Lucy and Hugh were seated at their tea, when the black-bearded man came whistling up the street and descended the area steps. Jane was waiting for him. One or two loud laughs were heard, followed by bumping sounds. He had laden himself with Jane’s big trunk, and she followed with a tin box and a brown paper parcel. She had not relented, nor come to the parlour even for a civil “Good evening.” As she followed her trunk and its bearer, she turned and looked in at the dining-room window with a mocking smile.
The group crossed the street, but paused a few yards lower down. There was a house whose door was open, and there they went in. That was where Jane had found a place! That was the “country situation” in favour of which she had given her abrupt notice! It was Mrs. Challoner’s own neighbours who had received her servant without the slightest reference to her. Lucy felt stung. She knew nothing of these people, except that their name was Marvel, and that the family seemed to consist of father, mother, and two or three daughters. She had constantly seen them going out, in evening dress, in cabs. But how discourteous was their present action! If, as it seemed, they had made up their minds to take Jane under any circumstances, they might at least have made formal recognition of her last employer’s existence. The only inference Lucy could draw was that her late servant had managed to put her so thoroughly in the wrong that the Marvels believed hers to be no standard to which they need refer, and herself a person to whom no civility was due.
It vexed Lucy to find how this thought hurt her. She knew that, in ordinary parlance, she “ought to be above feeling such things.” Once upon a time she would have laughed at such a matter as affecting herself, though she might have recognised its significance socially. She could not understand her greater weakness now. She said to herself that often in her life she had found pleasure in setting herself harder tasks than any she was now accomplishing; for she had taken youth’s athletic joy in pedestrian feats and in working against time. She was still unable to realise that it is one thing to court fatigue and excitement with unimpaired vigour and high-strung nerves, and quite another matter to accept these when one is already worn out with anxieties and fears. Also that it is one thing to live even the most laborious days in at atmosphere of love and appreciation, and another to toil in so much risk of carping and misunderstanding that one is thankful if one can but escape notice altogether. There is repose and refreshment beforehand in the very consciousness that there exists somebody who will say presently, “You must rest; you must have a holiday;” and who possesses both the will and the power to enforce the words, just as we often feel so much assurance in an outstretched helping hand, that we can jump safely, without availing ourself of its help.
Fond mother Lucy could not be expected to understand that there had been a perpetual strain in having for so long had no household companionship but that of her little laddie. If it is tiring to stretch ever upwards to minds above our own, speaking of things we do not understand, and in a language we scarcely know, it is equally exhausting to the mind to be for ever stooping, and never able fully to express its deepest thoughts and feelings.
There was a strain, too, in Lucy’s terror lest Hugh should lack something in being thrown wholly upon her failing resources; she would not rest if she thought he wanted a game; she would not even relapse into brief silences such as she often craved. No, she had goaded herself on to chatter, and make fun, and tell stories!
Then there had been nobody to remember and provide the little dainties—the pleasant table-surprises which do so much to stimulate a failing appetite. Until Miss Latimer had come to stay, all that Lucy cared for was that Hugh should get his milk, and his puddings, and his fruit. And somehow she herself turned from all these. And there was nothing tempting in their stead.
Also Lucy had started on her new laborious, lonely life after the agony of Charlie’s illness and the supreme effort made for his departure. She had been at the very bottom of her physical powers and nervous energy. For six months she had been steadily giving out and taking nothing in; nothing but nameless little worries had filled in the interstices of work and anxiety.
Looking in her glass, she could see her face was thin and wan; she noticed one or two silver threads in her hair. Anybody else looking so, she would know to be ill, but she would not own any breakdown in herself. Ill! Was not her task already half accomplished, and had not Charlie’s journey prospered beyond their hopes?
If only she had been able to enjoy one week of the bracing breezes off Deal, and of the wholesome presence of Mrs. May! If only the Brands’ house had been one where she was sure to find hearty welcome, and where she could have spoken out all the imaginings and horrors that began to haunt her. But from nobody in the world was it more necessary to hide her trembling spirits and collapsing forces than from her sister Florence, who would have seen in them only an occasion for criticism and censure, and for counsels for whose carrying out she would offer no furtherance.
It was at this time that Lucy first had a dream—which she often had afterwards—and which, worse still, became a sort of waking vision, which would open before her if ever she dared to remain for one moment without active occupation for brain or hand.