Chapter V: The First Night in a New Home

MRS. BATESON had arranged that Kate should reach her new place by daylight, as she was little used to travelling. The double journey from Heyington to her village home and back, once in the year, was the limit of her experience.

She had sent word to Fanny Ellis that she would reach Victoria Station at four o'clock, and half hoped that she might see her familiar face greeting her with a look of welcome. But no; all faces were alike strange, and Kate found herself bewildered and lonely as she stepped into the midst of a hurrying crowd.

She had rather a long drive, and the cab fare seemed a great deal for her to pay, especially now that her mother's need made every penny doubly precious.

She had cherished many dreams of city life, and thought it would be nice to be where there was so much to be seen, and people were not always looking at the same few faces. At Heyington, everybody knew everybody else, and one day passed very much like another, and in the same round of duties.

Fanny Ellis used to say that she would as soon be buried alive as stay there. It might do for mistresses who could go away for weeks or months at a time and whenever they liked, but not for servants who had a bit of life in them. Yet until brought into contact with Fanny, Kate had been more than contented, and thanked God for having given her a good home and a kind friend in her mistress.

During her drive to her new place of service, Kate was not very pleasantly impressed by what she saw.

The buildings were everywhere blackened with smoke, the very sky seemed to be grey instead of blue, though the day was hot and the sun was shining brightly.

When she got out of the cab, she noticed that the very leaves, instead of being a vivid green like those at Heyington, were coated over with black, and yet she was by no means near the heart of the city. Evidently her new home was in a good neighbourhood, for the houses were mostly detached and with more or less ground about them.

"Any way," thought Kate, "I shall be away from the dreadful noise of the streets. It bewildered me and made me wish myself back at Heyington."

She was met at the door by another servant, who said, "I suppose you are the new housemaid-waitress. I'm glad you are come in good time, for being short of one pair of hands we are rather at sixes and sevens. I'll help you upstairs with your things. They call you Kate, don't they?"

Kate thanked her and said, "Yes."

"Well, my name is Sarah. I'm waitress and housemaid number one, and you are to be number two, you know. Mrs. Maybrick says you have not been much used to waiting, but she has arranged for you to help me, same as the last one did. This is our room."

It was a long way up, and seemed to Kate very large and desolate looking, though there were three beds in it—so different in comfort to the one she had left that morning.

"I suppose some one else sleeps here beside me?" said Kate, glancing from side to side, and noticing that there were no drawers in the room, or anything but the servants' boxes for holding their clothes.

"I should think so," replied Sarah, with a laugh. "You didn't expect a room to yourself, I hope. It is what I never had in a town place."

"I had at Heyington Hall, the only situation I have lived in till now," replied Kate. "Such a nice little room it was."

"You were in luck's way, then. I wonder you left. Well, you see, this is not a nice little room, or a nice big one for that matter, for there are only scraps of carpet just to step on to, and three chairs, one apiece for us—cook, and you, and me. We three join at this room. Nurse is lower down with the children. This great barn of a place and a box-room run over the whole house, and are top of all.

"We are well out of Mrs. Maybrick's way up here, that is one comfort, though it does not look very cheerful in summer, and it is very cold in winter time."

"It does seem rather bare," said Kate, who in her passage upstairs had noted the handsome furniture and profusion of ornaments to be seen in every direction in the lower part of the house.

"I can guess what you are thinking of," said Sarah, with a knowing look. "You did not shut your eyes as you came up here, and now you are saying to yourself, that when they were furnishing, they might have put a thing or two less down below, and some decent sets of drawers and such like in our bedroom. You see we have to hang our gowns on nails, up and down as we can, and cover them from the dust with wrappers made out of old morning frocks. And Manchester dust 'is' black, I can tell you."

"Everything looked dingy to me, coming from a bright country place, where there are no big chimneys and so little smoke," said Kate.

"Yes, you'll find it out soon enough," replied Sarah, who was quite delighted at being able to air her own grievances, and, perhaps, took some pleasure in heightening them in the eyes of the new comer.

"You'd better make haste," she added, "and get your things off, so as to come down and help me. This is your bed. You can pop your gowns on it till you have time to hang them up. I must go or I shall be behindhand. We have company to dinner, and I believe the missis has come in. I'll tell her you are here. Don't be afraid, she will not trouble to come up so high. She seldom sees this place. I wish she would just come straight from her own room to this, then she might notice the difference, and mend matters a bit for us servants."

Sarah hurried away, and Kate lost no time in following her. She thought Mrs. Maybrick would want to speak to her, for at Heyington a new comer was always called into Mrs. Bateson's room, and, after a few words of kindly welcome, spoken to about her duties and the rules of the household, so that there could be no mistake.

She was encouraged to go to her mistress in any time of difficulty, and cheered by the assurance that she would find not only an employer, but a friend who would advise and help her in time of need, if she strove to do right.

Kate could remember her own arrival at the Hall—a raw, untaught, frightened girl, with hardly courage to answer when she was asked a question.

She could picture again Mrs. Bateson's kind face, and hear her inquiries after the mother and those she had left behind. And she remembered, too, how she bade her kneel down, and kneeling beside her, asked God that her coming might prove a blessing to herself, her friends at a distance, and all under that roof.

Kate seemed again to hear her old mistress asking that God's Holy Spirit, the one unfailing Guide and Teacher, might be given to lead her in the right way, and strengthen her for the duties before her.

The memory brought tears to the girl's eyes, and surely it was by the enlightening power of that Holy Spirit that she was enabled to see more clearly her ingratitude towards her best earthly friends, her want of consideration for her mother, her own unthankfulness for the pleasant places in which, by the good providence of God, her lines had been cast during three peaceful past years.

She could not help taking a few moments to kneel in that desolate looking room, to repeat again the prayer formerly offered on her behalf by her mistress, to cry for pardon for Jesus' sake, and to thank God for her safe journey. Then she went down, feeling brighter and happier, to begin her new duties.

Sarah noted traces of tears on Kate's cheeks, and being a really good-natured girl, though much given to gossip, she half regretted that she had said what might perhaps have frightened the new comer.

"Don't you get down-hearted," she said to Kate. "There's worse places than this, you may take my word for it; and I have been here over a twelvemonth. There's good food and plenty of it, for master is rich, and Mrs. Maybrick has money of her own, as she'd need to have, seeing what goes on fads and finery in this house.

"She doesn't bother us servants much, so long as things are fairly done. We are kept going—no mistake about that, for there's a deal of company invited, and no stinginess. Mrs. Maybrick isn't one to take care of the pence, or pounds either, for that matter.

"And when you have a holiday, it is your own day. No poking and prying, as Fanny Ellis says you had in your old place. You were right not to stand it. I wouldn't be obliged to go here and there, like a child, in the time that I call my own, for the best mistress that ever stepped."

The words were kindly meant, and Kate forced a smile and thanked the speaker. But she was already beginning to realise that the mistress who did not trouble herself as to the going out and coming in of a young girl who was far away from her home and her mother, was not likely to be a friend to whom she might venture to go in any time of trouble, or who, in sickness, would have much sympathy to bestow.

Kate did not see Mrs. Maybrick until she was seated at the dinner table. Her own share of the waiting was small, and chiefly confined to fetching and carrying, as there were hired helpers. It was very late before she went to her own room, and she was feeling wearied out in mind and body by her anxious thoughts, the journey, and the unaccustomed long hours.

Before she could lie down, she must put her clothes into something like order, though she scarcely knew how to begin, and wondered how she would ever be able to maintain the tidy careful habits which she had been taught by her late mistress.

There were no spare nails for her gowns, so she guessed rightly that when her predecessor left, those used by her had been taken by the others. In spite of this, there were articles of clothing, both clean and soiled, lying about in corners, and the very untidiness of the room made her feel oppressed and miserable.

The cook and Sarah were asleep before she extinguished the gas. The latter bade her good-night, and added, "I will help you to straighten up a bit to-morrow, and we'll drive in some more nails. It's too late now for anything but sleep, for I'm dead tired."

Too tired for prayer evidently, for both cook and Sarah dispensed with that, or at any rate they did not kneel before they got into bed.

Kate moved as gently as she could, and when the light was out, she knelt to pray with perhaps a greater sense of want than she had ever felt in her life before. Absent from all whom she could call her true friends, she realised for the first time what a blessed thing it is that Our Father in heaven is always near and willing to hear and answer even his ungrateful and disobedient children, if they come to Him with the name of Jesus on their lips, and pleading the merits of His love, and life, and death for sinners.

After she lay down, Kate could not sleep, though greatly in need of rest. The bed had been hastily made up, and the bedding thrown on after any fashion, for servants are not always careful for each other's comforts, and the thought, "If she does not like it, let her do it herself," is not an uncommon one amongst those who serve under the same roof.

Kate found her bed hard and lumpy, her bedding uneven and rumpled, and two-thirds of it on one side reaching the floor, whilst the other barely covered the mattress. She would amend these things for herself on the morrow, but in the meanwhile, they and her troubled thoughts kept her from enjoying the much-needed sleep.

She felt thankful to Mrs. Bateson as she lay, wakeful yet weary, for having encouraged her to commit to memory texts of Scripture, and for having called her into the room when she gathered her children to give them simple Bible lessons, and allowed her to share them.

Kate was as ignorant of these precious truths as of the household duties she would have to perform when she first went to Heyington. She owed everything that was best, under God, to her late good mistress.

The texts meant more to her now than they had hitherto done.

"The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call
upon Him in truth;"

"Call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee,—"

were amongst those which came to mind for her comfort.

And she could take the comfort, though feeling her unworthiness, because she was in earnest in her sorrow for her wilfulness, and in now as earnestly desiring guidance from above.