When tea was over the housemaid said to the footman: ‘Has Mr Ranford gone?’ and when he said yes, she told me to come up with her to Mrs Brympton.
Mrs Brympton was lying down in her bedroom. Her lounge stood near the fire and beside it was a shaded lamp. She was a delicate-looking lady, but when she smiled I felt there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She spoke very pleasantly, in a low voice, asking me my name and age and so on, and if I had everything I wanted, and if I wasn’t afraid of feeling lonely in the country.
‘Not with you I wouldn’t be, madam,’ I said, and the words surprised me when I’d spoken them, for I’m not an impulsive person; but it was just as if I’d thought aloud.
She seemed pleased at that, and said she hoped I’d continue in the same mind; then she gave me a few directions about her toilet, and said Agnes the housemaid would show me next morning where things were kept.
‘I am tired tonight, and shall dine upstairs,’ she said. ‘Agnes will bring me my tray, that you may have time to unpack and settle yourself; and later you may come and undress me.’
‘Very well, ma’am,’ I said. ‘You’ll ring, I suppose?’
I thought she looked odd.
‘No – Agnes will fetch you,’ says she quickly, and took up her book again.
Well – that was certainly strange: a lady’s maid having to be fetched by the housemaid whenever her lady wanted her! I wondered if there were no bells in the house; but the next day I satisfied myself that there was one in every room, and a special one ringing from my mistress’s room to mine; and after that it did strike me as queer that, whenever Mrs Brympton wanted anything, she rang for Agnes, who had to walk the whole length of the servants’ wing to call me.
But that wasn’t the only queer thing in the house. The very next day I found out that Mrs Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes about the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before. Agnes said she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was dreaming. To be sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and she had excused herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the woman plain enough to know her again if we should meet. I decided that she must have been a friend of the cook’s, or of one of the other women servants; perhaps she had come down from town for a night’s visit, and the servants wanted it kept secret. Some ladies are very stiff about having their servants’ friends in the house overnight. At any rate, I made up my mind to ask no more questions.
In a day or two another odd thing happened. I was chatting one afternoon with Mrs Blinder, who was a friendly-disposed woman, and had been longer in the house than the other servants, and she asked me if I was quite comfortable and had everything I needed. I said I had no fault to find with my place or with my mistress, but I thought it odd that in so large a house there was no sewing-room for the lady’s maid.
‘Why,’ says she, ‘there is one: the room you’re in is the old sewing-room.’
‘Oh,’ said I; ‘and where did the other lady’s maid sleep?’
At that she grew confused, and said hurriedly that the servants’ rooms had all been changed last year, and she didn’t rightly remember.
That struck me as peculiar, but I went on as if I hadn’t noticed: ‘Well, there’s a vacant room opposite mine, and I mean to ask Mrs Brympton if I mayn’t use that as a sewing-room.’
To my astonishment, Mrs Blinder went white and gave my hand a kind of squeeze. ‘Don’t do that, my dear,’ said she, tremblinglike. ‘To tell you the truth, that was Emma Saxon’s room, and my mistress has kept it closed ever since her death.’
‘And who was Emma Saxon?’
‘Mrs Brympton’s former maid.’
‘The one that was with her so many years?’ said I, remembering what Mrs Railton had told me.
Mrs Blinder nodded.
‘What sort of woman was she?’
‘No better walked the earth,’ said Mrs Blinder. ‘My mistress loved her like a sister.’
‘But I mean – what did she look like?’
Mrs Blinder got up and gave me a kind of angry stare. ‘I’m no great hand at describing,’ she said; ‘and I believe my pastry’s rising.’ And she walked off into the kitchen and shut the door after her.
II
I had been near a week at Brympton before I saw my master. Word came that he was arriving one afternoon, and a change passed over the whole household. It was plain that nobody loved him below stairs. Mrs Blinder took uncommon care with the dinner that night, but she snapped at the kitchen-maid in a way quite unusual with her; and Mr Wace, the butler, a serious low-spoken man, went about his duties as if he’d been getting ready for a funeral. He was a great Bible-reader, Mr Wace was, and had a beautiful assortment of texts at his command; but that day he used such dreadful language that I was about to leave the table, when he assured me it was all out of Isaiah; and I noticed that whenever the master came Mr Wace took to the prophets.
About seven, Agnes called me to my mistress’s room; and there I found Mr Brympton. He was standing on the hearth; a big, fair, bull-necked man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes: the kind of man a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and would have been like to pay dear for thinking it.
He swung about when I came in, and looked me over in a trice. I knew what the look meant, from having experienced it once or twice in my former places. Then he turned his back on me, and went on talking to his wife; and I knew what that meant, too. I was not the kind of morsel he was after. The typhoid had served me well enough in one way: it kept that kind of gentleman at arm’s-length.
‘This is my new maid, Hartley,’ says Mrs Brympton in her kind voice; and he nodded and went on with what he was saying.
In a minute or two he went off, and left my mistress to dress for dinner, and I noticed as I waited on her that she was white, and chill to the touch.
Mr Brympton took himself off the next morning, and the whole house drew a long breath when he drove away. As for my mistress, she put on her hat and furs (for it was a fine winter morning) and went out for a walk in the gardens, coming back quite fresh and rosy, so that for a minute, before her colour faded, I could guess what a pretty young lady she must have been, and not so long ago, either.
She had met Mr Ranford in the grounds, and the two came back together, I remember, smiling and talking as they walked along the terrace under my window. That was the first time I saw Mr Ranford, though I had often heard his name mentioned in the hall. He was a neighbour, it appeared, living a mile or two beyond Brympton, at the end of the village; and as he was in the habit of spending his winters in the country he was almost the only company my mistress had at that season. He was a slight tall gentleman of about thirty, and I thought him rather melancholy-looking till I saw his smile, which had a kind of surprise in it, like the first warm day in spring. He was a great reader, I heard, like my mistress, and the two were for ever borrowing books of one another, and sometimes (Mr Wace told me) he would read aloud to Mrs Brympton by the hour, in the big dark library where she sat in the winter afternoons. The servants all liked him, and perhaps that’s more of a compliment than the masters suspect. He had a friendly word for every one of us, and we were all glad to think that Mrs Brympton had a pleasant companionable gentleman like that to keep her company when the master was away. Mr Ranford seemed on excellent terms with Mr Brympton too; though I couldn’t but wonder that two gentlemen so unlike each other should be so friendly. But then I knew how the real quality can keep their feelings to themselves.
As for Mr Brympton, he came and went, never staying more than a day or two, cursing the dullness and the solitude, grumbling at everything, and (as I soon found out) drinking a deal more than was good for him. After Mrs Brympton left the table he would sit half the night over the old Brympton port and madeira, and once, as I was leaving my mistress’s room rather later than usual, I met him coming up the stairs in such a state that I turned sick to think of what some ladies have to endure and hold their tongues abou
t.
The servants said very little about their master; but from what they let drop I could see it had been an unhappy match from the beginning. Mr Brympton was coarse, loud, and pleasure-loving; my mistress quiet, retiring, and perhaps a trifle cold. Not that she was not always pleasant-spoken to him: I thought her wonderfully forbearing; but to a gentleman as free as Mr Brympton I dare say she seemed a little offish.
Well, things went on quietly for several weeks. My mistress was kind, my duties were light, and I got on well with the other servants. In short, I had nothing to complain of; yet there was always a weight on me. I can’t say why it was so, but I know it was not the loneliness that I felt. I soon got used to that; and being still languid from the fever I was thankful for the quiet and the good country air. Nevertheless, I was never quite easy in my mind. My mistress, knowing I had been ill, insisted that I should take my walk regular, and often invented errands for me – a yard of ribbon to be fetched from the village, a letter posted, or a book returned to Mr Ranford. As soon as I was out of doors my spirits rose, and I looked forward to my walks through the bare moist-smelling woods; but the moment I caught sight of the house again my heart dropped down like a stone in a well. It was not a gloomy house exactly, yet I never entered it but a feeling of gloom came over me.
Mrs Brympton seldom went out in winter; only on the finest days did she walk an hour at noon on the south terrace. Excepting Mr Ranford, we had no visitors but the doctor, who drove over from D— about once a week. He sent for me once or twice to give me some trifling direction about my mistress, and though he never told me what her illness was, I thought, from a waxy look she had now and then of a morning, that it might be the heart that ailed her. The season was soft and unwholesome, and in January we had a long spell of rain. That was a sore trial to me, I own, for I couldn’t go out, and sitting over my sewing all day, listening to the drip, drip of the eaves, I grew so nervous that the least sound made me jump. Somehow, the thought of that locked room across the passage began to weigh on me. Once or twice, in the long rainy nights, I fancied I heard noises there; but that was nonsense, of course, and the daylight drove such notions out of my head. Well, one morning Mrs Brympton gave me quite a start of pleasure by telling me she wished me to go to town for some shopping. I hadn’t known till then how low my spirits had fallen. I set off in high glee, and my first sight of the crowded streets and the cheerful-looking shops quite took me out of myself. Towards afternoon, however, the noise and confusion began to tire me, and I was actually looking forward to the quiet of Brympton, and thinking how I should enjoy the drive home through the dark woods, when I ran across an old acquaintance, a maid I had once been in service with. We had lost sight of each other for a number of years, and I had to stop and tell her what had happened to me in the interval. When I mentioned where I was living she rolled up her eyes and pulled a long face.
‘What! The Mrs Brympton that lives all the year at her place on the Hudson? My dear, you won’t stay there three months.’
‘Oh, but I don’t mind the country,’ says I, offended somehow at her tone. ‘Since the fever I’m glad to be quiet.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not the country I’m thinking of. All I know is she’s had four maids in the last six months, and the last one, who was a friend of mine, told me nobody could stay in the house.’
‘Did she say why?’ I asked.
‘No – she wouldn’t give me her reason. But she says to me, Mrs Ansey, she says, if ever a young woman as you know of thinks of going there, you tell her it’s not worth while to unpack her boxes.’
‘Is she young and handsome?’ said I, thinking of Mr Brympton.
‘Not her! She’s the kind that mothers engage when they’ve gay young gentlemen at college.’
Well, though I knew the woman was an idle gossip, the words stuck in my head, and my heart sank lower than ever as I drove up to Brympton in the dusk. There was something about the house – I was sure of it now ...
When I went in to tea I heard that Mr Brympton had arrived, and I saw at a glance that there had been a disturbance of some kind. Mrs Blinder’s hand shook so that she could hardly pour the tea, and Mr Wace quoted the most dreadful texts full of brimstone. Nobody said a word to me then, but when I went up to my room, Mrs Blinder followed me.
‘Oh, my dear,’ says she, taking my hand, ‘I’m so glad and thankful you’ve come back to us!’
That struck me, as you may imagine. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘did you think I was leaving for good?’
‘No, no, to be sure,’ said she, a little confused, ‘but I can’t a-bear to have madam left alone for a day even.’ She pressed my hand hard, and, ‘Oh, Miss Hartley,’ says she, ‘be good to your mistress, as you’re a Christian woman.’ And with that she hurried away, and left me staring.
A moment later Agnes called me to Mrs Brympton. Hearing Mr Brympton’s voice in her room, I went round by the dressing-room, thinking I would lay out her dinner-gown before going in. The dressing-room is a large room with a window over the portico that looks toward the gardens. Mr Brympton’s apartments are beyond. When I went in, the door into the bedroom was ajar, and I heard Mr Brympton saying angrily: ‘One would suppose he was the only person fit for you to talk to.’
‘I don’t have many visitors in winter,’ Mrs Brympton answered quietly.
‘You have me!’ he flung at her, sneeringly.
‘You are here so seldom,’ said she.
‘Well – whose fault is that? You make the place about as lively as the family vault—’
With that I rattled the toilet-things, to give my mistress warning, and she rose and called me in.
The two dined alone, as usual, and I knew by Mr Wace’s manner at supper that things must be going badly. He quoted the prophets something terrible, and worked on the kitchen-maid so that she declared she wouldn’t go down alone to put the cold meat in the ice-box. I felt nervous myself, and after I had put my mistress to bed I was half-tempted to go down again and persuade Mrs Blinder to sit up a while over a game of cards. But I heard her door closing for the night and so I went on to my own room. The rain had begun again, and the drip, drip, drip seemed to be dropping into my brain. I lay awake listening to it, and turning over what my friend in town had said. What puzzled me was that it was always the maids who left ...
After a while I slept; but suddenly a loud noise wakened me. My bell had rung. I sat up, terrified by the unusual sound, which seemed to go on jangling through the darkness. My hands shook so that I couldn’t find the matches. At length I struck a light and jumped out of bed. I began to think I must have been dreaming; but I looked at the bell against the wall, and there was the little hammer still quivering.
I was just beginning to huddle on my clothes when I heard another sound. This time it was the door of the locked room opposite mine softly opening and closing. I heard the sound distinctly, and it frightened me so that I stood stock-still. Then I heard a footstep hurrying down the passage toward the main house. The floor being carpeted, the sound was very faint, but I was quite sure it was a woman’s step. I turned cold with the thought of it, and for a minute or two I dursn’t breathe or move. Then I came to my senses.
‘Alice Hartley,’ says I to myself, ‘someone left that room just now and ran down the passage ahead of you. The idea isn’t pleasant, but you may as well face it. Your mistress has rung for you, and to answer her bell you’ve got to go the way that other woman has gone.’
Well – I did it. I never walked faster in my life, yet I thought I should never get to the end of the passage or reach Mrs Brympton’s room. On the way I heard nothing and saw nothing: all was dark and quiet as the grave. When I reached my mistress’s door the silence was so deep that I began to think I must be dreaming, and was half-minded to turn back. Then a panic seized me, and I knocked.
There was no answer, and I knocked again, loudly. To my astonishment the door was opened by Mr Brympton. He started back when he saw me, and in the light of my candle his fa
ce looked red and savage.
‘Yοu?’ he said, in a queer voice. ‘How many of you are there, in God’s name?’
At that I felt the ground give under me; but I said to myself that he had been drinking, and answered as steadily as I could: ‘May I go in, sir? Mrs Brympton has rung for me.’
‘You may all go in, for what I care,’ says he, and, pushing by me, walked down the hall to his own bedroom. I looked after him as he went, and to my surprise I saw that he walked as straight as a sober man.
I found my mistress lying very weak and still but she forced a smile when she saw me, and signed to me to pour out some drops for her. After that she lay without speaking, her breath coming quick, and her eyes closed. Suddenly she groped out with her hand, and ‘Emma,’ says she, faintly.
‘It’s Hartley, madam,’ I said. ‘Do you want anything?’
She opened her eyes wide and gave me a startled look.
‘I was dreaming,’ she said. ‘You may go now, Hartley, and thank you kindly. I’m quite well again, you see.’ And she turned her face away from me.
III
There was no more sleep for me that night, and I was thankful when daylight came.
Soon afterwards, Agnes called me to Mrs Brympton. I was afraid she was ill again, for she seldom sent for me before nine, but I found her sitting up in bed, pale and drawn-looking, but quite herself.
‘Hartley,’ says she quickly, ‘will you put on your things at once and go down to the village for me? I want this prescription made up’ – here she hesitated a minute and blushed – ‘and I should like you to be back again before Mr Brympton is up.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ I said.
‘And – stay a moment’ – she called me back as if an idea had just struck her – ‘while you’re waiting for the mixture, you’ll have time to go on to Mr Ranford’s with this note.’
It was a two-mile walk to the village, and on my way I had time to turn things over in my mind. It struck me as peculiar that my mistress should wish that prescription made up without Mr Brympton’s knowledge; and, putting this together with the scene of the night before, and with much else that I had noticed and suspected, I began to wonder if the poor lady was weary of her life, and had come to the mad resolve of ending it. The idea took such hold on me that I reached the village on a run, and dropped breathless into a chair before the chemist’s counter. The good man, who was just taking down his shutters, stared at me so hard that it brought me to myself.
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