She broke off' laughing bitterly, and remained silent. Waymark would not urge her to continue. For a minute it seemed as if she would tell no more; she looked at her watch, and half arose.
"Oh, I may as well tell you all, now I've begun," she said, falling back again in a careless way. "You know what the end's going to be; never mind, at all events I'll try and make you understand how it came.
"The family I got into was a lady and her two grown-up daughters, and a son of about five-and-twenty. They lived in a small house at Shepherd's Bush. My wages were very small, and I soon found out that they were a kind of people who keep up a great deal of show on very little means. Of course I had to be let into all the secrets of their miserable shifts for dressing well on next to nothing at all, and they expected me—mother and daughters—to do the most wonderful and impossible things. I had to turn old rags into smart new costumes, to trim worn-out hats into all manner of gaudy shapes, even to patch up boots in a way you couldn't imagine. And they used to send me with money to buy things they were ashamed to go and buy themselves; then, if I hadn't laid out their few pence with marvellous result, they all but accused me of having used some of the money for myself. I had fortunately learnt a great deal with the old lady in Tottenham, or I couldn't have satisfied them for a day. I'm sure I did what few people could have done, and for all that they treated me from almost the first very badly. I had to be housemaid as well as lady's maid; the slavery left me every night worn out with exhaustion. And I hadn't even enough to eat. As time went on, they treated me worse and worse. They spoke to me often in a way that made my heart boil, as if they were so many queens, and I was some poor mean wretch who was honoured by being allowed to toil for them. Then they quarrelled among themselves unceasingly, and of course I had to bear all the bad temper. I never saw people hate one another like those three did; the sisters even scratched each other's faces in their fits of jealousy, and sometimes they both stormed at their mother till she went into hysterics, just because she couldn't give them more money. The only one in the house who ever spoke decently to me was the son—Alfred Bolter, his name was. I suppose I felt grateful to him. Once or twice, when he met me on the stairs, he kissed me. I was too miserable even to resent it.
"I went about, day after day, in a dazed state, trying to make up my mind to leave the people, but I couldn't. I don't know how it was, I had never felt so afraid of being thrown out into the world again. I suppose it was bodily weakness, want of proper food, and overwork. I began to feel that the whole world was wronging me. Was there never to be anything for me but slaving? Was I never to have any enjoyment of life, like other people? I felt a need of pleasure, I didn't care how or what. I was always in a fever; everything was exaggerated to me. What was going to be my future?—I kept asking myself. Was it only to be hard work, miserably paid, till I died? And I should die at last without having known what it was to enjoy my life. When I was allowed to go out—it was very seldom—I walked aimlessly about the streets, watching all the girls I passed, and fancying they all looked so happy, all enjoying their life so. I was growing thin and pale. I coughed, and began to think I was consumptive. A little more of it and I believe I should have become so really.
"It came to an end, suddenly and unexpectedly. All three, mother and daughters, had been worrying me through a whole morning, and at last one of them called me a downright fool, and said I wasn't worth the bread I ate. I turned on them. I can't remember a word I said, but speak I did, and in a way that astonished them; they shrank back from me, looking pale and frightened. I felt in that moment that I was a thousand times their superior; I believe I told them so. Then I rushed up to my room, packed my box, and went out into the street.
"I had just turned a corner, when some one came up to me, and it was Mr. Bolter. He had followed me from the house. He laughed, said I had done quite right, and asked me if I had any money. I shook my head. He walked on by me, and talked. The end was, that he found me rooms, and provided for me.
"I had not the least affection for him, but he had pleasant, gentlemanly ways, and it scarcely even occurred to me to refuse his offers. I was reckless; what happened to me mattered little, as long as I had not to face hard work. I needed rest. For one in my position there was, I saw well enough, only one way of getting it. I took that way."
Ida had told this in a straightforward, unhesitating manner, not meeting her companion's gaze, yet not turning away. One would have said that judgments upon her story were indifferent to her; she simply related past events. In a moment, she resumed.
"Do you remember, on the night when you first met me, a man following us in the street?"
Waymark nodded.