Douglas Metcalf. That’s his photograph.”
For a moment she was quite stupefied, not grasping what I was saying. Then something like the truth began to dawn on her. It was my voice for one thing. In the time I had spent in the workhouse, I had not quite lost my middle-class accent, though often enough I had been made fun of on account of it. And Mrs. Lincott knew the names of her husband’s friends.
“Do you mean Metcalf who owned the alkali works?”
I nodded.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Good God . . . I’d heard . . .”
She sat down in the nearest chair and stared at me as though I had just fallen down the chimney.
“But good heavens, child, how do you come to be in this condition?”
I did my best to explain, though my understanding of what had happened was then quite rudimentary. Nevertheless she seemed to grasp the essence of what I was saying.
“And you say your mother died in that terrible place?”
I nodded, fresh tears springing to my eyes. It was the first time I had spoken in a civilized fashion with anyone since my mother’s death. I imagined this woman—a woman of my own class, a woman who dressed and spoke as my own mother had done—I imagined her rising from her chair and taking me in her arms and tearing me away from my endless scrubbing in order to live with her and her children as one of the family. Like a princess in a fairy tale, restored to her true station after a life of poverty.
For a moment, even now, I truly believe that very thought had passed through Mrs. Lincott’s own head. And for a moment, I do not doubt, she was on the verge of acting on that impulse. But with a degree of selfmastery that I can only call heroic, she reined herself in. When she next looked at me, I saw with a fallen heart, she had determined to regard me as the same scullery maid she had taken me for on entering the room.
“Well, I am saddened to hear your tale,” she said, rising from the chair. “I shall tell my husband about it. I believe we met your mother once at a dinner held by the Lit, and Phil. To think that she should have died under such circumstances. And so young. How tragic. How very tragic.”
The next moment she walked several paces to the door, then turned and glanced at me again.
“Finish up in here quickly, will you?” she said. “I have guests coming in half an hour.”
The door opened and closed, and I was alone again.
CHAPTER 6
Nothing improved. Days passed, weeks passed, whole months went by. If Mrs. Lincott ever thought of me, it must have been as something very distant, nearly abstract, an example of how the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. Or perhaps I was just an embarrassment she preferred to keep hidden away in the scullery. Of me as a person, I am sure she never thought at all. If she did, she never showed it in any concrete fashion. There were no gifts of clothing or bedding, no pieces of extra food. Nothing ever came my way in that house but hard work.
And yet the very expectation I had that I might yet receive some favorable treatment at Mrs. Lincott's hands was based on the wholly irrelevant fact of my having been born into the same class as she, on the coincidence—not such a great one in those days—that my father and Dr. Lincott had been members of a scientific and cultural society. But what else did I have to fend for myself with if not that? I knew no one outside the workhouse, I had not been bred to poverty, there was enough loneliness in me to fill the hearts of a family of beggars.
Spring came and passed, little noticed by me in the shadows of the scullery where most of my work was done. I had no days off. And if I had been given one, how would I have spent it? I had no clothes fit to wear outside, no money, not so much as a penny to buy a slice of pie. There was little for me to look forward to in life: at best I might hope to become a parlor maid and share a cold room under the attic with one or two other girls, and think
For a moment she was quite stupefied, not grasping what I was saying. Then something like the truth began to dawn on her. It was my voice for one thing. In the time I had spent in the workhouse, I had not quite lost my middle-class accent, though often enough I had been made fun of on account of it. And Mrs. Lincott knew the names of her husband’s friends.
“Do you mean Metcalf who owned the alkali works?”
I nodded.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Good God . . . I’d heard . . .”
She sat down in the nearest chair and stared at me as though I had just fallen down the chimney.
“But good heavens, child, how do you come to be in this condition?”
I did my best to explain, though my understanding of what had happened was then quite rudimentary. Nevertheless she seemed to grasp the essence of what I was saying.
“And you say your mother died in that terrible place?”
I nodded, fresh tears springing to my eyes. It was the first time I had spoken in a civilized fashion with anyone since my mother’s death. I imagined this woman—a woman of my own class, a woman who dressed and spoke as my own mother had done—I imagined her rising from her chair and taking me in her arms and tearing me away from my endless scrubbing in order to live with her and her children as one of the family. Like a princess in a fairy tale, restored to her true station after a life of poverty.
For a moment, even now, I truly believe that very thought had passed through Mrs. Lincott’s own head. And for a moment, I do not doubt, she was on the verge of acting on that impulse. But with a degree of selfmastery that I can only call heroic, she reined herself in. When she next looked at me, I saw with a fallen heart, she had determined to regard me as the same scullery maid she had taken me for on entering the room.
“Well, I am saddened to hear your tale,” she said, rising from the chair. “I shall tell my husband about it. I believe we met your mother once at a dinner held by the Lit, and Phil. To think that she should have died under such circumstances. And so young. How tragic. How very tragic.”
The next moment she walked several paces to the door, then turned and glanced at me again.
“Finish up in here quickly, will you?” she said. “I have guests coming in half an hour.”
The door opened and closed, and I was alone again.
CHAPTER 6
Nothing improved. Days passed, weeks passed, whole months went by. If Mrs. Lincott ever thought of me, it must have been as something very distant, nearly abstract, an example of how the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. Or perhaps I was just an embarrassment she preferred to keep hidden away in the scullery. Of me as a person, I am sure she never thought at all. If she did, she never showed it in any concrete fashion. There were no gifts of clothing or bedding, no pieces of extra food. Nothing ever came my way in that house but hard work.
And yet the very expectation I had that I might yet receive some favorable treatment at Mrs. Lincott's hands was based on the wholly irrelevant fact of my having been born into the same class as she, on the coincidence—not such a great one in those days—that my father and Dr. Lincott had been members of a scientific and cultural society. But what else did I have to fend for myself with if not that? I knew no one outside the workhouse, I had not been bred to poverty, there was enough loneliness in me to fill the hearts of a family of beggars.
Spring came and passed, little noticed by me in the shadows of the scullery where most of my work was done. I had no days off. And if I had been given one, how would I have spent it? I had no clothes fit to wear outside, no money, not so much as a penny to buy a slice of pie. There was little for me to look forward to in life: at best I might hope to become a parlor maid and share a cold room under the attic with one or two other girls, and think
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