AN ACCIDENT BEFALLS THE CANDLE.
MY Aunt Margaret stood for a while with her back to the fire, very erect, and her nose in air, sniffing defiantly toward the door through which that “most impertinent woman” had disappeared. Winnie was nodding profoundly in her chair by the fire. My Aunt with a toss of her head walked off again to the window, jerked back the bolt, and looked once more into the stable-yard.
She saw Nell at the wicket-door, the man who had taken his stand there with the dog. Nell seemed to prevail with him, for he whistled back the dog, who had gone out, and locking the door again, he returned across the yard with Nell, who continued talking volubly as they walked side by side, and pointed up at my Aunt’s window. On seeing the shutter again open and my Aunt’s head and shoulders revealed against the light, both maid and man stopped in amaze, and silently gazed at her for some moments. I dare say, as my Aunt observed the evident impression produced upon those mysterious persons, she regretted inwardly the act of defiance which had removed the bolt and replaced her at the window. The woman walked into the house without speaking; the man called the dog, and strolled away towards the stable.
My Aunt closed the shutter, drew the bolt, and coming again to the fire, shook Winnie up from her sleep, and ordered her to say her prayers and get to bed.
These orders were soon complied with, and honest Winnie slept the sleep of a good conscience and a good digestion, sweetened by fatigue, while her mistress, who was cursed with an active mind, sat by the fire, with a well-snuffed candle, and conned over her correspondence and her figures, and prepared for the critical interview with the defaulting tobacconist next day. Then she fell into a reverie with her foot on the fender. I don’t think she dozed; but the fire grew low, and the snuff of the candle waxed long and heavy at top like a fungus, and the room was tenebrose and silent, as indeed was the house, for by this time it was very late.
After a while, my Aunt fancied she heard some one approaching her chamber door very softly. It was the stealthy creaking of the boards that warned her; she could not hear the tread of the foot. She held her breath, sitting straight upon her chair, and gazing at the door with such faint light as her unsnuffed taper afforded her; and I dare say she looked extremely frightened.
She heard some one breathing close outside the door, then a hand softly laid on the door-handle; the door gently opened, and the face of the woman of the high cheek bones, pale and lowering, looked in. Her ill-omened stare encountered my Aunt’s gaze, and each was perhaps unpleasantly surprised.
Both looked on, pale enough, for some time without speaking. At last my Aunt stood up and said sharply— “What’s your business here, pray?”
“’Tis late to be burnin’ candle and fire, missess — half-past twelve, no less,” said the maid with cool asperity. “We’re an airly house, ma’am, here, and keeps dacent hours. Mebbe it’s what ye’d like supper — there’s cowld corn-beef and bacon,” she added after a pause.
“Not any, thanks; had I wished rapper, I would have rung for it,” said Aunt Margaret, loftily.
“Thrue for you, missess, only there’s no bell,” answered the woman, coolly.
“More shame for you,” retorted my Aunt, with a little flush, glancing along the walls innocent of bell-rope, for this “most impertinent woman” made her feel a little small.
“I seen you lookin’ out again, ma’am, through the windy, I don’t know after who.”
The aplomb of this woman’s attacks deprived my Aunt of breath and presence of mind, and she was amazed afterwards at the perplexed sort of patience with which she submitted to her impertinence.
“Yes: I looked out of the window.”
“We would not like people stoppin’ here that had friends outside,” said the woman, with a searching glance and a sulky wag of her head.
“I don’t know what you mean, woman.”
“Oh, ho! thankee — I know very well what I mane — an’ raebbe you’re not quite sich a fool yourself but what you can make a guess. At any rate it is not a lady’s part to be fur retin’ about the room, an pimpin’ an’ spyin’, ma’am.”
“Leave the room, please,” exclaimed my Aunt.
“An’ mebbe signin’ and beckonin’ out o’ the windies be night. Oh, ho! thankee — I know well enough what belongs to a lady.”
“I repeat, woman, you had better leave the room.”
“Woman, yourself! — I’m not goin’ to be woman’d be you — an’ the big lump iv a woman ye brought widge ye. Who’s that? eh?”
“My housekeeper,” replied my Aunt, with a fierce dignity.
“An’ a strappin’ ould one she is,” retorted the woman, with a hoarse sneer. She was turning over Winnie’s clothes, which lay on a chair.
“Your conduct is intolerable. I shall see the proprietor in the morning.”
“An’ welcome!” said the woman, coolly. “You closed the shutters again, I suppose?” and she walked round the bed to the window, from which my Aunt had made her observations.
I do believe that, if she was enraged, Aunt Margaret was also the least bit in the world cowed by this woman. But observing a little trembling in the bed-curtains, to the far side of which her ugly visitor had passed, my Aunt made a quick step to the side of the bed next her, and drawing the curtain, saw this unpleasant woman at the opposite side with the bed-clothes raised in her hand from Winnie’s feet and ankles, which she was inspecting.
“Big feet!” Where’s her boots, ma’am?” said the maid across the bed, eyeing my Aunt aslant, and replacing the bed-clothes.
“Boots or shoes, on the floor by the fire, and I wish you’d begone.”
“I’ll take your own, too, ma’am,” answered she.
“Well, yes; that is, I’ll leave them outside the door.”
“As ye plaze: only get to yer bed, at wonst — it s all hours;” and without more preparation, she chucked my Aunt’s mould candle from its socket into the fire, where, lying on its side it blazed up merrily.
“What do you mean? How dare you, huzzy! Fetch a candle this moment.”
“Arra go to yer bed, woman, while ye have light, will ye?” and with these words the attendant withdrew, shutting the door with a clap.