pg5247 [254]
Constance also waited, for the fraction of a second, as if expectant.
"Well, Amy," she said at length in her voice weakened by fatigue and pain. "The letters?"
"There ain't no letters," said Amy, grimly. "You might have known, if there'd been any, I should have brought 'em up. Postman went past twenty minutes agone. I'm always being interrupted, and it isn't as if I hadn't got enough to do—now!"
She turned to leave, and was pulling the door open.
"Amy!" said a voice sharply. It was Sophia's.
The servant jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the implicit, imperious command to stop.
"You will please not speak to your mistress in that tone, at any rate while I'm here," said Sophia, icily. "You know she is ill and weak. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"I never——" Amy began.
"I don't want to argue," Sophia said angrily. "Please leave the room."
Amy obeyed. She was cowed, in addition to being staggered.
To the persons involved in it, this episode was intensely dramatic. Sophia had surmised that Constance permitted liberties of speech to Amy; she had even guessed that Amy sometimes took licence to be rude. But that the relations between them were such as to allow the bullying of Constance by an Amy downright insolent—this had shocked and wounded Sophia, who suddenly had a vision of Constance as the victim of a reign of terror. "If the creature will do this while I'm here," said Sophia to herself, "what does she do when they are alone together in the house?"
"Well," she exclaimed, "I never heard of such goings-on! And you let her talk to you in that style! My dear Constance!"
Constance was sitting up in bed, the small tea-tray on her knees. Her eyes were moist. The tears had filled them when she knew that there was no letter. Ordinarily the failure of Cyril's letter would not have made her cry, but weakness had impaired her self-control. And the tears having once got into her eyes, she could not dismiss them. There they were!
"She's been with me such a long time," Constance murmured. "She takes liberties. I've corrected her once or twice."
"Liberties!" Sophia repeated the word. "Liberties!"
"Of course I really ought not to allow it," said Constance. "I ought to have put a stop to it long since."
"Well," said Sophia, rather relieved by this symptom of Constance's secret mind, "I do hope you won't think I'm meddlesome, but truly it was too much for me. The words were out of my mouth before I——" She stopped.
"You were quite right, quite right," said Constance, seeing before her in the woman of fifty the passionate girl of fifteen.
"I've had a good deal of experience of servants," said Sophia.
"I know you have," Constance put in.
"And I'm convinced that it never pays to stand any sauce. Servants don't understand kindness and forbearance. And this sort of thing grows and grows till you can't call your soul your own."
"You are quite right," Constance said again, with even more positiveness.
Not merely the conviction that Sophia was quite right, but the desire to assure Sophia that Sophia was not meddlesome, gave force to her utterance. Amy's allusion to extra work shamed Amy's mistress as a hostess, and she was bound to make amends.
"Now as to that woman," said Sophia in a lower voice, as she sat down confidentially on the edge of the bed. And she told Constance about Amy and the dogs, and about Amy's rudeness in the kitchen. "I should never have DREAMT of mentioning such things," she finished. "But under the circumstances I feel it right that you should know. I feel you ought to know."
And Constance nodded her head in thorough agreement. She did not trouble to go into articulate apologies to her guest for the actual misdeeds of her servant. The sisters were now on a plane of intimacy where such apologies would have been supererogatory. Their voices fell lower and lower, and