I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy
old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well
aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually
happened--and you must please to jog on a little while longer with me,
in expectation of Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival later in the day.
Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope had left
me, I was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes in the servants'
hall, which meant that dinner was ready. Taking my own meals in my own
sitting-room, I had nothing to do with the servants' dinner, except to
wish them a good stomach to it all round, previous to composing myself
once more in my chair. I was just stretching my legs, when out
bounced another woman on me. Not my daughter again; only Nancy, the
kitchen-maid, this time. I was straight in her way out; and I observed,
as she asked me to let her by, that she had a sulky face--a thing which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass me without
inquiry.
"What are you turning your back on your dinner for?" I asked. "What's
wrong now, Nancy?"
Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up, and
took her by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass, and it is customary
with me to adopt that manner of showing that I personally approve of a
girl.
"What's wrong now?" I said once more.
"Rosanna's late again for dinner," says Nancy. "And I'm sent to fetch
her in. All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house. Let me
alone, Mr. Betteredge!"
The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid. Having a
kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall presently know),
and seeing in Nancy's face, that she would fetch her fellow-servant in
with more hard words than might be needful under the circumstances, it
struck me that I had nothing particular to do, and that I might as well
fetch Rosanna myself; giving her a hint to be punctual in future, which
I knew she would take kindly from ME.
"Where is Rosanna?" I inquired.
"At the sands, of course!" says Nancy, with a toss of her head. "She had
another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked to go out and
get a breath of fresh air. I have no patience with her!"
"Go back to your dinner, my girl," I said. "I have patience with her,
and I'll fetch her in."
Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased,
she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin. It
isn't immorality--it's only habit.
Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.
No! it won't do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you; but you
really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna--for
this reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly.
How hard I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way,
and how badly I succeed! But, there!--Persons and Things do turn up so
vexatiously in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed.
Let us take it easy, and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick
of the mystery soon, I promise you!
Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common
politeness) was the only new servant in our house. About four months
before the time I am writing of, my lady had been in London, and had
gone over a Reformatory, intended to save forlorn women from drifting
back into bad ways, after they had got released from prison. The matron,
seeing my lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a girl to her,
named Rosanna Spearman, and told her a most miserable story, which I
haven't the heart to repeat here; for I don't like to be made wretched
without any use, and no more do you. The upshot of it was, that Rosanna
Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up
Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing
from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory
followed the lead of the law. The matron's opinion of Rosanna was (in
spite of what she had done) that the girl was one in a thousand, and
that she only wanted a chance to prove herself worthy of any Christian
woman's interest in her. My lady (being a Christian woman, if ever there
was one yet) said to the matron, upon that, "Rosanna Spearman shall
have her chance, in my service." In a week afterwards, Rosanna Spearman
entered this establishment as our second housemaid.
Not a soul was told the girl's story, excepting Miss Rachel and me. My
lady, doing me the honour to consult me about most things, consulted
me about Rosanna. Having fallen a good deal latterly into the late Sir
John's way of always agreeing with my lady, I agreed with her heartily
about Rosanna Spearman.
A fairer chance no girl could have had than was given to this poor girl
of ours. None of the servants could cast her past life in her teeth, for
none of the servants knew what it had been. She had her wages and her
privileges, like the rest of them; and every now and then a friendly
word from my lady, in private, to encourage her. In return, she showed
herself, I am bound to say, well worthy of the kind treatment bestowed
upon her. Though far from strong, and troubled occasionally with those
fainting-fits already mentioned, she went about her work modestly and
uncomplainingly, doing it carefully, and doing it well. But, somehow,
she failed to make friends among the other women servants, excepting my
daughter Penelope, who was always kind to Rosanna, though never intimate
with her.
I hardly know what the girl did to offend them. There was certainly no
beauty about her to make the others envious; she was the plainest woman
in the house, with the additional misfortune of having one shoulder
bigger than the other. What the servants chiefly resented, I think, was
her silent tongue and her solitary ways. She read or worked in leisure
hours when the rest gossiped. And when it came to her turn to go out,
nine times out of ten she quietly put on her bonnet, and had her turn by
herself. She never quarrelled, she never took offence; she only kept a
certain distance, obstinately and civilly, between the rest of them and
herself. Add to this that, plain as she was, there was just a dash of
something that wasn't like a housemaid, and that WAS like a lady, about
her. It might have been in her voice, or it might have been in her face.
All I can say is, that the other women pounced on it like lightning the
first day she came into the house, and said (which was most unjust) that
Rosanna Spearman gave herself airs.
Having now told the story of Rosanna, I have only to notice one of the
many queer ways of this strange girl to get on next to the story of the
sands.
Our house is high up on the Yorkshire coast, and close by the sea. We
have got beautiful walks all round us, in every direction but one. That
one I acknowledge to be a horrid walk. It leads, for a quarter of
a mile, through a melancholy plantation of firs, and brings you out
between low cliffs on the loneliest and ugliest little bay on all our
coast.
The sand-hills here run down to the sea, and end in two spits of rock
jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the
water. One is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the two,
shifting backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year, lies the
most horrible quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire. At the turn of the
tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below, which sets the
whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling in a manner most
remarkable to see, and which has given to it, among the people in our
parts, the name of the Shivering Sand. A great bank, half a mile out,
nigh the mouth of the bay, breaks the force of the main ocean coming
in from the offing. Winter and summer, when the tide flows over the
quicksand, the sea seems to leave the waves behind it on the bank,
and rolls its waters in smoothly with a heave, and covers the sand in
silence. A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell you! No boat ever
ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village, called
Cobb's Hole, ever come here to play. The very birds of the air, as it
seems to me, give the Shivering Sand a wide berth. That a young woman,
with dozens of nice walks to choose from, and company to go with her, if
she only said "Come!" should prefer this place, and should sit and work
or read in it, all alone, when it's her turn out, I grant you, passes
belief. It's true, nevertheless, account for it as you may, that this
was Rosanna Spearman's favourite walk, except when she went once
or twice to Cobb's Hole, to see the only friend she had in our
neighbourhood, of whom more anon. It's also true that I was now setting
out for this same place, to fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings us
round happily to our former point, and starts us fair again on our way
to the sands.
I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. When I got out, through the
sand-hills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw bonnet,
and her plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her deformed
shoulder as much as might be--there she was, all alone, looking out on
the quicksand and the sea.
She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.
Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass without
inquiry--I turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying. My
bandanna handkerchief--one of six beauties given to me by my lady--was
handy in my pocket. I took it out, and I said to Rosanna, "Come and sit
down, my dear, on the slope of the beach along with me. I'll dry your
eyes for you first, and then I'll make so bold as to ask what you have
been crying about."
When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of
a beach a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I
was settled, Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior
handkerchief to mine--cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very
wretched; but she sat down by me like a good girl, when I told her. When
you want to comfort a woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee.
I thought of this golden rule. But there! Rosanna wasn't Nancy, and
that's the truth of it!
"Now, tell me, my dear," I said, "what are you crying about?"
"About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly.
"My past life still comes back to me sometimes."
"Come, come, my girl," I said, "your past life is all sponged out. Why
can't you forget it?"
She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man,
and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.
Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my
grease. The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the
lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything.
The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap
of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place,
and shook her head.
"The stain is taken off," she said. "But the place shows, Mr.
Betteredge--the place shows!"
A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat is not
an easy remark to answer. Something in the girl herself, too, made me
particularly sorry for her just then. She had nice brown eyes, plain as
she was in other ways--and she looked at me with a sort of respect for
my happy old age and my good character, as things for ever out of her
own reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not
feeling myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to
do. That thing was--to take her in to dinner.
"Help me up," I said. "You're late for dinner, Rosanna--and I have come
to fetch you in."
"You, Mr. Betteredge!" says she.
"They told Nancy to fetch you," I said. "But thought you might like your
scolding better, my dear, if it came from me."
Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and
gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again,
and succeeded--for which I respected her. "You're very kind, Mr.
Betteredge," she said. "I don't want any dinner to-day--let me bide a
little longer here."
"What makes you like to be here?" I asked. "What is it that brings you
everlastingly to this miserable place?"
"Something draws me to it," says the girl, making images with her finger
in the sand. "I try to keep away from it, and I can't. Sometimes,"
says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy,
"sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me
here."
"There's roast mutton and suet-pudding waiting for you!" says I. "Go in
to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an empty
stomach!" I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time of
life) to hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter
end!
She didn't seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept me
where I was, sitting by her side.
"I think the place has laid a spell on me," she said. "I dream of it
night after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You
know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge--you know I try to deserve your
kindness, and my lady's confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes whether
the life here is too quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after
all I have gone through, Mr. Betteredge--after all I have gone through.
It's more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not
what they are, than it is to be here. My lady doesn't know, the matron
at the reformatory doesn't know, what a dreadful reproach honest people
are in themselves to a woman like me. Don't scold me, there's a dear
good man. I do my work, don't I? Please not to tell my lady I am
discontented--I am not. My mind's unquiet, sometimes, that's all." She
snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed down to the
quicksand. "Look!" she said "Isn't it wonderful? isn't it terrible? I
have seen it dozens of times, and it's always as new to me as if I had
never seen it before!"
I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid
sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then
dimpled and quivered all over. "Do you know what it looks like to ME?"
says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. "It looks as if it had
hundreds of suffocating people under it--all struggling to get to the
surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a
stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck
it down!"
Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an
unquiet mind! My answer--a pretty sharp one, in the poor girl's own
interests, I promise you!--was at my tongue's end, when it was snapped
short off on a sudden by a voice among the sand-hills shouting for me
by my name. "Betteredge!" cries the voice, "where are you?" "Here!"
I shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.
Rosanna started to her feet, and stood looking towards the voice. I was
just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a
sudden change in the girl's face.
Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it
before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless
surprise. "Who is it?" I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own question.
"Oh! who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than to me. I twisted
round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on us from
among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a
beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose
in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set the
Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I could get on my
legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me, put his arm round
my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly squeezed the
breath out of my body. "Dear old Betteredge!" says he. "I owe you
seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know who I am?"
Lord bless us and save us! Here--four good hours before we expected
him--was Mr. Franklin Blake!
Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to all
appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I looked at
the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than ever, seemingly at
having caught Mr. Franklin's eye; and she turned and left us suddenly,
in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without either making her
curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me. Very unlike her usual
self: a civiller and better-behaved servant, in general, you never met
with.
"That's an odd girl," says Mr. Franklin. "I wonder what she sees in me
to surprise her?"
"I suppose, sir," I answered, drolling on our young gentleman's
Continental education, "it's the varnish from foreign parts."
I set down here Mr. Franklin's careless question, and my foolish answer,
as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people--it being, as I
have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior fellow-creatures to
find that their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than they are.
Neither Mr. Franklin, with his wonderful foreign training, nor I, with
my age, experience, and natural mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea of
what Rosanna Spearman's unaccountable behaviour really meant. She was
out of our thoughts, poor soul, before we had seen the last flutter of
her little grey cloak among the sand-hills. And what of that? you will
ask, naturally enough. Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can,
and perhaps you will be as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I
found out the truth.