London - Edward Rutherfurd [567]
As for Jenny, she felt only a kind of sullen misery. Was Percy trying to conceal what she was from his family? What was the point?
The meal was over, and the two brothers had just gone outside together when Maisie quietly turned to her.
“I know what you do,” she said softly. “You’re in service, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” said Jenny.
“I thought so. Those clothes.” Maisie nodded. “We’ve never had anyone in service in our family, of course. Or Herbert’s.”
“No. I don’t suppose you ever will, either,” said Jenny.
“Oh.” Maisie looked her straight in the eye. “That’s all right then.”
When, an hour later, in the handsome park around Crystal Palace, Percy asked her to marry him, Jenny said: “I don’t know, Percy. I really don’t know. I need some time.”
“Of course. How long would you like?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Percy, but I want to go home.”
Esther Silversleeves waited two weeks before she spoke to Jenny. By then she was worried.
“Jenny, you’ve been here most of your life. Now please tell me what’s the matter.” She waited patiently for her to speak.
Though Jenny had a few friends, there was no one she really felt she could confide in; so for the previous two weeks she had thought about it alone. And the more she thought, the more it seemed that everything was impossible. For a start, there was Percy to consider. Maisie and Herbert have probably talked him out of it by now, she thought. I expect he’s wishing he’d never proposed. What’s Percy want with an old thing like me with no money? she said to herself. Maisie could find him a young girl who’d do him much better. There was her brother and his children, also. I may be poor, she considered, but working as I do, if anything happened to him I could keep those children from starving. And dear old Mrs Silversleeves really needs me, Jenny thought. I’d be walking out on her, too.
“It’s nothing, really,” she said.
“Tell me about him,” the old lady said quietly, and when Jenny looked surprised: “Out late and all dressed up on a Saturday night; then off with a straw hat and a parasol the next Sunday? Surely,” she continued, as Jenny looked up ruefully, “you can’t think me such a fool that I hadn’t noticed.”
So, haltingly, Jenny told her some of it. She said nothing about her brother and his family because that subject was forbidden, but she told her a little about Percy and his family, and her doubts.
“I couldn’t leave you, Mrs Silversleeves. I owe you so much,” she concluded.
“You owe me?” Esther stared at her, then shook her head. “Child,” she said gently, “you owe me nothing. I cannot possibly live many more years, you know. I shall be looked after. Now as to this Percy,” she continued firmly. “You only suppose he’s having second thoughts. If he loves you, nothing this Maisie says is going to affect him in the least.”
“But it’s his family.”
“Oh, damn his family!” said Mrs Silversleeves, surprising them both so much that they laughed. “Now,” she said, “is that all?”
It wasn’t. Every day the memory of the woman she had seen at her brother’s, the desolation of her own childhood, those last words of poor Lucy – “Don’t ever go back” – came to visit her. The stark reality was still, as far as Jenny could see, very plain. Marriage to Percy, some children perhaps: all right enough. But if Percy died, what then? A life like the poor folk in the East End? Probably not quite that bad, but hard. Very hard. Her brother had a point. She’d done well not to marry. She had the security of the Silversleeves house; a good character; some savings. After Mrs Silversleeves had gone, she knew she’d find a good position. A housekeeper even, or lady’s maid.
Young girls got married without a thought; women like Jenny didn’t, despite the fact that she longed to be loved and to live with Percy so much that