It was a grand sea to-day: one of the grandest that we had seen at
Saltwater. The waves were dancing and sparkling like silver; the blue
of the sky was deeper than a painter's ultramarine. But to us, looking
on it from Mrs. Blair's house in Seaboard Terrace, its brightness and
beauty were dimmed.
"For you see, Johnny," observed the Squire to me, his face and tone
alike gloomy--outward things take their impress from the mind--"with
that dreadful affair at the next door jaundicing one's thoughts, the sea
might as well be grey as blue, and the sky lowering with thunder-clouds.
I repeat that I don't like mysteries: they act on me like a fit of
indigestion."
The affair just was a mystery; to us, as to all Saltwater. More than a
week had elapsed since the Monday evening when it took place, and poor
Jane Cross now lay buried in the windy graveyard. On this said Monday
evening, the two servant maids, Jane Cross and Matilda Valentine (left
in the house, No. 7, Seaboard Terrace, during the absence of the family
abroad), had been pursuing their ordinary occupations. While Jane Cross
was laying the cloth for supper in the kitchen, Matilda went out to
fetch the usual pint of ale. On her return she could not get in. When
admittance was obtained, Jane Cross lay dead in the hall, having fallen
down the well of the staircase. Evidences of a scuffle on the upper
landing could be traced, making it apparent that the fall was not
accidental; that she had been flung down. Some doubt attached to Owen,
the milkman, partly from his previous intimacy with the girls, chiefly
because he had been seen leaving the back door of the house somewhere
about the time it must have occurred. What Owen said was, that he had
rung twice at the door, but his ring was not answered.
Matilda was to be pitied. The two young women had cared a good deal for
one another, and the shock to Matilda was serious. The girl, now staying
in our house, had worn a half-dazed look ever since, and avoided No. 7
as though it had the plague. Superstition in regard to the house had
already been rife in both the servants' minds, in consequence of the
unhappy death in it of their master's son, Edmund Peahern, some weeks
back: and if Matilda had been afraid of seeing one ghost before (as she
had been) she would now undoubtedly expect to see two of them.
On this same morning, as I stood with the Squire looking at the sea from
the drawing-room window of No. 6, Matilda came in. Her large dark eyes
had lost their former sparkle, her clear olive skin its freshness. She
asked leave to speak to Mrs. Todhetley: and the Mater--who sat at the
table adding up some bills, for our sojourn at Saltwater was drawing
towards its close--told her, in a kindly tone, to speak on.
"I am making bold to ask you, ma'am, whether you could help me to find a
place in London," began Matilda, standing between the door and the table
in her black dress. "I know, ma'am, you don't live in London, but a long
way off it; Mrs. Blair has told me so, Master Johnny Ludlow also: but
I thought perhaps you knew people there, and might be able to hear of
something."
The Mater looked at Matilda without answering, and then round at us.
Rather strange it was, a coincidence in a small way, that we had had a
letter from London from Miss Deveen that morning, which had concluded
with these lines of postscript: "Do you chance to know of any nice,
capable young woman in want of a situation? One of my housemaids is
going to leave."
Naturally this occurred to the Mater's mind when Matilda spoke. "What
kind of situation do you wish for?" she asked.
"As housemaid, ma'am, or parlour-maid. I can do my duty well in either."
"But now, my girl," spoke up the Squire, turning from the window, "why
need you leave Saltwater? You'd never like London after it. This is a
clear, fresh, health-giving place, with beautiful sands and music on
them all day long; London is nothing but smoke and fogs."