The Old Year Out

At Scarrow they drank the old year out at eleven, because the men had to be up at five whatever the calendar said.

It was done in the staircase hall. Mrs. Orme had made a bowl of hot ale with roasted apples floating in it, and Jessop ladled it into thirty-one cups. The household stood in a half circle in their black, holding the warmth between both hands. The family and guests stood on the lowest stairs. Hester had her godmother’s shawl over one arm and three sheets of paper pinned inside her pocket.

She had eaten nothing at dinner. She had gone through the day as she might have gone through a day before a tooth was drawn.

“The King,” said Lord Wardlow, and they drank. He waited a moment with his cup lifted. “And the year. It took the Queen from us, and it gave us two feet of snow and sixty men to dig it. I thank every one of you for the fortnight past. God send us an easier one.”

“THE YEAR!” shouted the Colonel, a full second late, and Ned Varley cheered from the back and was looked at by Jessop.

Lord Halewood stood two stairs above Hester. He leaned down a little, with his cup in his white hand.

“The new year, Miss Ludlow. I look forward to the third Saturday of it particularly.”

“I hope it will answer your expectations, my lord.”

“I am sure that it will.” He drank, and set his cup on the tray. “Wardlow, you will forgive me if I see it in from my bed. I never could find anything to say to a clock.”

He went up without hurry. Hester listened to his door close at the far end of the east passage. She had been waiting for that sound since nine.

The household drained its cups and filed away toward the kitchen. The Marsdens followed, arm in arm, and Mr. Brome after them with a candle. Lady Cecily kissed her brother’s cheek and went up. Lady Halewood put out her hand for her shawl.

“Ma’am,” said Hester. “May I come to you in half an hour? I have a matter of business with Lord Wardlow. It is the account I spoke of yesterday.”

Her godmother looked at her for some time. The black eyes went to Hester’s pocket, and to her face, and then to the Earl, who was speaking to Jessop by the door.

“The butcher’s paper,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I see.” She took the shawl and put it round her own shoulders, which she had never done in two years. “Pay it in full, child. A debt paid by halves is only owed twice. The door stays open, and Pruett shall sit up for you. I shall not.”

She went up the stairs with her cane, one step at a time, and did not look back.

Hester crossed the hall. Her boots were loud on the stone.

“My lord. May I have a quarter of an hour of you, in the library? It will not keep until morning.”

He turned. He did not ask her what it was. He said, “As long as you need,” and took the lamp from Jessop’s hand.

“Jessop, you will be here until twelve?”

“To open the door on the stroke, my lord. As always.”

“Then leave this one wide.”
***
The fire had burned low. He set the lamp on the common ground beside the inkstand and bent to lay a log on. When he straightened, he put his hand on the back of her chair.

“Will you sit?”

“I had rather stand. My father made us stand to own a fault. He said that a person sitting down was already half excused.” She went to her own side of the desk and stayed behind the chair. “I should be glad if you stood too, my lord. You may want to walk out of the room.”

He went round to his side. The nine feet of oak lay between them, with the lamp, and the brass plate at the corner of his blotter.

Her mouth was dry. She had made this sentence a hundred times since Tuesday, and each time she had built something in front of it. She gave him only the six words that mattered.

“My lord, I am Mrs. Nettle.”

He did not start. His left hand was flat on the desk, and it stayed flat. He looked at her steadily across the lamp, and his face was very grave.

“Go on,” he said.

“I have been since the first of March in the year seventeen. I have written every one. Ninety-five were printed, and a ninety-sixth has been lying in this house.” She heard her voice shake and went on over it. “I am paid two guineas a week. My father left my mother an annuity of fifty pounds. The rent of the house in Islington is forty. There are four of us. My sister Naomi is nineteen. My brother Jonas is fourteen and at a day school. The two guineas are the coal and the meat and his Latin. I do not offer that as an excuse. You are entitled to know the price you were sold at.”

“I had wondered what it was,” he said slowly. “Go on.”

“I sat at my godmother’s table three nights in the week and wrote down what was said across my head. She knows nothing of it. Whatever you do with me, I ask that she is not blamed.” Hester drew a breath. “I made the Earl of Soot. I found it the week your bill was first talked of, and I was delighted with it. I wrote that you hoped to sit down by Michaelmas. On Christmas morning I watched you read the lesson and understood what forty minutes had cost you. On Christmas night you told me what the soot was. I put my hand on yours and said nothing. I could not say I was sorry without saying for what.”

“Miss Ludlow—”

“Pray let me finish. I shall not be able to begin again.” She unpinned her pocket. Her fingers were clumsy, and the pin pricked her. “I told you on the Edge that I had been unjust to you in my thoughts. I had been unjust in print as well, and that is worse. There were two paragraphs. You know them. I can shew you where I had them.”

She laid the first sheet on the desk, on the common ground, under the lamp.

“That came to Crane Court on the second of May last, unsigned. I asked about the patent in two places. Nobody would say it was false, and I took that for proof, because I liked my sentence. I learned from Ned on my second day here that you give the machines away.”

She laid the second beside it.

“That came on the ninth of June in the year seventeen. I asked nobody anything. The street was right and the hours were right. Lady Cecily told me the truth of it over the parcels last week, without knowing whom she told. I let her tell me, and I tied her string, and I held my tongue.”

His hand had closed at last. He was looking at the second note. She saw him read it through, and saw the muscle move in his jaw at alone, toward eleven o’clock.

“And this,” Hester said, “is why I picked up the papers on Christmas Eve.”

She put the four lines about the sweep’s boy between the two.

“Look at the d in lordship. Then at Lord, there, and Lady, there. Look at the M, and the tail of the g. I have had them under a candle three nights. It is one hand, my lord. I had never seen a line of his writing until he let that fall on your hearthrug.”

He drew the lamp nearer and bent over the three sheets. He took a long time. She stood with her hands gripped on the chair-back and watched the grey at his temple, and thought that she had better look at him now as much as she could.

“Halewood,” he said at last, very quietly.

“He wanted your sister’s twenty thousand pounds, and you told him why he should not have them. He has told me himself that he pays debts of that kind. He did not know to whom he was writing. He knows now.”

His head came up. “He knows?”

“Since Monday. He opened your post-bag with a penknife and took out my packet. It is directed to Mr. Garrow, and every idle man in London knows who Mr. Garrow is. He stopped me in the gallery. He will have a paragraph in the Lantern of the sixteenth of January, to say that your bill is a job got up for the machine-makers and that you are their hired voice. If I do not write it, he tells you, and Lady Cecily, and my godmother, and his four clubs. He spoke of my mother’s landlord.” She made herself say the rest. “I told him that he should have my answer in print. He took it for a yes. It was not. I will not print a third lie for him. But I let him think it for three days, and I let you—on Tuesday I let you—”

She could not get to the end of that one.

“I ought to have told you on the hill. You asked me twice. I had two words out, and I gave you something smaller. You kissed a woman you did not know, and I let you do it.”

He said nothing. The log caught and flared.

“There. That is all of it. My packet has a line in it about you and night-caps. He has it in his coat. I have a letter upstairs from my editor to say that your hundred guineas are making one of his men thoughtful. You need not pay anybody now.” She let go of the chair and stood with her hands at her sides. “I expect to be put out of the house, my lord. The road will bear a sledge. I can be ready by eight. I ask only that I may leave those three sheets with you, for Lady Cecily, and that I may be the one to tell her what I am. I owe her that to her face.”

It was said. She felt quite empty, and oddly light, as she had felt at her father’s grave when the last of the earth was in.

He did not speak for so long that she began to count the ticks of the clock in the hall. He was looking at the notes. Then he looked at her, and she could not read him at all. There was pain in his face, and she had expected that. There was something else that she had not, and it looked almost like relief.

“You take it very quietly,” she said. Her voice cracked. “I had thought that you would at least walk about.”

“I am a slow man, Miss Ludlow. All London knows it.” He stopped there a moment. “You have talked for ten minutes. I should like to answer in the same order, if you can stand a little longer.”

“I can stand.”

“The two paragraphs, then.” He touched the edge of the first note. “You were fed these by a man who knew what he was doing, and who chose you because you were good. That was his sin before it was yours. You should have asked more questions in May. You should have asked one in June. You have known that for a fortnight, and I have watched it make you ill. For my part of them, I forgive you. I do it wholly, and I shall not take it back.”

Her eyes stung. She held them wide.

“The June one is not all mine to forgive. That is my sister’s. You are right that she must hear it from you. I shall not tell her before you do, and I shall not hurry you. But I do not think it will be as you fear. I said to her once that a lie with no author is believed for ever. You have just handed her the author.”

“And the rest?” said Hester. “The ninety-three others?”

“I have read them.” One corner of his mouth moved. “I spoke for forty minutes. I had the verb at the wrong end, and you were the only person in England who told me so. The Bishop did preach an hour on charity to a curate on forty pounds. Bombazine did go to five shillings. Most of what you wrote of me was true, Miss Ludlow, and most of what you wrote of the others. I did not like it. I could never find where it was false.”

“The name was false.”

“The name was exact. I have had soot on me since I was eleven. You did not know it, and I did. That is the only difference.” He paused for the next word, and she waited for it, as she had learned to. “I minded it less from the day I knew who had stood at this desk and heard about Tom. You could have given me a dozen comfortable answers that night. You gave me your hand. I do not want an apology for that. I would not change it for one.”

She shook her head. She could not see him properly.

“As to putting you out. I shall not put you anywhere. You are my guest until Twelfth Day. You have half a speech on that blotter, and I cannot finish it without you. And if you believe that I kissed a woman I did not know—” He stopped again, longer. “I knew the woman. I knew how she argued, and what she did in Hannah Eyre’s cottage, and how she looked when a curate got a psalm wrong. A pen-name does not alter one of those.”

“My lord, you cannot—it is too easy. You offered a hundred guineas for me.”

“Let the guineas alone. They are my fault, and I shall mend them.”

It was the gentleness that undid her. She had braced herself for anger for three weeks, and she had nothing ready for this. Her breath caught, and then she was crying. She did it without grace, with both hands over her face and her shoulders shaking, as she had not cried since the vicarage door closed behind them.

She heard him come round the end of the desk. He did not touch her. A handkerchief was put into her fingers, and she pressed it to her eyes.

“I am sorry,” she said into it. “I did not mean to do this. I meant to be dignified and go upstairs.”

“You have been dignified for a quarter of an hour. It was very hard to watch.” His voice was close, and not quite steady. “Miss Ludlow. There is a thing that I ought—”

“Pray do not be kind to me again for a minute. I cannot bear another. Only wait.”

He waited. She heard him draw breath once, as if to go on. Then he let it out, and whatever he had been about to say went with it. She supposed that it had been one more generous thing, and she was grateful to be spared it. She wept until the worst was over, and blew her nose, and looked up.

He was standing a yard from her with his hands behind him. His face was troubled. She thought that he was sorry for her, and it made her want to cry again.

“There,” she said. “I have spoiled your handkerchief. You may send the bill to Crane Court.”

“Give me your hand.”

She gave him the left. He shook his head and reached for the other. He turned it over in the lamplight and looked at the middle finger, stained black down one side.

“I have looked at that for nine days,” he said. “I told myself that Lady Halewood must send out a great many cards.”

He bent and put his mouth to the stain. It was brief and warm. She felt it to the soles of her feet. Then he set her hand down on the back of the chair, as carefully as he might have set down a glass, and stepped away.

“What will you do about him?” she asked.

“Tomorrow. He is asleep, and the notes will keep until daylight. May I have them tonight?”

“They are yours. They always were.”

He gathered the three sheets and put them inside his coat. In the hall there was a step on the stone, and the rattle of a bolt being drawn. Cold air ran along the floor and stirred the lamp flame. The tall clock on the stairs gathered itself with a whirr and began to strike.

They both stood and listened. She counted, because she could not help it. At the twelfth stroke she heard Jessop say something civil to the dark, and the great door swing wide.

Lord Wardlow looked at her across the open door and the cold. His eyes were very dark and very kind, and there was a shadow in them that she took for weariness.

“Then we begin the year honest,” he said.
***