The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 1020, July 15, 1899

“Mr. Black,” said Lucy, speaking rather suddenly after her pause, “Miss Latimer and I are keeping house together just now, and we are hopeful of securing the services of a highly respectable elderly woman, who will keep things neat and punctual. Would you care to come and live here for the present, paying me precisely what you have paid Mrs. Mott?”

“Oh, Mrs. Challoner,” cried the lad, “how can you propose such a delightful thing! It is far too good to be true! To come to a house like this, so near the office too, and your home! It would be a real kindness in you to do such a thing: but it would not be fair—you oughtn’t to think of it!”

“Mr. Black,” said Lucy, “I think it may suit you very well indeed; but the kindness and the service will not be all on my side. In the event of all manner of evil chances—burglaries or chimney fires, for instance,” she interpolated with a smile, “we shall have a reliable and friendly house-mate. See how useful you were to me, and how you kept up our spirits on that terrible Christmas Day! But most especially, Mr. Black, there will be somebody else besides me for Hughie to talk to, and perhaps play with sometimes.” Her lip trembled as she spoke. It was hard to think she herself could not suffice for her own child. But she was too true a mother to limit her little boy’s enjoyments to her own failing powers, no longer equal to provide them.

“I come home so tired sometimes,” she said, “that I fear I may put a damper on Hugh’s prattle, or fail him in his romps. Miss Latimer, too, is very tired, and she is growing old. It would be such a comfort to feel I had a young friend’s help to fall back upon at a pinch. It might not happen often. It may not happen at all, because it will be such a restful relief to know there is somebody to fall back on. I shall take no mean advantage of your presence in this matter,” she added, with an April smile. “I think you may trust me for that!”

“Oh, Mrs. Challoner,” said Tom, “that’s just what a fellow misses when he isn’t at home; there’s nobody expects anything from him, and he gets like a working and feeding and eating machine. I’m sure I’ll be only too delighted to be of any use I can. As for playing with Hugh, we’ll have drill and all sorts of larks. And he can go for a run with me in the evenings, whenever you don’t want to walk! To think of getting into a home such as this! How thankful mother will be! She’s beginning to worry about the matter, for though I’ve made light of it to her, she seemed to guess how it would be.”

So it was settled. Then Clementina Gillespie duly kept the appointment Mrs. Challoner made with her. Her appearance well supported her introduction by Mrs. Bray’s faithful Rachel. Certainly she had not the sonsie charm of the delusive Mrs. Morison. Quite the reverse. Clementina’s face had no resemblance to a winter apple lying in the frost. She was pale and thin, almost cadaverous-looking, with a well-marked aquiline nose and a long jaw. In place of Mrs. Morison’s white frills and cosy wraps, she was clad in what she called her “mournings,” without a dash of white about her. Lucy at once noticed the soft Highland voice, with its strange Celtic wailing. But Clementina Gillespie’s manner and appearance were alike “superior.” Indeed, there was a kind of severe, decayed high-breeding and elegance about her.

“Four people instead of three, ma’am,” she said, when Lucy told her that her household was to be joined by a youth of seventeen. “It will make no differ to me, whatever. I shall have nothing to do but to try to do my best for you all. And, indeed, the young gentleman will be a blessing and a safeguard in the house, for I do think this Babylon has terrible risks for a household of lone women.”

“There is not so much danger as people from country places are apt to imagine,” Lucy hastened to reassure her, fearful lest terrors of “Babylon” should drive her back to her native fastnesses. “The young gentleman will sleep in the little room behind the dining-room, Miss Latimer, I and my little boy are on the first floor, and your bedroom is in the attic, so you see burglars will have to pass us all before they can get to you,” she added playfully.

Clementina Gillespie did not smile. “They might come in by the roof,” she said. “I hear they often do. What is fated will happen. But I am not afraid, whatever.”

“Of course not,” Lucy replied. “If you have lived in a lonely house on a hillside, you are sure to be a brave woman. It must be rather eerie in such places on wild, dark, winter nights.”

“The winds and the darkness are the servants of the Almighty,” returned the Highland woman. “But wherever there be peoples, there be bad peoples.”

“Ay, but good ones also,” said Lucy. “And all people are in God’s hand, as well as all forces of nature.”

Clementina Gillespie did not answer, and Lucy somehow felt that she did not quite agree. It struck her, however, that conversation having taken such a turn was a sufficient proof that this person was on a different intellectual level from all the other servants she had seen lately. It was equally clear that if Clementina were never to be more cheerful than she was at present, she might be a little depressing. Yet Lucy recollected that she had come from a father’s grave and a broken-up home, and was a stranger in surroundings utterly alien to her previous ways and thoughts. Besides there would be Tom to keep the house alive with mirth and laughter.

Lucy was not sorry to be able to ask Jane Smith whether it would put her to any inconvenience to leave before her “notice month” had expired, or whether she would like to do so. Of course, in either case she would get her wage the same, but badly as the girl had behaved, Lucy was reluctant to evict her if the home was of any importance to her.

“Oh, no, mum, I’ll go to-morrow if you like, mum,” was Jane’s answer. “I’ve got a place waiting for me the minute you can do without me. They’ll be glad to have me so soon.”

Lucy allowed herself to ask no question then. Nobody had inquired about Jane’s character. But if she had taken a place in the country it might be in her own village, and might have been secured by some other line of introduction. But when the day of departure came, Lucy felt it to be her duty as a mistress to know where the girl was going. So she inquired gently—

“Have you far to go, Jane?”

“No, mum,” was the curt answer, with no information vouchsafed.

“Shall you want a cab? Or are your boxes to be called for by the railway people?” Lucy persisted.

“I don’t want no cab, mum. A friend of mine’s coming to give me a hand. You needn’t trouble about me, mum.”

Lucy and Hugh were seated at their tea, when the black-bearded man came whistling up the street and descended the area steps. Jane was waiting for him. One or two loud laughs were heard, followed by bumping sounds. He had laden himself with Jane’s big trunk, and she followed with a tin box and a brown paper parcel. She had not relented, nor come to the parlour even for a civil “Good evening.” As she followed her trunk and its bearer, she turned and looked in at the dining-room window with a mocking smile.

The group crossed the street, but paused a few yards lower down. There was a house whose door was open, and there they went in. That was where Jane had found a place! That was the “country situation” in favour of which she had given her abrupt notice! It was Mrs. Challoner’s own neighbours who had received her servant without the slightest reference to her. Lucy felt stung. She knew nothing of these people, except that their name was Marvel, and that the family seemed to consist of father, mother, and two or three daughters. She had constantly seen them going out, in evening dress, in cabs. But how discourteous was their present action! If, as it seemed, they had made up their minds to take Jane under any circumstances, they might at least have made formal recognition of her last employer’s existence. The only inference Lucy could draw was that her late servant had managed to put her so thoroughly in the wrong that the Marvels believed hers to be no standard to which they need refer, and herself a person to whom no civility was due.

It vexed Lucy to find how this thought hurt her. She knew that, in ordinary parlance, she “ought to be above feeling such things.” Once upon a time she would have laughed at such a matter as affecting herself, though she might have recognised its significance socially. She could not understand her greater weakness now. She said to herself that often in her life she had found pleasure in setting herself harder tasks than any she was now accomplishing; for she had taken youth’s athletic joy in pedestrian feats and in working against time. She was still unable to realise that it is one thing to court fatigue and excitement with unimpaired vigour and high-strung nerves, and quite another matter to accept these when one is already worn out with anxieties and fears. Also that it is one thing to live even the most laborious days in at atmosphere of love and appreciation, and another to toil in so much risk of carping and misunderstanding that one is thankful if one can but escape notice altogether. There is repose and refreshment beforehand in the very consciousness that there exists somebody who will say presently, “You must rest; you must have a holiday;” and who possesses both the will and the power to enforce the words, just as we often feel so much assurance in an outstretched helping hand, that we can jump safely, without availing ourself of its help.

Fond mother Lucy could not be expected to understand that there had been a perpetual strain in having for so long had no household companionship but that of her little laddie. If it is tiring to stretch ever upwards to minds above our own, speaking of things we do not understand, and in a language we scarcely know, it is equally exhausting to the mind to be for ever stooping, and never able fully to express its deepest thoughts and feelings.

There was a strain, too, in Lucy’s terror lest Hugh should lack something in being thrown wholly upon her failing resources; she would not rest if she thought he wanted a game; she would not even relapse into brief silences such as she often craved. No, she had goaded herself on to chatter, and make fun, and tell stories!

Then there had been nobody to remember and provide the little dainties—the pleasant table-surprises which do so much to stimulate a failing appetite. Until Miss Latimer had come to stay, all that Lucy cared for was that Hugh should get his milk, and his puddings, and his fruit. And somehow she herself turned from all these. And there was nothing tempting in their stead.

Also Lucy had started on her new laborious, lonely life after the agony of Charlie’s illness and the supreme effort made for his departure. She had been at the very bottom of her physical powers and nervous energy. For six months she had been steadily giving out and taking nothing in; nothing but nameless little worries had filled in the interstices of work and anxiety.