Read Online Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin - Free Book Online Page A

I could see greeted every new face as an occasion for suspicion and contempt. She was tall, not well dressed but not in the poor rags of her neighbours on the street by any means, and her hair, which was wiry, silver with age, untidy, seemed to stand out about her face in anger. Though her dress was clean it was cut too low for morning, and the bones that protruded at her throat, where some gentlewoman might place a locket on a bit of ribbon, stuck out looking raw, angry, like the rest of her. When she spoke, which she did at once, her voice was husky, her accent as rude as if she hated the words she spoke.
    “Well, here’s a fine young miss at my doorstep,” she said. “Having been turned out of her position, if I don’t miss my guess, for pinching the silver, or was it the brandy, my girl.”
    “I’m looking for Mrs. Farraday,” I said.
    “And you’re looking
at
her, too,” was her response.
    I drew the letter from my sleeve, my fingers trembling so it was all I could do to unfasten the buttons, and as I did I explained myself, wanting only for this business to be concluded and myself far away. “I’ve a letter from Dr. Jekyll,” I said. “He has bidden me deliver it to you and wait on your answer, which you may give me direct without writing,” and I pulled the letterout. Before I could hand it to her she had snatched it from my fingers, breaking the seal eagerly. “Harry Jekyll,” she said, “and what does he want with Mrs. Farraday today?” She withdrew the page from the envelope, extracting two bank notes and slipping them into the front of her dress so quick and nimble I couldn’t make out their amounts, then stood perusing the letter with her eyebrows raised and a self-satisfied smirk on her lips. It shocked me to hear Master referred to so familiar, and I had such a feeling of revulsion for her that I drew back a little on my step and tried to occupy my thoughts with the wonder of such a woman being able to read.
    “I thought it would come to something like this,” she said at length, looking me up and down as if she thought I must be an accomplice.
    “I’m afraid I know nothing of it,” I said.
    “Count yourself lucky, then, my girl,” she replied. “I wish I knew nothing of such a one as is here sent to me.”
    I was silent and she continued her perusal of the letter, hissing over it like some snake who has come upon a mouse, and darting quick, glittering looks at me over the top of the page. “These terms is acceptable,” she said. “I’ll say that for Harry Jekyll, he knows the price o’ things.”
    “Then your answer is yes,” was all I said.
    She folded up the paper, stuffed it back in the envelope and sent it to lie with the bank notes in her bosom, all the while smiling at me in such a hateful,confident way as made me shrink inside my clothes. I had a dread that she was about to touch me.
    “Oh, you look innocent enough,” she said. “And you’re very cool, aren’t you. Proud too, I’ll wager, but time will take care of that.”
    I said nothing, but I met her insulting eyes with my own and poured out through them such feelings as seemed fairly to sober her, for she lost interest in baiting me and said, “Tell your master it will take me a week to clear everyone out. I can’t turn out such as have already paid. Then another week to make the”—she paused over the word—“alterations he wants.”
    “Very well,” I said, feeling so mystified at her response that I stood a moment turning it over in my mind. “I’ll tell him your answer is yes, in two weeks’ time.”
    “You may tell him whatever you want,” she said. “And give him Mrs. Farraday’s compliments for choosing such a milk-faced, lying little la-di-dah for a messenger, and tell him next time he has business with me, he’d best come on it himself. I think he’s not above it,” and with that she closed the door hard in my face, leaving me feeling a gush of relief, for I thought now that was over