Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/95

 now, his early bringing up had been more luxurious and refined than ours had been; so that he in a manner condescended when he came into our home sphere, and he made me understand that he condescended. You know how men can make women understand this. With James of course Ashley was all that was genial and brotherly, though there was that certain flavour of the superior being in all he said or did; but he treated me very much as if I was an upper servant or an automaton. He never spoke to me; never even shook hands with me when he came in or went away; if he had anything to ask, anything he wanted done for him, he looked at James and asked him, though I had to do it; and if by any chance he came when James was out, and waited for him, he used to take a book and busy himself in that, without paying more attention to me than he did to the cat. And not quite so much. So this was how I knew that Ashley Graham held himself superior to us. He was too honourable to treat me as his equal when he knew that I was his inferior, I used to think; and I liked him all the better for his haughtiness.

Ashley knew very little about our real circumstances, and we hid the seamy side from him, perhaps foolishly. For instance, he did not know that we had only two rooms; that behind the large old Indian screen of our sitting-room was James's bed; and that the other little room at the top of the house was mine. He was as poor as we were, but he was in society and we were not; and that gave him an appearance of superior condition, which of course he wanted to keep up for the sake of his family. Still, he knew that James did not sell many pictures, and, as I tell you, we were all half-starved together. But Ashley thought we were better off than we were, and only I knew how poor he was.

He was often in our rooms, and lately he got into the way of sleeping there. The first time he asked for a bed it was a wild wet winter's night, when no one with a heart could have turned out even a dog. In those days he lived over at Holloway, or some unearthly place like that; it was past twelve, and the last omnibus had gone; a cab would have ruined him outright—a cab from Percy-street to Holloway for a poor painter who did not sell his pictures, the thing was impossible!—so when he asked, in that off-hand cavalier way of his, if we could take him in, and James looked at me, I answered briskly, "Yes, certainly;" and, with a sign to James, "if Mr. Graham does not object to a little room at the top of the house."

No, Mr. Graham did not object to a little room at the top of the house: he said this quite graciously, as if he was conferring a favour, not receiving it; upon which I went up-stairs, and began to arrange my own room for him. It was a pleasure! Georgie! I was just a slave, and nothing more! I brought out my poor little hoard of meagre prettinesses, and laid them about the room where they made the most effect; I hid away my own things, so that he should not know whose room it was; and when my brother took him up-stairs, even he scarcely seemed to know what I had done, and I really believe imagined I had somehow changed my room, and that I was to be quite comfortable myself for the night. He did not see me again to ask me how I had managed—I am speaking now of James—and neither he nor Ashley knew that I had passed the night sitting on a wooden chair by the empty kitchen hearth; for the landlady let us have a little kitchen for my cooking and washing, &c. It had been originally the scullery, and was a dirty, damp old hole; but it did well enough. We were too poor to be fastidious.

In the morning I took up Ashley's hot water and his boots, which I had cleaned with my own hands. He thought it was the landlady's servant who had waited on him, and as he passed me on the stairs he gave her sixpence, which the girl took quite tranquilly, as even less than her due. Those boots let me into the secret of Ashley's poverty. They were old and worn, and I mended them for him, I must say, cleverly. I often did this; for Ashley, never dreaming that I had only a hard wooden chair for my bed when he slept with us, continually now overstayed his time, playing chess or "talking shop" with my brother, and at last got to ask for his room as almost a matter of course. James was too proud and timid, poor fellow! to tell the truth, and I was too happy to be of use to Ashley to murmur at any sacrifice that I could make. It was the sweetest time of my life! That humble unrecognised self-sacrifice for the one you honour is almost more delicious than gratitude!

And all this time Ashley took no more notice of me than before. I was very young. James was only a protection in name, not in reality; and, girl as I was, I could understand something of the motive of his reserve, and see into the value of it. And yet I used to think he might have been just a little