saw my pretty things, my bits of ivory and silver and
lacquer that used to be in our little home at Oodeypore. No matter
how poor I was, I would never part with them. She insisted on my
bringing them with me to decorate her drawing-room, and now she holds
them in default of the warning she says I ought to have given her."
"But she can't keep them, surely?"
"Oh no! she will give them up. It is only what Miss Warner calls a
game of bluff. That good friend was recalled suddenly to America,
and since I would not go with her, as she wanted, she put me and my
affairs in charge of her betrothed, who is a young solicitor in an
old firm in Chancery Lane. He, Mr. Douglas, says that Mrs. Tatlow is
only squirming a little before giving up the things. So we shall let
her squirm."
"And now," Freda said, "let us have some tea, for I seem to have been
talking an incredible amount."
When she had ordered the tea, I said to her:
"Is Aline to hear this, Freda?"
"I think not," she said wistfully, "unless you think that I had
better own up to everything. But it would only grieve her."
"Indeed, I think you are right," I said. "It would nearly break her
heart. I think you were cruel to us too, Freda, to endure such
things."
"Well, it was not for very long," she answered.
"I hope that 'place' was quite exceptional," I said, again mouthing
the distasteful word, and with a severe aspect.
"Oh, quite! There aren't many Mrs. Tatlows in this world. By the
way, Hilda, since the mood for confession is upon me, I may as well
own up something else."
"What! more boarding-houses?" I cried.
"Oh, no! I am done with boarding-houses. But what will you say when
I tell you that I have been lady's-maid to Lady A."
"A real lady's-maid! Not a sort of lady lady's-maid?" I exclaimed,
rather horrified.
"I thought you would be shocked. Yet it was the pleasantest work I
have ever had. She is very beautiful, and, in her odd, flighty way,
very kind. I used to love doing her long ashy-coloured hair. It was
down to her feet when I used to brush it out at night. I often
brushed it till I could scarcely stand, for the pleasure of handling
it."
"You were not like an ordinary servant, Freda, surely?"
"Oh, no! though I was prepared to accept that when I went to Overton
Towers. But I found a little room allotted to me close by Lady A.'s
own rooms, and she had given orders that I was to have my meals
there. So I was not with the other servants, and when I wasn't on
duty I could read or write, or do anything I liked in my own little
room."
"How long did you stay, Freda?"
"Well, not many months. Her ladyship said to me suddenly one day,
when I met her eyes in the mirror: 'I should like to know, my dear,
why you are masquerading as my maid'."
"What did you say?"
"I answered her quite frankly. 'Because I'm a poor woman, Lady A.,
and I find the genteel professions too hard for me.' 'Well,' she
said, 'you are everything I could desire as a maid, but I'm going to
do better for you than leave you at the mercy of a heartless woman of
fashion like myself, and in a perfectly anomalous position. Besides,
you make me look a hag beside you. I shudder when I see your face
near mine in the glass. I'm taking back Cecile, an unscrupulous
wretch, but an admirable maid, for I'm more comfortable with her.
And I'm going to send you to Mrs. Des Vœux, an exquisite old blind
lady in Devonshire, for whom you will read and write and cut
roses--that's all. I've kept you so long to make sure you'd be good
to her. And now I am sure.'"
"She arranged it for you like that?"
"Yes, just like that. I was to have gone to Mrs. Des Vœux in a
short time after I left Lady A., so I came home and imprudently spent
all my money. Then it happened that the lady whom I was to replace,
whose marriage was leaving the vacancy for me, had to postpone her
departure for six months. So I was rather thrown on my beam-ends,
and that is how I had the pleasure of making Mrs. Tatlow's
acquaintance."
"And I suppose Mrs. Des Vœux's will be a case of 'and they lived
happy ever afterwards'?"
Freda gave a little shudder.
"Oh, no, Hilda! I hope I shall have a house of my own one day,
though I don't see how it's going to happen. Servitude is all very
well so long as one is young, but--" she ended with an expressive
little gesture, flinging out both her hands.
"Freda," said I impulsively, "have you ever had an offer of marriage
in those years of your wanderings?"
"An embarrassment, Hilda. My suitors have ranged in age from sixteen
to sixty--nay, seventy-five--and in eligibility from the ownership of
a pocket-knife and three white mice to the ownership of an
iron-foundry and a steam yacht."
"And you never met anyone you could say 'yes' to?"
Freda's merry face changed all at once, and a wounded red flew into
her soft, pale cheeks.
"You are only a child, Hilda," she said coldly, "and so I forgive
you."
"Oh, Freda," I cried, "I didn't think you'd care so much!"
"I am Jim's wife," she answered, "as well as Jim's widow!"