But as soon as I heard the step on the stair, that quick way about it, I knew it was not Master and I thought, of course it is him, though I had hoped we’d heard the last of him. So I lay still listening to him move through the quiet house, down the hall and into the library I thought, where he stopped and I heard nothing.
He is on some errand for Master, I told myself, some book as he needs, so do not bother about it but go back to sleep. Yet I could not stop straining my ear to hear any sound and for such a long time that now it was the quiet unsettled me. A resolve grew in me as well, to get up, go downstairs and see him. If one of Master’s servants is free to roam about this house in the dead of night, I thought, then why not another? So at last I got up, took my summer cloak off the peg and wrapping myself in it, slipped out the door. As I was barefoot, I moved along the hall soundlessly and down the stairs. The house was dark, for all the curtains was drawn, so I stopped at the landing to let my eyes grow used to the dark. There was light pouring out in a thick pool from the library, for the door was open. So, I thought, he has lit the big lamp and made himself quite at home, which annoyed me somehow. I moved along quick, not certain what I would say or do, but only that I would see him, and put an end to this mystery of a man with no face. I stepped bold into the light and looked into the room.
He had his back to me and did not hear me. He was bent over the writing table, a book open before him and he was writing hurriedly on the pages of it. He is very small, no taller than I. I saw he was well dressed, though plainly, and, as Cook has said, he has a deal of dark, unruly hair which is longer than the fashion. That was all I could observe before he felt me behind him, though I had not moved, and suddenly he whirled around, making a strange snarling sound, and faced me across the carpet. His face was charged with anger and he had raised his fists, as if expecting an attack, but he took me in at once and got control of himself, so that as I stepped back in fear, he came over quite calm and said in a hoarse voice like a whisper, though it seemed loud in my head, “Mary Reilly.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” I said. “I heard noises in the house and then, when I came down, I saw the light.”
“Then you know who I am,” he said, very cool and seeming pleased to have been discovered.
“You are Master’s assistant,” I said, for I could not bring myself to say his name.
This made him smile and I wished it had not, for there was that in his smile no woman must care to meet, nor man neither, and I felt myself shrink inside my cloak. His cold eyes was all over me as well. He leaned back against the writing table and gestured to the book behind him. “I was just taking some notes for your master,” he said, “upon a little project we have underway together.”
“I see, sir,” I said.
“I find if I don’t get these things down as they come to me …” Here he paused, then stepped away from the table towards me, while I felt of a sudden all the strength leave my knees. “But see for yourself,” he said, holding his arm out to me as if he thought I might join him. “It might interest you.”
I took one step backward. “I’m sure I would not understand it, sir,” I stammered.
“I think you would, Mary,” he said. His voice was hard and I did not like the way he said my name so familiar, as if he knew all about me. He stood with his arm still raised, to draw me in, I thought, but I knew nothing could make me take a step in his direction. Yet I felt a strange fatigue come over me, as if my blood had chilled, so I could not make up my mind to move. I heard the hall clock ticking and ticking. His eyes was a cold glare, the way a cat can look, with no feelings to be read, so I could scarcely look at him. Then I thought how I must seem—my bare feet, my cloak pulled over my night shift, my hair all loose and uncombed about my face, and I felt my hands was clutched in front of me like a frightened child, but still I could not speak or move. How long did we stand in this way? And did he think I did not move because I could not make up my mind?
That question brought me to myself. I hardly looked at him, though he stood still in the doorway before me, but I bobbed a curtsy and said, “I beg your pardon, sir. I’ll leave you to your work,” and then I turned away, trying hard to remain calm though I heard his low laugh behind me. I made my way back through the dark hall to the staircase. There I paused and looked back, thinking I could still feel his eyes upon me, but he had gone back into the room.
It seemed I stopped at every step, and with each one my heart grew more heavy. When I got to our room I knew I would not sleep, so I took up the candle and sat down to write and to wait until I heard him go out.
Something is wrong about him. Cook is right. He is twisted somehow, though where I cannot say. Nor can I tell much about his face, though I looked at him, except that his eyes is dark and that cold it is like looking for your reflection in a frozen pool; it seems like glass but what is beneath is that deep and dark, it gives nothing back.
And Mr. Poole is right as well. He is no gentleman, though he may try to pass for one. How can Master not see this?
There, I hear him. He is in the hall and at the stairs. Does he know I will not sleep while he is in this house?
He seems to think he knows all about me. The way he said my name and told me what I will and will not understand, I can’t bear it. Did he come in, after all, just to draw me out, to make sure I know that while he has liberty I shall have none?
Now he has gone out. I hear his steps crossing to the laboratory. No doubt he will tell Master, “I’ve frightened your housemaid,” if he speaks of me at all.
While I must speak to no one.
This morning I was up early, but not before Cook, who told me when I went down that Master himself had only just come in, had gone straight to his room and wanted a fire and then a breakfast tray. So I put on my apron and went up at once. I did not think Master would speak to me of our midnight visitor, but I wished that he would, for I wanted to tell him he was not the only one deprived of sleep. When I passed the mirror in the hall I gave myself a close look and saw my eyes has dark circles under them and my skin looks pinched, which I did not like to see. I knocked at Master’s door and he bade me come in. He was sitting in his chair with his long legs stretched out before him, gazing at the cold hearth, listless, it seemed to me, and not much more life in him than I felt in myself. So I went straight to work, only saying, “Good morning, sir,” nor did he speak to me. The wind was wrong, for I could not get the fire up and had to go down for paraffin and back up again, but all the while Master did not move a muscle. When at last I was done and got up to leave he said, “Tell Cook a light breakfast, Mary,” he said. “And please no kippers.”
This made me smile for Cook does always send Master kippers when she thinks he may have an appetite and he hates them, though I think he eats them now and then out of respect for her feelings.
“I will, sir,” I said, and went out.
I stopped before going down on the first floor and looked into the library to see had Master’s assistant left the book open, but he must have put it on the shelf and I’d no idea which book it was. It did not seem right to me that anyone should write in a book—I’ve never seen Master do it—so I thought if I had the leisure to look for it I might find it quick enough, but of course I hadn’t and likely never would. So I went down to the kitchen and caught Cook just taking a kipper out of the box.
The rest of the day was quiet enough and we was all of us, Master included, busy with our work indoors. In the afternoon it began to rain. The sound of it falling over the house and the darkness seemed to make us all drowsy; indeed, after he finished his letters in the drawing room, Master stretched out on the divan and fell asleep. I saw him as I was passing in the hall. He took his dinner in the dining room and sent Cook his compliments on her savoury, which pleased her, so she said at our dinner how fortunate we was all on such a raw night to have our place safe and secure with such a Master in such a house, and Mr. Poole agreed, telling of some unhappy stories he’d read about in the papers
of servants who was cruelly treated, paid very little, poorly lodged and worked almost to death, all over London, it seemed, such that he wondered how they bore it.
But I could hardly listen, still less join in, for I feel so confused by these last days and don’t know where I stand, with Master or with my fellows. Days as this one can go by and nights like the last seem not to matter, almost as if they had not happened, yet my heart is uneasy and can take no comfort, not even in my work. I remember as a child how I felt so often, when days and days would go by quiet, when he was gone or had work and so came and went only to eat and sleep, and I would tell myself, now be content while you can and be good, and maybe this time it will last. But it never did.
Last night Mr. Poole asked me to stop at the library on my way up to bed and make sure Master had a good fire, for he’d gone in to read just after dinner and looked to be at it a few hours to come. It was after ten, Annie was already gone up, Cook said she was ready to turn in herself and Mr. Bradshaw vowed he was not far behind. I left my cap and apron off and went up, feeling in good spirits, for we’d had a quiet day, tomorrow is my half-day and the weather, though cold, promised fair. I was thinking of Regent’s Park, where I like to stroll and sit, though the gardens are not much to see this time of year. At the landing a breeze guttered my candle, then it went out altogether, but I could see well enough to the light in the library, so I went along, holding my candle out before me though it was useless. When I come to the doorway and looked in, there was Master standing over the writing table, his back to me, looking into a book, just in the same way as Mr. Edward Hyde when I found him here, though Master was not writing. Still, it gave me a queer feeling and I said a little loud, “Sir?” at which Master straightened up very sudden and snapped the book shut, as if he had been caught out, but then he turned to me easy enough and said, “Good, Mary. Have you come to breathe a little life into this fire? It’s nearly gone, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, going in. Master took up the book and returned it to the shelf as I worked. I noted where it went and the colour of the binding, which was red, thinking it must be the book Master’s assistant was so anxious I should look into. But I had to turn a bit to be sure of it, for Master was behind me, and when he had put it up he looked back at me so quick he saw I was watching him, so that when I put my mind back on the fire where it belonged I knew my face was glowing as hot and red as the coals. He took down another book and sat with it in the chair facing the fire, but he did not open it, only sat watching me rake out the dead coals. I wondered could he see my hands was shaking.
“Tomorrow is your half-day, isn’t it, Mary?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. Then he was quiet and I thought only, please do not let him send me on another errand to that house.
“Have you planned what you will do?”
“Only go to Regent’s Park, sir,” I said. “As I often do.”
“You have a friend you will meet there, no doubt?” Master said.
I couldn’t think what Master might mean by “a friend,” though it struck me he mun mean a sweetheart, which amused me so I laughed. “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think I will, unless you mean old Mr. Tott, the gardener, who sometimes talks with me about the roses.” Then, as I was done with the fire, I turned to Master, though still on my knees, and found he was looking down at me, seeming serious and worried, as if it made him sad to think of me, which made me uncomfortable so I said, “No, sir. I have no friend.”
“And you’ve no family,” he said. “You don’t see your mother.”
“Not often, sir,” I said. “She’s out in Shoreditch now. There’s not that much time of a half-day. I send her a little money now and again, and a letter on her birthday, but she cannot read so she mun find someone to read it to her.”
“I see,” Master said.
But I thought of Marm, in her cold little room, and of the way she looked the last time I saw her, which was some months ago, worn down to nothing, an old woman now, though she cannot be old really, and always at the sewing, day and night, for she works by the piece and gets three shillings a week if she’s lucky. She put it down only long enough to give me a cup of tea in a poor cracked cup she has, and then back she was at the needle, and I thought, no, Master did not see, and it was just as well. So I only said, getting up off my knees, “I’m done now, sir, if there’s nothing else.”
“No, Mary,” he said. “That will be all.”
But when I was half out the door he said, “Mary?” as if he’d just thought of something, so I stepped back into the room. “Sir?” I said.
“I believe my assistant may have given you a bit of a shock the other night.”
So he spoke of me.
“Not really, sir,” I said. “I think I surprised him more than he did me.”
This made Master’s eyebrows shoot up, so I saw he did not expect it. “I fear he was rude,” Master said then.
“No, sir,” I said. “We hardly spoke once I saw who he was.”
“I see,” Master said, looking at me very close. “It’s as well you’ve met. I take a great interest in that young man.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Then Master nodded, closing that subject, I thought, and I wondered why he even brought it up if that was all he had to say on it. “Good night then, Mary,” he said.
“Good night to you, sir,” I said and went out. As I walked along the hall it seemed odd to me that Master and I had said good night to each other, for we never have before. I went up to my room, changed into my night shift and sat by the window to brush my hair out, looking out across the housetops and at the treetops such as I can see, and the moon, which was a thin one, and the stars. I could hear the sound of a cab on the stones, and footsteps of some passerby in the court I could not see. I thought on all these strange events of the last days—that awful room in Soho and the bloody handkerchief, the few words I exchanged with Mr. Edward Hyde, who filled me with a kind of sleepy dread, such as I might feel at the beginning of a nightmare when things may go along right enough and make such sense as dreams do make, still, something is not right and I begin to long to wake up, though certain I will not in time.
I can make no sense on it, nor speak to anyone, even Master, it seems, though I feel him close to me all the time and think we have hardly a need to speak as it seems we are walking in this strange dream together.
After breakfast this morning Master went straight to his laboratory, so I took the opportunity to sweep out the carpets in the drawing room and library. It was work that needed doing, to be sure, but I had it in my head also that I would look into this book Master’s assistant felt so free to scribble upon. I made myself do the drawing room first and thought over whether it could be right to pry in this way, for I never have done such a thing before. Still, even as I thought upon it and saw that I had no business to be looking into Master’s books, I knew I would look at it. It seemed almost a pleasure to put off doing it, for I think I knew whatever I found would not satisfy me but only make everything more dark and confused than it is already.
And I was right.
I had to move all the furniture about to do the carpet, then, when I was done, shove it all back in place again, which work made me warm. All the time I worked I knew exactly where the red book was and it seemed even when I had my back to it I could feel it there, like a light behind my head. It was on a shelf too high for me to reach, so before I put the green leather chair back in its place I jumped up quick upon it and took down the book. Then I put it on the low table which is away from the door, so if Mr. Poole should pass I might not be standing in his line of view.
I stood for a moment looking at the cover, which is a fine leather one, as all Master’s books is well bound, and edged in gold with the title worked in gold on the spine, but it was in Latin so I could make nothing of it. I opened it to the first page where the title was again, and then the next page with a list of the chapters, which it seemed was each on a subject s
uch as “natural law,” or “physical properties,” only I glanced at them so quick I could not even make out what sort of book it was. Then I fanned the pages and saw at once that several of them was covered over in the margins with writing, which seemed to me, for I’ve seen it often enough, to be very like Master’s own hand, fine and straight so that a great many words can fit in a small space, not like mine which sprawls so across the page. I opened the book to one of these pages, where the writing was that small I had to bend over it to make out the words.
I wish I could say I did not know the meaning of what was written there. Certain they was such words as I have never spoke nor writ myself, though, growing up as I did, I was not spared the unpleasantness of hearing them often enough. It seemed very odd to read such filth as was there, especially written in so fine a hand. I bent over the page as if I needed to read more to soften the shock of it, or to make some sense of anyone using a book in such a foul way and it seemed the words as I read them was very loud in my head, like someone shouting. But then I had a greater shock, for suddenly through the hateful words I was reading I heard a harsh voice, like a whisper, seeming very close to my ear. “Mary Reilly,” he said.
I slammed the book closed and turned around, nearly fainting from surprise. He was standing close behind me but he stepped back, as if to give me room, though not far enough to give me liberty, so I could only clutch the table, helpless to escape.
“I thought you would understand it well enough,” he said, lifting his chin to the book behind me. Then, as I did not speak, for I could not, he stood looking me up and down with a horrid smirk about his mouth. I tried to look back, though it is hard to face down such eyes as his, which for one thing is never still. After a long moment I found my breath and said, “I beg your pardon, sir.”
He gave me a sneer and turned away. “For what?” he said. “Do you think I care what you read?” Then he went to Master’s chair near the grate and sat down in it.
Mary Reilly Page 12
