CHAPTER XXI

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FREDA BREAKS SILENCE.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a pleasant meal, and I was only sorry not to be hungrier, for the Magnolia Cottage of my imagination could not have provided more inviting viands than the cold fowl, and rolls and butter, and honey and fragrant coffee, which made our lunch. Freda flushed with pleasure when I said so.

"Ah!" she said, looking towards her friend, "if anybody can make a shilling go as far as a pound, it is Mary Vincent."

"Hardly that, my dear, but I am not an old campaigner for nothing, and the advantage of living in a slum is, that food is sold at prices within reach of the poor. Then I spent a couple of years of my girlhood in a French convent, and learned from Sister St. Genevieve to make coffee," said Freda's friend.

I liked Mrs. Vincent uncommonly well. She was quite plain-looking, but had, I thought, one of the sweetest expressions imaginable. Her hair, too, was very pretty, white, and with a wave in it, a striking contrast to her olive-hued cheeks and quick, brown eyes. But looking at her one only got an impression of the goodness of the face; the irregular features and small eyes and colourless skin faded into insignificance as compared with that.

Master Jacky, too, had his chair at the table, beside Mrs. Vincent. I must say he behaved very well for so small a boy, and one evidently so much petted. Except for an occasional indiscretion, such as asking why wasn't there chicken and honey every day, his conduct was exemplary. Indeed, with regard to her training of him it was evident that Mrs. Vincent had not been a soldier's wife for nothing. She had a number of military words of command, which she uttered with an immovable face whenever the young gentleman seemed on the point of becoming obstreperous. It amused me very much to see the boy's prompt obedience to them; but that was, as she explained to me, because Jacky was to be a soldier when he grew up, and he had already begun his training.

I couldn't help thinking that she was probably better for the young pickle than his own dear little mother, whose eyes danced and twinkled with such merriment when Jacky forgot that he was a soldier

## acting under orders. Mrs. Vincent's face never lost its sweet

seriousness for one moment, even when Freda and I were visibly merry.

After lunch Mrs. Vincent carried the boy off and left us to our chat There were so many things we had yet to say to each other. After I had told all the home news I came back to Freda herself.

"Now tell me," I asked, "what a 'nasty place' is like, such as your last 'place'?"

I made a wry face over the word, which seeing, Freda laughed.

"Well, I'll tell you, dear," she said. "In taking my last place, which was to be for a short time, I thought I'd depart from the beaten path of governessing, which is really a very sad and lonely life. So I answered an advertisement for a lady to act as hostess at a Bayswater boarding-house, to take the head of the table, receive people who came on business, and all that kind of thing. The salary was miserable, but the place sounded an easy one, and there was one great inducement. I could have Jacky to stay with me whenever I liked, and oh, my dear, if you could know the pangs of loneliness I have suffered for want of my boy at times! The thought of a 'place' where Mary could fetch him to me now and again for a few hours was like heaven."

"Poor Freda!"

"Oh, poor Freda indeed! You shall hear how it turned out. I found the woman a coarse, red-faced, cunning-eyed person, not at all more prepossessing because of her oily smile. I took a dislike to her at once, though she meant to be very amiable. She said that her business was so large that she could no longer carry out all the duties of hostess herself,--she required another 'lydy' to help her. The real truth was that she was conscious of her own deficiencies, and had come to see that she lost clients by receiving them herself. She really did want a lady to coax people to come in."

"She must have had common-sense anyhow," said I.

"Oh, my dear, she knew well! She wasn't sensitive, even with regard to herself. She told me that my duties would be, besides presiding at table, receiving visitors, &c., to do such small household tasks as a lady would naturally do in her own house. She hoped, she said, that I wouldn't mind doing a little mending."

"Well?"

"Well, I said I didn't mind anything in reason. Then she took me upstairs and showed me my bedroom. It was the merest attic, but I could see a tree or two from it, and at the foot of my bed there was a little old cot, which clinched the matter for me, for I imagined Jacky in it, and the joy of undressing and dressing him myself, and listening to his soft breathing all night. So I said I'd come, without further ado."

"Is it so seldom you have Jacky to yourself, Freda?"

"Well, you see, Hilda, Mary Vincent has been like his mother so long that when I come home I don't like to disturb the existing order of things. She, dear woman, would utterly efface herself if she had the least suspicion of my longing to do everything for Jacky once in a while. But when I come home she thinks I need rest, and am to be waited upon, and will have me lie in bed in the morning while she does everything for both of us."

She sighed a little wistful sigh, and then smiled.

"But I always say to myself that I am Jacky's mother, and that is enough happiness for me. I can yield the rest to her who loves him so much also, and has never had a child of her own. It is so long since I have had things to do for Jacky that I daresay I should be awkward and unaccustomed now."

"Poor Freda!" I said again.

"And rich Freda," she laughed. "I will confess to you, Hilda, that I got over my first great pang when I let my friend bathe Jacky while he was yet a baby. That was--"

She broke off abruptly, and I knew she had been going to say "after Jim died", and then had choked over it.

"She had been so good to us--to me and Jim--that when I saw she was hungry for the child, I stood aside. She never guessed that it cost me anything, dear soul! I cannot understand now how mothers give up the personal care of their babies to anyone else if they can help it. In that way, at least, rich women are not so happy as poor women."

"But the boarding-house, Freda?" I said.

"Ah, yes! I was forgetting. The money was very small, but having Jacky whenever I wished, as the woman said I might, outweighed everything, so I went. Mary thought, too, that the duties, being light, would not wear me out, as I have been worn out where there were half-a-dozen energetic children. But I soon found that I was to be a kind of white slave. I was to be housemaid and housekeeper and hostess all rolled into one. Even at the hour when a servant's duties are over, mine were going on. If Mrs. Tatlow--that was her name--saw me sitting still for a moment she found new work for me. Why, after a hard day I have sat up till two in the morning mending house-linen. There were years of arrears of mending, all waiting for me."

"Why did you stay when you found what it was like?"

"I couldn't come home at once, because I had been having a long rest, and the money was all spent. And Lady A. had promised to secure me the place I am now going to in Devonshire, so I thought I would stay on, and endure it without complaint for a while. Then the summer came, and there was an unusual demand for rooms, and Mrs. Tatlow came to me one day with her oily smile, and said she had been obliged to take my room for a time, and if I would not mind the inconvenience of sleeping downstairs she thought she could make me very comfortable. I said I shouldn't mind, for I had not then seen the room, and my attic, since the hot weather set in, had been so hot that I thought I couldn't be much worse off. But, oh, Hilda, if you had seen the room! It had no window, but was lit by a grating in the door. It ran under the street. It was dark, noisome, unwholesome in the last degree, for it had only been intended to put brushes and such things in. My wretched little bed almost filled it completely. I protested when I saw the place, but quite in vain. My own room was already taken."

"And you slept in it, Freda?" I cried out, horrified.

"I could do nothing else. Mary had taken Jacky to Broadstairs--we have always managed to give him a month at the sea every summer. This little house is taken for that period by two maiden ladies, friends of Mary's, who like to come up once a year to see the pictures and shops. I had nowhere to turn to. I sat down in the horrible little hole and cried bitterly. Then I concluded that I could stand it till Mary came home, and so I set my teeth to it."

"The woman ought to have been put in prison," I said angrily.

Freda laughed.

"That is precisely what Susan, the kitchen-maid, said. 'She did ought to be in 'Olloway, that's wot she ought.' Indeed I got plenty of sympathy from the overworked, badly-fed, worse-housed, kitchen staff. I often wondered at the warmth of their partizanship, poor dears. They were worse off, as far as sleeping accommodation went, than myself, though, of course, a servant has always this advantage over an untrained lady, that she can leave. There are so many of us," said Freda, with a watery little smile.

"You had some friends, anyhow?" I said.

"Yes; though I wouldn't listen to their sympathy; not so much for my dignity's sake--that sort of thing levels human beings somehow--as that I couldn't bear it at the time."

"You poor darling!" I cried, embracing her.

Again the rainbow smile flitted over her face, and she went on.

"The sympathy that really touched me most came from the ostensible master of the house. Before this time I had only seen Mr. Tatlow flitting along a corridor, or diving into a doorway to get out of my way. He was the most absurd little man to look at--pale-faced, tearful-eyed, with long red weepers of whiskers, and a general miserableness of expression."

"So well he might have," said I acridly. "Well--"

"So well he might, my dear. Susan informed me that he had to clean all the boots, sometimes forty pairs a day, in the season. He was the most oppressed of all his wife's victims."

"Why didn't he assert himself, then?"

"Oh, Hilda, you should have seen him! Poor little soul! He was one of those men who make you feel it to be so tragic that they should be men and yet like that. Coventry Patmore makes his plain heroine talk of the sadness--

"That God should e'er Make women, and not make them fair".

But the tragedy of men like poor little Mr. Tatlow is sadder still."

"How did he show his sympathy?" I asked.

"Oh, poor little soul! by facing his wife for me with the spirit of a lion. He was miserably afraid of her, yet he did that. And he apologized to me with a delicacy and good feeling that showed he had the heart of a gentleman in his poor little frame."

"He could do nothing?"

"No, only get himself into hot water by his championship of me. I believe the woman was horribly violent when she was angry. She vented all her violence on him, for though she was savagely angry with me she said nothing. I only knew it by her glance of malevolence when she thought herself unnoticed."

"And you slept a month in that dog-hole?"

"No, I'm ashamed to say I didn't. I'm not made of the martyr-stuff. I had been ten days or so in it when Lucy, the chamber-maid, told Miss Dahlia Warner, an American who was staying in the house, about my habitation. Miss Warner was very rich, very pretty, and very spirited. She came down and saw the place for herself. 'Now, why did you do it, Mrs. Hazeldine?' she asked; 'don't you know it was self-murder? Look at yourself in the glass!' I did so, and saw a very white face and very big eyes. 'Besides, you are encouraging that wretch to treat some other helpless, poor creature in just the same way.'

"Then I burst out crying, and she suddenly put her arms about me affectionately. 'There, I am worrying you, you poor little thing!' she cried; 'as if you had not had enough to bear already. Come up to my room and tell me all about it. The woman is out, but if she were not, she wouldn't dare to question me."

So I went with her, and, being broken down by her sympathy, I told her everything. When I had finished, she said to me, 'There! Can you get your things together in a quarter of an hour? Yes, I am sure you can, for that kind creature downstairs will help you. You are coming with me to the Cecil as my guest for a fortnight, and as long afterwards as you will stay.'

And so she carried me off. She returned later on for her own luggage, paid Mrs. Tatlow for her board, and gave that good lady a stinging little bit of her mind. The woman was obsequious to her, for her main business is with Americans, and she dreaded the mischief Miss Warner might do her. But for all that she kept my pretty things."

"Your pretty things, Freda?"

"Yes. She came here on some excuse after I had promised to go to her, and saw my pretty things, my bits of ivory and silver and lacquer that used to be in our little home at Oodeypore. No matter how poor I was, I would never part with them. She insisted on my bringing them with me to decorate her drawing-room, and now she holds them in default of the warning she says I ought to have given her."

"But she can't keep them, surely?"

"Oh no! she will give them up. It is only what Miss Warner calls a game of bluff. That good friend was recalled suddenly to America, and since I would not go with her, as she wanted, she put me and my affairs in charge of her betrothed, who is a young solicitor in an old firm in Chancery Lane. He, Mr. Douglas, says that Mrs. Tatlow is only squirming a little before giving up the things. So we shall let her squirm."

"And now," Freda said, "let us have some tea, for I seem to have been talking an incredible amount."

When she had ordered the tea, I said to her:

"Is Aline to hear this, Freda?"

"I think not," she said wistfully, "unless you think that I had better own up to everything. But it would only grieve her."

"Indeed, I think you are right," I said. "It would nearly break her heart. I think you were cruel to us too, Freda, to endure such things."

"Well, it was not for very long," she answered.

"I hope that 'place' was quite exceptional," I said, again mouthing the distasteful word, and with a severe aspect.

"Oh, quite! There aren't many Mrs. Tatlows in this world. By the way, Hilda, since the mood for confession is upon me, I may as well own up something else."

"What! more boarding-houses?" I cried.

"Oh, no! I am done with boarding-houses. But what will you say when I tell you that I have been lady's-maid to Lady A."

"A real lady's-maid! Not a sort of lady lady's-maid?" I exclaimed, rather horrified.

"I thought you would be shocked. Yet it was the pleasantest work I have ever had. She is very beautiful, and, in her odd, flighty way, very kind. I used to love doing her long ashy-coloured hair. It was down to her feet when I used to brush it out at night. I often brushed it till I could scarcely stand, for the pleasure of handling it."

"You were not like an ordinary servant, Freda, surely?"

"Oh, no! though I was prepared to accept that when I went to Overton Towers. But I found a little room allotted to me close by Lady A.'s own rooms, and she had given orders that I was to have my meals there. So I was not with the other servants, and when I wasn't on duty I could read or write, or do anything I liked in my own little room."

"How long did you stay, Freda?"

"Well, not many months. Her ladyship said to me suddenly one day, when I met her eyes in the mirror: 'I should like to know, my dear, why you are masquerading as my maid'."

"What did you say?"

"I answered her quite frankly. 'Because I'm a poor woman, Lady A., and I find the genteel professions too hard for me.' 'Well,' she said, 'you are everything I could desire as a maid, but I'm going to do better for you than leave you at the mercy of a heartless woman of fashion like myself, and in a perfectly anomalous position. Besides, you make me look a hag beside you. I shudder when I see your face near mine in the glass. I'm taking back Cecile, an unscrupulous wretch, but an admirable maid, for I'm more comfortable with her. And I'm going to send you to Mrs. Des Vœux, an exquisite old blind lady in Devonshire, for whom you will read and write and cut roses--that's all. I've kept you so long to make sure you'd be good to her. And now I am sure.'"

"She arranged it for you like that?"

"Yes, just like that. I was to have gone to Mrs. Des Vœux in a short time after I left Lady A., so I came home and imprudently spent all my money. Then it happened that the lady whom I was to replace, whose marriage was leaving the vacancy for me, had to postpone her departure for six months. So I was rather thrown on my beam-ends, and that is how I had the pleasure of making Mrs. Tatlow's acquaintance."

"And I suppose Mrs. Des Vœux's will be a case of 'and they lived happy ever afterwards'?"

Freda gave a little shudder.

"Oh, no, Hilda! I hope I shall have a house of my own one day, though I don't see how it's going to happen. Servitude is all very well so long as one is young, but--" she ended with an expressive little gesture, flinging out both her hands.

"Freda," said I impulsively, "have you ever had an offer of marriage in those years of your wanderings?"

"An embarrassment, Hilda. My suitors have ranged in age from sixteen to sixty--nay, seventy-five--and in eligibility from the ownership of a pocket-knife and three white mice to the ownership of an iron-foundry and a steam yacht."

"And you never met anyone you could say 'yes' to?"

Freda's merry face changed all at once, and a wounded red flew into her soft, pale cheeks.

"You are only a child, Hilda," she said coldly, "and so I forgive you."

"Oh, Freda," I cried, "I didn't think you'd care so much!"

"I am Jim's wife," she answered, "as well as Jim's widow!"

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