Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [48]
Months passed. My savings, never large, dwindled to nothing. I did whatever work I could find, and rough and dirty work it was for the most part. At last, when I had resolved to return to sea, which I must do or starve, the agency informed me that I was to appear for an interview with a prospective employer. It was only by the generosity of an acquaintance of my late father’s that I acquired decent clothing for the occasion, he having grown overstout for the trousers, shirt, and waistcoat that hung so slack upon my wasted frame. A jacket was, providentially, provided by the agency.
My employer-to-be was a young gentleman of fashion, high coloured and good humoured, and so clearly wealthy and well tailored that my gaze fixed upon him as a starving cur’s upon a beefsteak. After several prosaic questions regarding a manservant’s duties as I understood them, questions easy to anticipate, he inquired, “What do you know of foxhunting, Brooks?” The intensity apparent in his voice and the narrowing of his eyes showed me plainly that this question was of greatest importance: that the entire affair hinged upon my answer. I would gladly have proclaimed myself an expert if I could, but I knew that the most trifling enquiry would at once reveal any such imposture. “Nothing, sir,” I replied. “I fear that I know nothing at all of it.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” was my future employer’s rejoinder. “After discovering me ignorant of it, my last man would speak of nothing else. If I hadn’t discharged him, I should have been forced to throw him under a train.”
My joy was complete and perfectly unbounded, so that the latter part of his remarkable statement made but small impression on my mind at the time, though it was to return with great force.
He had commodious rooms in the West End, and in them I discovered items of apparel well suited to my duties, items abandoned, as it seemed, by my predecessor in his service. These I examined with delight and at once made my own. As soon as I could, I repaired my scant wardrobe from my wages and from the gifts, sometimes generous, accorded me by my master’s friends. I should mention that I was our entire staff, save for a fat and rather pleasant woman, styled the housekeeper but in fact a cook, whose services we enjoyed but three days per week.
Parliament adjourned, the season ended, and the heat and dirt of the city, which had been most mercifully swept aside, resumed. Wealthy families and single men of fashion alike retired to the country or the seaside, and we with them. My new master’s parents resided in Westmoreland, not far from this antiquated town of Windermere in which my life must end. The house is large and old, and in part ruinous. It is said to have been occupied for a time by Cromwell’s Roundheads, and boasts what is called a priest’s hole, this though in my judgment it looks more like a Necessary Closet. Here there was a large staff, at first distrustful but quickly welcoming when it was seen that I was adept at my duties and disinclined to shirk.
In London, I had gloried in my return to service, in light work I well understood and the entire absence of hectoring officers. Here my life was indeed delightful. I would, I resolved, hold to my post at all costs. My new master and I would grow old together; and should death come first for me I should bless him as I breathed my last. Little did I know what was to come!
There is not one of the visitations I endured that is not burned forever in my memory, but none is seared more clearly or more deeply than the first. I lay abed, having slept soundly, I believe, for some hours. Waking, I saw bending over me a maiden of mist whose hair was night and whose eyes were stars. Her hand moved toward my face—it stroked my brow, and I was conscious of no touch but only of a sensation of