CHAPTER XI.
AN UNWELCOME ADMIRER.
So now I was going to be a lady's-maid. I knew that the customs, ideas, traditions, and general mode of thought prevailing in the rank of life I was about to enter, would be likely to differ in many ways from those to which I had hitherto been accustomed; and this knowledge naturally made me rather anxious as to how easy I might find it to adapt myself to my novel position, and to the people with whom I should have to associate. I felt that I was on the brink of a completely new experience, and looked forward with more trepidation than I had expected to my initiation therein on joining Lord Mervyn's household as a servant. Under these circumstances I laid down two rules for my guidance, to which I determined to adhere as far as possible: these were—first, carefully to avoid making enemies amongst my fellow-domestics; and secondly, to try and discover and conform to whatever unwritten laws of etiquette might be generally established amongst them. And in accordance with the second of these rules, I determined that on the day when I was due at 2000 Eaton Square, I would not make my appearance there till towards supper time; for I had often noticed at home that whenever a new servant was coming, he or she was sure not to turn up till as late in the day as possible; and from this I inferred that to arrive early at a new place was probably not considered the right thing.
It was, therefore, quite late in the evening when I drove up to Lord Mervyn's door. The various articles I had had to purchase in order to equip myself properly, had caused my possessions to outgrow the modest little bag that had sufficed to contain them when I came to London a few weeks before; and so I was now accompanied by a box large enough to make a respectable show as it stood on the roof of the cab which brought me.
That cab, by the by, is always a sore recollection to me, for I cannot forget that it was the means, indirectly, of my vanity receiving a sharp blow. The way of it was this.
As I knew that Lady Mervyn would defray my expenses in getting to her house, of course I did not hesitate about coming in a cab; and of course also, in charging the fare to her, I put it down as being just double what I had really paid. When she came to settle her accounts with me she demurred to this item, saying that the charge was far beyond what it ought to have been for the distance from my lodging to Eaton Square. I replied innocently that I had thought it seemed a good deal, and had said so to the cabman at the time; but that as he had declared it was not a penny more than he was entitled to, and as I had supposed he must know the proper fare better than I did, I had given him what he asked.
Lady Mervyn accepted the explanation as satisfactory, and passed on to the next item without further question. But, when paying me, she remarked contemptuously that I must be uncommonly silly to let myself be cheated so easily, and that in future she advised me to remember that the word of a London cabman was not always to be relied on implicitly.
As if I needed any advice of that kind! Was it possible to hear myself credited with such folly, and yet not refute the insulting accusation instantly? I to be considered such a greenhorn—I who prided myself on being anything but soft and easy to take in!
Stung to the quick by her scornful words, my self-esteem would hardly consent to submit to the affront in silence. It urged me to remind her of the fact that there could, in any case, be no question of my having let myself be cheated, since it was not I who was the person by whom the fare was eventually to be paid. But such a retort, though gratifying to my injured feelings, would have evidently been to the last degree unbecoming to my position as lady's-maid. Luckily my sense of this sufficed to keep me from answering her as I longed to do, and I managed to listen humbly to the unmerited reproach of gullibility, just as though I acquiesced in the justice of it. But it was only by a desperate effort that I could thus control myself, for I was wounded in a point where I was peculiarly sensitive. The thought of the slur that had been cast on my knowledge of the world and hard-headedness rankled in my breast for long afterwards, irritating me to such an extent that I could not help feeling that my dishonesty in overcharging Lady Mervyn was punished after all, and that I had only come off second best in the affair. For the amount of pecuniary profit I gained by it was absolutely insignificant, and certainly inadequate to counterbalance the mortification which it entailed upon my pride.
The thought of this annoyance has led me away from the proper course of my narrative. I apologise for the digression, and return to the evening when I and my chattels were deposited by the cab at 2000 Eaton Square.
The dignity of the post I was to fill exonerated me from having to join the common herd who supped in the servants' hall, and gave me standing in the higher and more select society occupying the housekeeper's room. Here we fared most sumptuously, for Lady Mervyn had had a small dinner-party that night, and on these occasions it was customary for the servants to finish up the relics of the feast if they cared to do so. Bearing this in mind, the cook never omitted to make the dishes of a liberal size, or to concoct a sufficient amount of whatever sauce was required for the various entrées, puddings, etc., to be able to keep back some of it when they were sent up to the dining-room. By this means it was easy afterwards to renovate most of them for downstairs use, even though the sauce might have been popular with the gentry, and wholly consumed upstairs—at least, as much of it as ever went there. Our meal, therefore, was little inferior to, and almost identical with, that which had been set before the guests overhead. It terminated with some capital ice-pudding and dessert ices, of which there was an ample supply, in well frozen condition;—this was thanks to the care of the butler, who had helped the ladies and gentlemen with a very sparing hand, and then at once sent the remainder to be preserved for us in the refrigerator.
My companions seemed so well inclined to be civil and to welcome me amongst them, that I began to shake off my nervousness, and to think that I was going to get on swimmingly. It was evidently considered that in the presence of a newcomer like me, the first appropriate topic of conversation to bring forward was the character of our employers; and as every one in the room delivered his or her opinion on the subject with perfect freedom, I soon picked up a good deal of highly interesting information.
Lady Mervyn was described as being "reg'lar out and out worldly, a good bit more of a Turk than you would think from the quiet looks of her; a bit mean, too, and one of those ladies who go poking their noses into a larder to see what's there pretty near every morning." I could see that the cook considered the last mentioned custom to be highly objectionable, and an amount of surveillance which was both uncalled for and aggravating.
The verdict on the eldest daughter was that she was "not much to look at, and a bit of a screw, but better tempered than Lady M."
The most popular member of the family was evidently Kitty, who was pronounced to be "'andsome, merry, spirity, and pleasant-spoken to both 'igh and low. For all that, though, you can see that she'll never be satisfied without being first fiddle, or pretty near it, wherever she is, and that in 'er 'art she likes 'igh folk and swells better than them as isn't. She don't show 'er pride on the outside, p'raps, so much as some do; but it's there all the same, and you won't often find an 'ortier young lady, go where you will. She's 'er ma's favourite, she is, and bound to marry a top-sawyer some day—she'd never be 'appy with any one as wasn't."
I took the opportunity of enquiring whether there was supposed to be any particular individual in the wind, and I half expected that in the answer I should hear something about Captain Norroy. This, however, was not the case, nor was his name ever once mentioned during the whole conversation. I evolved that she had plenty of admirers, and was very gracious to them all, just as she was to every one else; but that whenever any of them had been cheated by her amiable manner into the belief that he had a chance of becoming her husband, he had speedily been undeceived, and learnt, to his cost, that her readiness to be great friends with him was no indication of a disposition to be anything more. The most desirable of her many admirers was, in the opinion of my informants, a certain Lord Clement, who was clearly at her disposal if she chose to have him, but whose affection she showed no signs of reciprocating.
Her obduracy in this matter was quite inexplicable, I was told, he being a rich young earl not more than eight years her senior, of good family and irreproachable character, an excellent match in every respect, and whose wife's rank and position would be high enough to content any reasonable woman. There was no doubt that her family approved cordially of his suit, and that his relations, also, had no objection to it. One would have thought that any girl would have been glad to get such a husband, and more particularly a girl like her who set store on being a nob. Yet, for some reason or other, she seemed not to know he had any attractions at all to offer, and turned up her nose at him as if she didn't care a straw about such things. Not that she was what you could call uncivil to him,—oh no, it was not her nature to be that to any one,—but she certainly contrived to give him more cold shoulder than encouragement. Whether or not he had ever ventured to declare himself to her, in spite of this, was a matter as to which opinions varied. The housekeeper did not believe he had proposed; whereas the butler took a contrary view in consequence of what he had heard from a waiter friend of his who had had opportunities of observing his lordship and Miss Kitty together at several parties. But it was mere conjecture, and every one agreed that there was no certainty about the matter either one way or other.
It can easily be imagined that gossip of this kind was extremely interesting to a person in my position, anxious to learn all I could regarding the lay of the land which I had come to inhabit. The communicativeness of my new associates, and the facility with which I was getting on with them at starting, reassured me greatly. I began to wonder at my former qualms, lest in descending to a lower social grade I should find things to put up with that were distasteful and unpleasant. Entering service was, after all, no such formidable ordeal as I had imagined; there was nothing that I should not quickly grow accustomed to in my unfamiliar surroundings; nothing to shock the prejudices or fastidiousness of any reasonable person; no reason whatever why I should not be able to fraternise, and make myself at home, just as well in that class of life as in any other. Alas for these couleur de rose anticipations of mine! They were destined to be of but very brief duration, and were soon ruthlessly destroyed by the following most vexatious occurrence.
As there is no accounting for tastes, and as even the ugliest of women need not despair of meeting with some man in whose eyes she will appear beautiful, or nice-looking at the very least, therefore I might obviously have foreseen the possibility of my encountering some male fellow-servant or other who would consider me sufficiently attractive to flirt with. Of course, I ought to have taken this into my calculations when I was contemplating the various chances and events to which I should be liable on entering service. But it was a contingency which, somehow or other, never once occurred to me; I suppose I was too destitute of vanity about my own charms to think of it.
Now amongst my new companions was Lord Mervyn's valet, Perkins, a pale-faced, sandy-haired, thick-lipped, abominably-scented man, who wore flowing whiskers of inordinate length which he greatly cherished; who believed himself to be universally acceptable to the weaker sex, and who was conceited, cowardly, and revengeful. As bad luck would have it, I happened to take his fancy at first sight; and it all of a sudden dawned upon me, to my amazement and dismay, that he was actually making me the object of very marked and unmistakable attentions.
Scandalised at the notion of a man-servant taking the liberty to raise his eyes to a lady, I could hardly trust to the evidence of my own senses at first. But then the matter seemed less unlikely when I remembered that he had not a suspicion of there being any inequality of rank between him and me, and that, as far as that went, I was in his eyes just the same as any other maid in the house.
What he should find to admire in me, who had certainly done nothing to attract him, was beyond my power to imagine; but that did not alter the very unpleasant fact that he did regard me with favour, for he made it too plain for there to be a doubt about the matter. I shuddered to think that I must endure being made love to by a valet: it was an odious and degrading idea. Had I realised the possibility of it beforehand, I hardly knew whether I should ever have placed myself where I should be exposed to the risk of anything so disagreeable. Disgusted and angry at the admiration which I deemed an insult, and was yet powerless to resent, I endeavoured to nip it in the bud by energetic snubbing. Alas! he only thought that I was affecting coyness in order to draw him on, and persisted in his objectionable attentions all the more.
To add to my annoyance, I perceived that I was meanwhile incurring the bitter enmity of Lady Mervyn's maid, Robinson, to whom Perkins had, before my coming, devoted himself chiefly, and who strongly objected to any transfer of his affections. Too much blinded by jealousy to see how unwelcome his vulgar compliments were to me, she attributed the fickle conduct of her swain entirely to my wiles, and thought that I alone was to blame for his deserting her.
Unluckily the man had a smattering of French, and though his accent was as bad as a Corsican's (which is saying a great deal), he was immensely proud of his acquirements as a linguist, and aired them on every possible opportunity. Knowing that I, too, was supposed to be accomplished in this line, he kept on addressing me in the one foreign tongue which he believed himself to know, whenever he could recollect enough of it to translate any remark that he wanted to make. By this proceeding the flames of Robinson's wrath were constantly being fanned higher and higher; for she—understanding not a word of any language except her own—jumped to the conclusion that whatever French observation he addressed to me must necessarily be something of an extra-tender description, which would be unsuited to the ears of the general public.
I—anxious not to quarrel with her, and recoiling with horror from the idea that any one could possibly suspect me of having the faintest approach to a private understanding with Perkins—invariably answered his speeches in English. But my efforts to undeceive her were in vain, and by the time we retired to bed she had begun to express her hostility in various unmistakable ways—such as darting angry glances in my direction, giving vent to frequent sniffs betokening great mental irritation, and making half-audible observations as to the rudeness of talking secrets in company, and the intense objection she had to meddlesome strangers who intruded and made mischief amongst friends.
A nice kettle of fish this is! thought I, in reviewing the events of the day before I went to sleep. I certainly do not see how I am to keep to my intention of not making enemies at this rate. And just when I was beginning to feel sure that everything was going to be so comfortable, too! Why could not that wretch Perkins have let me alone, I wonder? Faugh! The idea of supposing that I could be pleased with what he considers pretty speeches. I think it's a great pity that there are any men at all in the world,—or, anyhow, any except gentlemen.
There was something worse than mere pretty speeches in store for me. On the day after my arrival I was going upstairs from dinner when I suddenly saw Perkins coming towards me. No one else was in sight, and he evidently thought it a good opportunity for prosecuting his courtship vigorously.
"Miss Jill, my dear," whispered he, leering at me detestably; "I'm dying for a kiss from them sweet lips of yours. Do give me one now—there's no one to see."
I was too much taken aback to be able to think of any answer which would adequately express the intense horror and indignation with which his insolent speech inspired me, so I pretended not to have heard what he said. But I suspect that my face showed something of what I felt, for he was not deceived by my affectation of deafness, and continued, with a conceited snigger, whilst he stroked his beloved whiskers complacently:
"What—not just yet, my little partridge! Tray biang! This evening, or to-morrow, then, eh? Only I reelly can't wait long, mind; and if you go on being 'ard-'arted, I shall take that kiss without asking leave. That's just what you want, I dessay. Bless you! I know the way to please the ladies. You're all the same—longing to be courted and kissed, and yet making believe that you can't abide nothing of the kind, all the time."
I reached my room in a state of fury that was mixed with alarm, lest he should attempt to execute his threat. Being stronger than me, there was a chance that he might succeed in spite of all I could do to prevent it. And since it made me frantic merely to think of such a humiliation, what should I do supposing the monster actually did manage to profane my face with his lips? Should I kill him on the spot, or should I expire from sheer disgust? How unutterably horrible it was to have to associate with a creature who had such coarse, boorish ideas of what was the proper way for a man to make himself agreeable to a woman! This, verily, was a degradation for which I had not bargained. It was a comfort that I was going abroad so soon; if I could escape for a few days more, I should be out of reach of the danger. And with this reflection I consoled myself as well as I could, determining to be constantly on my guard as long as I was in that house, lest the dreaded and hateful salute should come upon me unawares, from some obscure corner or lurking-place.
My apprehensions were but too well-founded, as I experienced on the following evening. It was after dark, and I was proceeding along the passage near the pantry, with a lighted candle in my hand, when my enemy suddenly sprung out from some recess where he had been lying in ambush. He endeavoured to throw his arms around me, exclaiming, as he did so: "Now's our time, my pet! I can't possibly wait no longer; and no one's looking, so you needn't purtend not to like it."
Moved by rage and fright to defend myself at all hazards, I had recourse to the only weapon available; and against the odious face and lips that were approaching mine I thrust the candle that I carried. He tried to avoid the impending peril by blowing out the light; but either he was too much confused, or else I was too quick for him, and he failed to extinguish it. In another instant there was a strong smell of burning hair, and one of his cherished whiskers was on fire. He let go of me with an oath, and an exclamation of pain and fear—for he was a shocking coward; and I passed on, quivering with excitement, and divided between exultation at my escape and self-hatred for having subjected myself to the disgrace of being thus forced into a sort of romping struggle with a valet.
When next I saw him he bore considerable traces of the contest. The hairy appendages to his face, in which he delighted, were gone; for the whisker I had set on fire had been so much destroyed that it had had to be shaved off, and then of course its companion had been obliged to follow suit. And besides this, there were on his lips and cheek sundry inflamed and angry-looking burns and blisters, which I regarded with vindictive satisfaction.
When the other servants commented on the change in his appearance, and inquired into the cause thereof, he accounted for it by a story—which I did not trouble myself to contradict—about his having had an accident with an unusually explosive match, the head of which had flown off and burnt him. There was nothing so abominably dangerous, he said, with savage emphasis, as an ill-made thing like that, going off all of a sudden, and flaring and skipping about like mad, when it looked as safe and quiet as possible. Regular man traps, he considered them to be and if he could have his way, they should be burnt, or got rid of somehow, every one of them.
As he spoke he cast a malignant glance at me, which convinced me that I had incurred his undying resentment, and that in his abuse of the imaginary match he was conveying his opinion about my deserts.
To that, however, I was indifferent; for in my eyes his hatred was infinitely preferable to his love; I did not at all suppose he could do me any harm, and only rejoiced to find what a wholesome effect my violence had produced. He could by no means forgive the loss of his whiskers and disfigurement which I had indicted on him; and after the encounter above recorded he took no notice of me, except when he thought he saw an opening for saying or doing anything likely to annoy me—of which he always availed himself.
Some of the ways by which he tried to show his spite were highly ludicrous, and all the more so because they failed completely of having the effect he desired. For instance, in helping the vegetables he would omit to supply my wants in the proper order of precedence belonging to my position, and would serve some inferior domestic with potatoes before me. This, as I subsequently learnt, was intended as a mortal offence, which ought to have wounded my feelings desperately. But I was happily ignorant of it at the time, and had no suspicion of the intended insult. As long as I had enough potatoes, it was all the same to me whether I had them first or last; and when at dinner, he passed over me, and handed the dish to the second housemaid before me, I was all unconscious of the affront that was being offered, so that my peace of mind was in no wise affected by it.
But though, since he had given up making love to me, I was impervious to most of his methods of annoyance, none the less did I find the prevailing state of things uncomfortable in 2000 Eaton Square; and it was with sincere joy that I found myself at last fairly off from London, and accompanying Mrs. Rollin and Kitty to the Continent. I hoped that I had seen the last of Perkins; or that, at all events, if he and I should be destined to inhabit the same house again when I returned from abroad, he would have got over his present bad temper sufficiently to keep the peace with me. Certainly I never suspected the implacable enmity of which—as I was to find by experience—he was capable.