FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS.
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:
"DEAR FRIEND.--Thank you a thousand times for your kindness to a
poor friendless girl. I have found a good place with a lady, so I
send you back what you so generously lent me. God bless you, dear
friend.
"Believe me, Yours gratefully,
"MARY GRIMM."
For the first time in his life, Hudson knew what it was to be bitterly
disappointed and angry on receiving back money that he had lent.