5
Footsteps sounded on the stairs—the servants, coming upstairs to bed. No dancing for them. Work, caps and aprons. And those strange rooms upstairs to sleep in that nobody ever saw. Probably Miss Perne went up occasionally to look at them and see that they were all right; clean and tidy.... They had to go up every night, carrying little jugs of water and making no noise on the stairs, and come down every morning. They were the servants—and there would never be any dancing. Nobody thought about them.... They could not get away from each other, and cook....
To be a general servant would be very hard work. Perhaps impossible. But there would be two rooms, the kitchen at the bottom of the house, and a bedroom at the top, your own. It would not matter what the family was like. You would look after them, like children, and be alone to read and sleep.... Toothache. Cheap dentists; a red lamp “painless extractions” ... having to go there before nine in the morning, and be alone in a cold room, the dentist doing what he thought best and coming back to your work crying with pain, your head wrapped up in a black shawl. Hospitals; being quite helpless and grateful for wrong treatment; coming back to work, ill. Sinks and slops ... quinsey, all alone ... growths ... consumption.
Go to sleep. It would be better to think in the morning. But then this clear first impression would be gone and school would begin and go on from hour to hour through the term, mornings and afternoons and evenings, dragging you along further and further and changing you, months and months and years until it was too late to get back and there was nothing ahead.
The thing to remember, to keep in mind all the time was to save money—not to spend a single penny that could be saved, to be determined about that so that when the temptation came you could just hang on until it was past.
No fun in the holidays, no money spent on flowers and gloves and blouses. Keeping stiff and sensible all the time. The family of the two little Quaker girls had a home library, with lists, an inventory, lending each other their books and talking about them, and albums of pressed leaves and flowers with the Latin names, and went on wearing the same plain clothes.... You had to be a certain sort of person to do that.
It would spoil the holidays to be like that at home. Every penny must be spent, if only on things for other people. Not spending would bring a nice strong secret feeling and a horrid expression into one’s eyes.
The only way was to give up your family and stay at your work, like Flora, and have a box of half-crowns in your drawer.... Spend and always be afraid of “rainy days”—or save and never enjoy life at all.
But going out now and again in the holidays, feeling stiff and governessy and just beginning to learn to be oneself again when it was time to go back was not enjoying life ... your money was spent and people forgot you and you forgot them and went back to your convent to begin again.
Save, save. Sooner or later saving must begin. Why not at once. Harry, it’s no good. I’m old already. I’ve got to be one of those who have to give everything up.
I wonder if Flora is asleep?
That’s settled. Go to sleep. Get thee behind me. Sleep ... the dark cool room. Air; we breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Everybody has air. Manna. As much as you want, full measure, pressed down and running over.... Wonderful. There is somebody giving things, whatever goes ... something left.... Somebody seeing that things are not quite unbearable, ... but the pain, the pain all the time, mysterious black pain....
Into thy hands I commit my spirit. In manus something.... You understand if nobody else does. But why must I be one of the ones to give everything up? Why do you make me suffer so?