“Mr. Morgan!” Mrs. Meares had cried. “No Irishman would have done that.”
“No Irishman would ever do anything,” the pianist snapped, “if he could get somebody else to do it for him.”
Sylvia welcomed the assault, because the scalding coffee drove the baron to unbutton his waistcoat in a frenzy of discomfort and thereby confirmed Clara’s legend about the scarcity of his linen.
The third lodger was Mr. James Monkley, about whom Sylvia was undecided; sometimes she liked him very much, at other times she disliked him equally. He had curly red hair, finely cut red lips, a clear complexion, and an authoritative, determined manner, but his eyes, instead of being the pleasant blue they ought to have been in such a face, were of a shade of muddy green and never changed their expression. Sylvia once mentioned about Mr. Monkley’s eyes to Clara, who said they were like a fish.
“But Monkley’s not like a fish,” Sylvia argued.
“I don’t know what he’s like, I’m sure,” said Clara. “All I know is he gives any one the creeps something shocking whenever he stares, which he’s forever doing. Well, fine feathers don’t make a summer and he looks best who looks last, as they say.”
One reason for disliking Mr. Monkley was his intimacy with her father. Sylvia would not have objected to this if it had not meant long confabulations during which she was banished from the room and, what was worse, thrown into the society of Mrs. Meares, who always seemed to catch her when she was trying to make her way down-stairs to Clara.
“Come in and talk to me,” Mrs. Meares would say. “I’m just tidying up my bedroom. Ah, Sil, if God had not willed otherwise I should have had a boy just your age now. Poor little innocent!”
Sylvia knew too well this counterpart of hers and hated him as much in his baby’s grave as she might have done were he still her competitor in life.
“Ah, it’s a terrible thing to be left as I’ve been left, to be married and not married, to have been a mother and to have lost my child. And I was never intended for this life. My father kept horses. We had a carriage. But they say, ‘trust an Irishwoman to turn her hand to anything.’ And it’s true. There’s many people would wonder how I do it with only one maid. How’s your dear father? He seems comfortable. Ah, it’s a privilege to look after a gentleman like him. He seems to have led a most adventurous life. Most of his time spent abroad, he tells me. Well, travel gives an air to a man. Ah, now if one of the cats hasn’t been naughty just when I’d got my room really tidy! Will you tell Clara, if you are going down-stairs, to bring up a dustpan? I don’t mind asking you, for at your age I think you would be glad to wait on the ladies like a little gentleman. Sure, as your father said the other day, it’s a very good thing you’re in a lady’s house. That’s why the dear baron’s so content; and the poor man has much to try him, for his relations in Berlin have treated him abominably.”