Then I withdrew, feeling extremely provoked at the turn affairs had taken, and heartily anathematising Sir Bartholomew for having come back to England so inopportunely, instead of staying in the East, as he had been expected to do. How unlucky, too, that Lady Mervyn should have happened to meet him, and to have had nothing better to talk about than me! The more I thought about it, the more extraordinary did it seem that she should have ever troubled herself to mention me to him: for, from what I knew of her ladyship, I should have thought that a lady's-maid was far too insignificant to be honoured by being made a topic of her conversation with a stranger—that is to say, unless there had been some special reason for it; and I did not think any such reason was likely to have existed in this instance. Very likely the letter she had written to Kitty about me would contain some enlightenment on this point. If only I could get hold of that document, I would see; but the chances were that I should not be able to lay hands on it, as Kitty rarely left correspondence about—a carefulness which deprived her maids of a good deal of the amusement they might otherwise have had. On this occasion, however, fortune favoured my desires. When Kitty changed her dress that evening, in taking her handkerchief, purse, and other et-ceteras out of her pocket, she dropped a letter on the floor without noticing its fall; I, who was standing close by and helping her, instantly covered it with my dress, in hopes it might be the epistle I wanted to see; I managed to keep it under my feet and dress till she was looking in another direction, and then shoved it under the skirts of the toilette-table, where it was safely out of sight. She finished dressing, and went down to dinner, without having perceived the loss; and as soon as the coast was clear, I rushed to the table, and extracted the letter, which I had hidden there. On opening it, I found, to my delight, that it was the one from Lady Mervyn about me; the contents sufficiently explained why she should have condescended to discuss so humble an individual as myself with Sir Bartholomew, showing that it was all owing to the interference of Perkins, and that I had only him to thank for the misfortune by which I was now overtaken. After relating what I already had heard from Kitty, Lady Mervyn went on to say:
"It was only by the merest accident that we came to hear anything about the matter. Your father's valet, Perkins, is member of some club or other (fancy one's servants having clubs, like gentlemen! I can't think why parliament doesn't make them illegal), to which a man who used to be with Sir Bartholomew belongs also. With this man Perkins happened to make acquaintance, and, on hearing where he had been in service, asked him if he knew Lady Brown's last maid, Jill, who was now abroad with you."
Ah, thought I, when I had read so far, I can quite believe that that spiteful wretch Perkins, directly he thought he had met an old fellow-servant of mine, lost no time in going spying and sniffing about, and trying to rake up some ill-natured story against me! I know his tricks and his manners, as the doll's dressmaker in Our Mutual Friend used to say.
"When Perkins said that, however," continued the letter, "the man stared at him, and declared he was talking nonsense. Lady Brown's last maid, the man asserted, had been called Smith; had married a man named Roberts soon after her mistress's death; and had then gone with her husband to live at Liverpool, where she had been ever since, to his positive knowledge. This seemed very odd to Perkins, and made him suspect there was something amiss, so he, very properly, told me of what he had heard. As it happened that Sir Bartholomew had returned to England, I had no difficulty in learning the truth from the fountainhead; and now that I have just had an interview with him, I write at once to tell you the result. Of course you will not lose a moment about handing the odious woman over to the police as a forger and impostor. I shan't be a bit surprised to find that they want her already, and know lots of other things against her; goodness only knows what she is—thief, coiner, swindler, incendiary, or anything! It is so lucky that we should have found her out in time. Mind that you see all your things are quite right, and if they are not, have her boxes searched. Don't pay her anything, by the by. I should not think a person who gets a situation as she has done can claim wages—it would be getting money under false pretences, I fancy. At any rate, there's no need to hurry about paying until we find out whether we are legally bound to or not."
Having perused the letter I folded it up, and replaced it where Kitty had let it fall on the floor, so that she might find it there whenever she missed it, and went to search for it.
One thing, at all events, the letter proved clearly, and that was that Lady Mervyn's servants had spoken with perfect truth when they said she was mean; for how contemptibly mean and petty was her suggestion about withholding my wages! It seemed to me that as I had earned them honestly I was unquestionably entitled to them, whatever my character might be. And I might conclude that Kitty, who was not so little-minded as her mother, and whose pride made her incapable of an ignoble action, took the same view of the matter that I did; for I knew that if she had intended obeying her mother's instructions about dismissing me unpaid, she would certainly not have mentioned, as she had done, that I was to receive the full amount due to me. Honour and truth were integral parts of her character, and apparent in all her dealings; and though I was not myself sensitively particular about those things, yet I could not help admiring them in her all the same.
Well, I had not deserved badly of her, I thought; and in reviewing my past conduct it seemed to me that, on the whole, she had not much reason to complain of me. No doubt, my acquisition of her purse at the railway station had been somewhat questionable; but, after all, it had only been picked up—not stolen; and my subsequent retention of it had been caused chiefly by pique, because my feelings had been hurt for the moment, when I found that she had forgotten me. Since I had been her maid I had, I considered, served her faithfully enough; and so I would continue to do during the short remaining period of being in her service. This resolution, be it said, was prompted by no ulterior views of self-interest, as I was quite aware of the impossibility of my ever referring to her for a character. But she had declined to rob me of my wages and send me to prison, as her mother would have had her do, and had also troubled herself to soften the dismissal in some way, and I wished to show that I appreciated the consideration with which she had treated me, and was not ungrateful for it. Consequently I omitted nothing that it was in my power to do for her comfort on the journey back to England, and performed my duties as her maid up to the last moment of quitting her every bit as zealously as though I had hoped to gain some advantage by my attentions.
At Charing Cross Station we separated, to the intense astonishment of her aunt, who as yet knew nothing of what had taken place. They went one way and I went another; and thus I was cut off from the first person I had ever come across who possessed the gift of arousing the sluggish capacity for affection which lay dormant in my cold-blooded nature. Our being parted was entirely the doing of that abominable Perkins; and, as I looked after her with a sigh, I relegated him to the same place as my stepmother amongst my enemies, and regarded him with sentiments of similar detestation.
CHAPTER VII.
A DOGGY PLACE.
When first cut adrift from Kitty, I felt disgusted with service and had a great mind not to be a maid again, because I knew I should hate waiting on any other mistress. But people who have to earn their own living cannot afford to be fanciful, and reflection soon showed me the unwisdom of throwing up in a pet a profession in which I had now acquired some little experience; so, within a couple of days after my return to London, I was once more advertising for a place as travelling-maid.