Read Online Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin - Free Book Online

grey and drizzly but not cool, and in spite of it many people were strolling about, taking such fresh air as they could find. From there I had a long walk, through thick crowds of people of all sorts out to do their shopping, and carriages surging by with the drivers shouting at anyone foolish enough to try to cross a road, the horses all in a lather, wild-eyed, unable to look right nor left for their blinkers but driven forward by the whip and the mad sound of hooves everywhere, always a sad and frightening sight to me, so I clung to the buildings,moving along slowly and being bumped by those coming in and out of the stalls. Then, as if there was some signpost or boundary, all the noise and commerce gave out, the streets narrowed and the whole scene grew dark and mean—low doorways, lampless and dirty, many standing open and the unlucky residents lounging about on the steps or simply in the dirt itself. There were children everywhere, crouching in the doorways, collected in groups on every corner, working their ways singly or in a pair, through the grown people on the sidewalk with an eye always to pockets that might be liberal or just untended—cunning, sharp-faced, pale, starving, vicious children such as have neither homes to return to nor anyone who might care whether they are ever seen or heard from again. On one corner I passed a solemn girl sweeping the crossing and crying out in a sweet, sad voice for a penny. I dug down in my cloak pocket and came up with one, which, when we had reached the other side, I pressed into her outstretched hand. She barely glanced at me but closed her white fingers tight around the coin—the first she’d seen all day, I had no doubt—and turned back to her crossing, calling out to a loutish man who brushed past me roughly in his hurry to be about whatever bad business he had in mind. I stopped to look back at the child and saw myself in her hopeful, sad little face—only I was more fortunate than she, because Marm made such a home for me as she could and did not turn me into the streets. I had no brothers and sisters who must be fed too, and when I had the good luck to go to school, I found the strengthto wrest a little learning from my poor teachers, who was starving nearly as bad as we was.
    These streets were not the ones I ran down as a child, though they might be and will be near enough to them soon, as the poor buildings give out under the burden of so many. Even as a child it seemed to me that what made such places wicked was not so much that they was dirty, crowded, ugly and falling down, but that the people who come to live in them know this is a place where no rules or manners need ever be applied and so they act exactly as they feel. Were the gentle classes put into such a place and bidden to live there, they would not know how to act.
    I kept my eyes down and hurried along, feeling I was moved only by a dull tug of sadness coming out of my own childhood but now attached to this errand, which I could not think upon without a shudder. Again I told myself that doubtless this was some good thing Master had contrived, to lighten the suffering around me with a little food, a bed, or a book, but though I advised myself, I could not believe it. Here and there were housefronts of a better stamp than their neighbours—not clean by any means, nor inviting, but not in such a state of disrepair, not betraying every sign of want and despair, and at length I found myself standing before one such which bore the same number as Master had written on the letter.
    There was a step to separate this doorway from the filth of the street and I lifted my skirts to perch upon it. I found no knocker nor any sign of a bell, so I poundedthe wood a few times hard with my fist, waited, hearing nothing, then pounded again. This time I heard the sound of someone moving, a rustling of skirts and a quick step. In a moment the door flew open and I was seized up by the cold, mean, hungry eyes of a woman who