“Oh, no, but I shall have plenty to do before eleven, when I am to go back to Mr. Field’s room for an hour’s reading.”
“He will keep you up till two in the morning. He is frightfully restless at night. Ridley has an awful time with him.”
“I don’t mind how long I read, when the book is interesting. Good-night.”
The housekeeper dismissed her with a nod — no offered hand, or kindly smile. Mary went up to her sitting-room with an uncomfortable feeling that Mrs. Tredgold was displeased with her. She had to remind herself that the person whose humour she had to study was not the housekeeper, but the afflicted master of the house.
She spent an hour or two in unpacking and arranging her possessions in the roomy wardrobe, and at eleven o’clock she went down to the picture-gallery, where the reading girl sat alone in her white stillness.
The valet came out of Mr. Field’s room as she stood for a moment by the statue.
“He is ready for you. He has been ready for some minutes.” There was a reproachful emphasis in the last words, which meant that Mr. Ridley had ordered his supper for “eleven sharp.”
He held the door open for her, and she went in, a shadowy figure in her pale grey frock, which she had put on for dinner.
Conway Field looked wan and tired in the lamplight. He pointed to a book on the table by which she had sat in the afternoon, and on which a shaded lamp had been placed for her.
“Read As You Like It.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes.”
She began to read very quietly, for the wan face, the tired voice, suggested mental and physical exhaustion; but she almost lost consciousness of the invalid, in the delight of what she was reading. The book itself was a joy, a thin imperial octavo bound in limp vellum, the type large, the hand-made paper exquisite. Such an edition of Shakespeare as she had never imagined. Only one play in a volume — the head-lines, the tail-pieces, the perfection of modern art.
She turned the leaves with delicate hands that were faintly tremulous.
“You touch my book as if you were afraid of it,” Mr. Field said.
She had felt all the time that those weary eyes were watching her, but his speech brought the warm blood to her face.
“It is such a lovely book.”
“My favourite edition. Printed at a press that exists no more, since the artist who created it is dead. Tout casse, tout lasse, tout passe! When you are as old as I am, you will have realized that dreary saying.”
She went on reading till the valet came in at the stroke of twelve, and took his place silently by his master’s chair. She had read the first Act and half the second when the clock struck.
“Good-night, Miss Smith. You read Shakespeare quite tolerably, and you will read better by and by. You shall read the comedies and the histories before you begin the great plays, and by that time you will be an accomplished Shakespearean reader. You have the material — intelligence and voice. Practice and thought will do the rest.”
“You are very kind,” she said, feeling that this was high praise, and then she saw the pale hand held out, and she was pleased when Mr. Field held her slim fingers in his own with a momentary pressure, which could hardly be called shaking hands. It was at least a more cordial good-night than Mrs. Tredgold had vouchsafed to her.
Two footmen came into the room as she left it, tall and vigorous youths, who placed themselves on each side of their master’s chair ready to wheel him through the library to his bedroom.
Five spacious rooms, picture-gallery, morning room, library, bedroom and dressing-room, were devoted to the master’s use — but that suite of splendid rooms was Conway Field’s London world. He only left them for an airing in the Park on a sunny morning, until he was removed to his country house, or on a Continental journey, which only his wealth made possible. No man of small means as helpless as Conway Field could hope to forget his infirmity in the enchantment of far-off lands.
As the strangeness of this life wore off, Mary Smith had leisure to realize the change from the Refuge to Warburton House. She could but feel that her lines had been cast in pleasant places, and that this employment which Austin Sedgwick had found for her was just the most congenial work a kindly Fate could have thrown in her way. Youth that had known only the bright side of life might have revolted against the monotony of her days and nights, the subjection of her own will to that of a querulous invalid; for although Conway Field was kindly, he was often querulous, and always peremptory. Every inhabitant of Warburton House was there to do his pleasure, existed only to minister to him and obey. They were drilled into silent submission — never to question, never to wonder, above all, never to express compassion or sympathy — only to obey. They were not to “study him,” or to guess what he wanted. They were always to await his bidding. By the time they had been half a year in his service, Mr. Field’s servants would as soon have tried to guess the wishes of a tiger as to anticipate the requirements of their master.
“When I want you to do anything for me, I will tell you,” he said; and after they had heard that speech two or three times in a voice and with a frown that few men except the Great Commoner could command, Mr. Field’s servants knew their places.
Among the few of his dependents who suited him there was a little man whom Mary saw every day but with whom acquaintanceship never went beyond a few words of friendly greeting when she met him in the picture-gallery on his way to Mr. Field’s room or leaving it.
This was the clever little shorthand writer and typist who conducted the invalid’s correspondence, grappled with the daily burden of letters which is one of the disadvantages of wealth or the reputation of wealth.
Every morning brought the same pile of letters on the large silver tray, hardly one of which was of the faintest personal interest to the man to whom they were addressed — letters for the most part from total strangers: innumerable, hopelessly repetitive appeals for help from every kind of public charity, from churchmen of every colour, endless, far-reaching, from nearest St. Giles’s to remotest Africa, and in the majority of cases with a certain justification in the pitifulness of the call. And it was for Peter Frominger to consider all these appeals, and to bring the most worthy of them before his employer and receive instructions in an interview that was never to last more than half an hour.
It had been by a lucky chance that Frominger had found his place in Field’s service. For to serve Conway Field successfully was to be safe from the fear of a penniless old age.
Conway’s doctor, in the gossip of a morning visit when there was nothing in the patient’s condition to talk about, had told him the story of a working engineer in a factory, a clever young man full of energy and inventiveness, who hoped to rise from the ranks some day by sheer force of mind and will-power, and whose life had been spoilt by an accident. Something had gone wrong in the machinery — some seemingly trivial detail — and Frominger’s left arm had been caught in the iron teeth, and the active, eager young man had been changed into a helpless cripple with one half of his body paralysed.
He had spent the next year of his life in a hospital — the year that would have been full of hope, since he was to have been married to a girl he adored before the end of it. His sweetheart had been kind, and had come to him every week on the visiting day, every week for the first three months, and then her visits had grown rarer, and he had lain on his bed of pain, longing for her, only to be disappointed. And then she had missed more weeks, and had brought him a bunch of grapes, or a few flowers, by way of apology, but had seemed hurried and fluttered, and there had been little joy in seeing her — and then she sent him a long letter, a cruelly sensible letter, which did not break his heart, only because he had found out that she was a very shallow young person, and that her love was not worth having.
She had been thinking over their circumstances, she told him, and as there did not seem to be the slightest chance of his ever being able to make a home for her, she had decided to marry t
he manager in the grocery store where her mother had dealt for many years, and had seen him rise to his present leading position in the firm.
This crushing letter had a curious effect on Frominger, and in less than a week he had left his bed, in defiance of the doctors, and was walking about the ward upon crutches.
The doctors never knew what put life into the paralysed limb, and made that move, in which motion had been pronounced impossible.
“It is the most remarkable case of Will-power that has come within my experience,” the doctor said. “This young man refused to be beaten. Within a few months he was on his legs again. They were not very good legs, but he was able to walk — and though he has not recovered the use of his left hand, his right is worth two of any other man’s. Within a year he has taught himself shorthand, and has made himself an expert typist — and now he is able to maintain himself. He gets enough work with his typewriter to keep him alive, and that is all he expects.”
“Send him to me,” Conway Field said. “I might find use for such a man.”
He found such use as Frominger in his rosiest dreams of possible and impossible things had never pictured. Mr. Field liked him, and after three or four interviews he was installed in comfortable rooms on that upper floor where Mary had now become his neighbour. Her rooms were handsomer and more spacious, but Frominger’s rooms were the most luxurious he had ever inhabited, and the work he had to do was work he liked.
All letters addressed to the master of Warburton House went through Frominger’s hands, to be carefully sifted, and only his bankers knew the extent of Conway Field’s benevolence. The half-hour which he spent with his employer every morning was a small part of Frominger’s work. He spent many hours upon his task of investigation, and travelled to remote and obscure suburbs to verify piteous letters, and sometimes to find the most plausible descriptions of shabby-genteel sufferings utterly without foundation.
Frominger did his work con amore, and the professional begging-letter writer who got so much as ten shillings out of Mr. Field’s purse was not yet born.
And when the day’s work was done, Frominger, who had been made a member of the London Library, had his hours of ease in his comfortable sitting-room, where Mrs. Tredgold sometimes dropped in upon him for a friendly chat, to inquire if his meals were brought him as he liked, and perhaps to pump him just a little about the things he knew in his intimate relations with her master. But as he had opposed a dead wall of childlike stupidity against all such attempts, she had ceased the pumping process, and was content to give herself the pleasure of talking to an intelligent person of her own sentiments and ideas, and of the distinguished position she had enjoyed during the Reverend Tredgold’s lifetime.
Mary, on the other hand, saw very little of Frominger, since she was never in the room during the time in which Conway Field became as much a man of business as it was in his nature to be, and dictated his letters to the head officials of “the Yard” from which his wealth sprung, as well as fixing the amounts of his benefactions.
Mr. Field had no occasion for stern looks with Mary Smith, who took the liberty of understanding him, but never offended by the faintest expression of sympathy with his affliction. For her he was as other men. She gave him no pitying sighs, no pathetic glances. She was ready to talk if he was inclined for conversation, she went quietly on with her reading if he was silent. She was as obedient as an automaton; but she read as if she enjoyed reading to him, which he was quick to perceive.
His other reading girls had insisted upon being sorry for him, of asking if he was better, or if he had had a good night.
“I never have a good night,” he snapped at the questioner, “and I never want to be reminded of my sleeplessness. Please begin to read, and don’t exhaust your voice. You haven’t any to spare.”
They had read wretchedly, and had been officious and forward, and had cried when he reproved them. This girl had fine manners, and read well.
“You have brought me a treasure,” he told Austin, when they were alone together, and Austin was delighted.
“I thought she would do,” he answered quietly, knowing that with his uncle very little was sometimes too much.
But there were some people in Warburton House, and some visitors there, who did not approve of Mary Smith. Mrs. Tredgold, for instance, was tortured with the pangs of jealousy. Her master had treated her as a lady, but he had not treated her as a friend. His brief conversations with her had never gone beyond their business relations. He gave her his instructions. He heard what she had to say about the servants or about the house, and there an end. She felt no nearer to him after twelve years of diligent service than she had been when she came to him as a stranger. And here was this palefaced chit, this girl from nowhere, accepted as a friend, treated as if she were a favourite niece. She had her tea in Mr. Field’s room every afternoon — it was an established thing. The little Paul Lameric teapot was now known in the pantry as Miss Smith’s teapot, as Mr. Field insisted upon it being used for her. He liked to see that, and some choice Swansea china, on her tray. Mrs. Tredgold had told him it was a pity such choice things should be so used, and he had replied frowningly that he wanted exquisite things where he could see them, rather than in pantry cupboards. So Miss Smith’s afternoon tea-tray was fit for a duchess, and butler, footman and housekeeper were alike jealous and resentful. Ridley, the valet, had more common sense and more humanity. He was not jealous. Years of skilled and faithful service had established his value. Whatever came about, he must be first in importance with his master. A Mary Smith, with a delicate prettiness, graceful movements and nice manners, was but the ornament of life, while he was the foundation upon which the house of life stood. His master could not do without him.
Mary Smith’s life in that stately house was like a long voyage on a placid sea. It was a monotonous life — for the only difference in her days was the change from one book to another, or the number of hours that she spent in Mr. Field’s room. He was capricious, and sometimes impatient of a favourite author for not being as good as he had believed him.
“I thought Ruskin was more convincing. Put the book back upon the shelf, and bring the fourth volume of Carlyle’s ‘Frederick’ — wearisome stuff, but it may help me to half an hour’s sleep. Can you see to read in this half light?”
“Yes, if I sit near the window.”
“Don’t go too far away. Your voice is soft and low, an excellent thing in woman.”
“Shall I read louder?”
“No, for Heaven’s sake. I can afford to lose the sense of the book, but a loud voice is torture.”
As time went on, and Mr. Field found his reader willing and even anxious to read as long as he liked to hear her, in that still night season when the ticking of the clock in the library was a rhythmical accompaniment to the gentle voice, he allowed her to go on reading till the deep of night. He would lift his pale hand now and then to stop her, and would ask with real concern if she were tired, and her answer was always the same.
“I am never tired. Please send me away when my reading wearies you, but not till then. I wish I could read you to sleep.”
“I doubt if you will ever do that — but you shorten my nights for me — and I get some comfortable sleep between five and seven — and till that comes I can lie awake, and think of what you have been reading.”
She found that he knew most of the finest passages in her Shakespearean readings by heart, and could repeat them to himself dumbly in those hours of waking.
“Samuel Brandram had mastered twelve plays — but I am content to know some of the finest speeches and a scene here and there.”
She breakfasted with Mrs. Tredgold at a punctual nine o’clock, though she would have preferred a tray in her own pleasant sitting-room to that lady’s well-furnished board, where she rarely escaped without having to hear insinuations or questions which were obviously meant to make her uncomfortable. Forewarned by Austin Sedgwick, she had put on an armour of proof against all s
uch attacks, and her serene countenance on such occasions exasperated the housekeeper.
“She is the most provoking young person I ever had to deal with,” Mrs. Tredgold told her friend the butler, who had lived so long in that tranquil household, and had enjoyed so much leisure for improving his mind by reading the daily papers, that he was as nearly a gentleman as a butler can be.
“Yes, Mr. Drayson, the most provoking and impertinent — and sly — yes, sly as sly,” concluded the housekeeper, who had learnt this convenient form of comparison from the great mind of her husband, who never used any other. He had been wont to bewail himself for being as “hot as hot,” or as “cold as cold,” or as “ill as ill.”
“No doubt Smith is sly, madam. She has it in her looks,” Mr. Drayson would reply in his bland, superior voice. “But there is nothing abnormal in that. It is the girl’s nature. And if she suits the governor, as she seems to do—”
“Suit him? She has wormed herself into his favour as no other girl has ever done. Not Florence Taylor, who had twice her good looks, or Lucy Green, who had more style.”
“The governor doesn’t want style or looks, madam. He wants a good reader, and this girl can read. I hear her when I take them their teas — and I know what good reading is. I told you that first afternoon that she would do.”
“And she has had her tea in his room ever since. Never did he lower himself to that degree with any other reading girl!”
“No, my dear madam, but, you see, he likes this girl, and he didn’t like the others. That’s where it is, Mrs. Tredgold.”
“Well, if you’re satisfied, Mr. Drayson, I suppose I ought to be. But I saw through that girl before she had been in this house a quarter of an hour. Becky Sharp!”
“Becky — ?”
“Sharp, that’s what she is, and so you’ll find after your master’s funeral, when you hear his will read.”
“I hope that’s a long way off, Mrs. Tredgold. I don’t want a better billet than Warburton House, and I don’t think you would gain by any change of that kind — though no doubt there’d be legacies for all of us.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1007
