In face of this impertinence, Lucy rallied her spirits and dignity. Cost what such effort may afterwards, it is not at such moments that any spirited woman fails or shrinks.
“Very well, Jane,” she said. “Under these circumstances, I need ask you no questions. This spares me a painful task. But as your senior, even but by a few years and a little experience, I trust that you will deeply consider your ways. You have not treated me well. That may not matter much now. But I fear that you are not acting in a way to secure your own womanly respectability and happiness. If you seek a reference from me, I shall have to tell any inquirer what has happened.”
“Very well, m’m. Please, m’m, you’ll remember it was me that gave you notice.”
“I shall remember,” said Lucy. Not another word was exchanged.
The event gave Lucy a sleepless night, partly because it had excited her beyond her ebbing strength, and partly because she could not help forecasting ways and means with which to meet this fresh domestic difficulty.
To live in the same house with somebody so flatly antagonistic as she felt Jane intended to be, was a hard trial for a lonely and over-strained woman. Lucy realised that Jane was capable of insolence—that her outburst had not been a mere fit of temper, but a revelation of the coarse, cruel nature seething beneath the dull exterior. It might not have been wise, but if Lucy had been a free woman, she would have paid Jane her wages and let her go at once, so as to clear the atmosphere. But Lucy was not a free woman; she had her engagements to fulfil, her work to do.
She had hoped to take advantage of the fine weather to take Hugh a little out of town on Saturday afternoons, thus giving him fresh air and enjoyment, and also snatching an opportunity to make a study or a sketch. But now the four Saturday afternoons which would pass over before Jane’s departure were all the leisure in which to seek a new supply of domestic help. This “month” of Jane’s would bring Lucy to the edge of the summer holidays at the Institute. Had all gone on right with Jane, Lucy had meant to get her decent old charwoman to spend her nights in the house and give the girl company and security, while she and Hugh went down to Deal for two or three weeks. She had a secret consciousness that she was “running down” in a way which needed both the fresh sea breezes and the strong, calm presence of Jarvis May’s brave widow. She had hoped to persuade Miss Latimer to make one of the party. That lady herself would have respite from her one or two little engagements, and she had not had a seaside holiday for two or three years. Lucy meant to give the invitation as a favour to herself, since Miss Latimer’s presence would ensure her the more leisure and freedom for sketching. For in that seaside holiday she had hoped to lay in a store of sketches—as many as she could possibly work up before the darkening days of next winter would be brightened by Charlie’s return.
Now all these plans of hers must be knocked on the head! She tried to be thankful that if she failed to secure satisfactory help during the coming month, then the holidays would at least give her leisure to do her own housework for awhile. She had accustomed herself to remember that, as Jeremy Taylor tells us, every trial has two handles, or at least that we have two hands, and that, when anything happens to our displeasure, it is the part of a wise and submissive spirit to handle it on that side in which we can find some comfort or use. But it seemed to poor Lucy as if this “handle” was so slight that it was ready to break in her trembling grasp. She knew that trials which loom large in the mists of our own minds are sometimes wonderfully reduced in magnitude if we can get them outside ourselves, and state them in plain terms. So she tried to rally her courage and spirits by asking what was this trouble, after all? She was simply parting from a servant whom she had never liked, and who had proved herself to be a girl of low type.
That was how Lucy resolutely put it, and then it seemed little enough. She would not let herself add that she was already worn out under the awful anxiety of her husband’s illness, the strain of the separation, the practical solitude, the unremitting duties which would allow of no rest nor recreation. She left these in her sub-consciousness. When we know that no hand but ours is on the helm, we can face anything except the full realisation that we ourselves are stunned and reeling in the storm.
It seemed to Lucy that as she and Miss Latimer were not to have their holiday together at the seaside, the next best thing would be to invite Miss Latimer to spend her holiday in the little house with the verandah, so that they might at least enjoy each other’s society. Miss Latimer accepted the invitation eagerly, adding the information that she had got to leave the house in which she had been living, as the family were quitting town.