Виктория Холт - It began in Vauxhall Gardens

"The first thing is to have something to eat and drink," he said. "I believe that is what you need more than anything."

She rose obediently.

In the eating-house with its evergreen plants in ornamental pots, and its music, he took her to a secluded table, and there, with his back to the crowd, he gave her his full attention. He watched her devour a leg of roast chicken and sip the burned champagne, which put some colour in her cheeks and made her eyes look like translucent jade. Watching her, he felt benign. He thought of Cophetua and the beggar maid or a small boy dipping his toes into a deliciously cool stream. He was savouring a pleasure knowing that he could withdraw whenever he wished to. Though why he should find pleasure in the society of an uneducated girl he was not sure.

It was after she had eaten and when they sat back listening to the music that she told him her sad story. He could hear her voice now— a little hoarse and tremulous with that queer sibilance which he would have thought ill-bred a short while before.

"It fell out like this, sir," she said. "I came up to London from the country—Hertfordshire, that's where my home was. There was a lot of us, you see, sir, and they was glad to get rid of us elder ones, Mother and Father was. ... I had a chance to work in the mantua maker's and learn a trade. A girl from our village had gone to her, and when she come home for a little stay, she said she'd take me back with her because there was a vacancy where she was, you see. So I left home "

She made him see it—the woman with her young girls working in the great room, rising early in the morning, stitching through the long hours, living simply, having no pleasures but each other's company. Mistress Rickards, the mantua maker, was strict. She would never allow the girls to go out alone. They were never allowed to go to any entertainments—not even a hanging outside Newgate Jail. Mistress Rickards was stern; she beat her girls with a stick when she thought they needed it; and she fed them on skimmed milk and texts from the Bible. They were with her to work, she told them continually; not to frivol away their time. If they worked hard they would one day be good at their trade, at which they could earn a living; then they would not starve in the gutter as some did. On the rare occasions when she took them out she would point at the beggars sitting on the street corners with their hired children, exposing their afflictions, their blindness, their ragged state, their sores. "Pity the beggars, ,, the poor things would chant miserably; and Mistress Rickards would threaten: "You'll come to that, Agnes, you lazy slut. You too, Rosie, you sluggard. Don't think you'll escape, Millie, you awkward girl. That's what you'll come to unless you learn your trade."

They had worked hard and they had been happy within their narrow lives. They used to sit at a bench by the window and the apprentices who passed by would look in and wave; each girl had had her apprentice to be teased about as she stitched and stitched to avoid the harsh prophecies of Mistress Rickards, the mantua maker.

"And one day," said Millie, in her hoarse yet childish voice, "I had to go to Mr. Latter, the mercer, for a piece of silk a lady wanted making into a mantle. Mistress Rickards went as a rule, but she'd eaten oysters the night before and they hadn't agreed with her. She sent me, and Jim was in the shop."

She softened when she talked of Jim. He was no longer an apprentice, she proudly explained, but the mercer found him too useful to let him go. So he paid him a wage to stay on, and Jim used to .say that he was the one who really managed the shop.

Their courtship had lasted ten months. Jim was a man with money. He wasn't afraid of Mistress Rickards. He said he was going to look after her and she needn't bother any more about learning a trade. He was going to see that she made mantles and pelisses for herself, not for others. She was going to be Mrs. Sand, she was.

She almost sparkled as she told him of the night they went to Vauxhall.

"There was fireworks, and we danced. I kept thinking of what Mistress Rickards would say when I got back. And when we did get back, there she was waiting, her hair in curlpapers and her cane propped up by the door. But Jim didn't care. He came in with me. He said: Tm going to marry Millie and don't you dare lay a finger on her.' "

And so they had married, and she had left Mistress Rickards' and they lived in the room which Jim had found for them in St. Martin's Lane. There they were happy for the whole of one year.

Her face darkened. "We'd been married a year ... exact to the day. Jim said: 'Let's go to Vauxhall.' So we did. We danced and watched the fireworks. Jim said let's have a drink. That was when we was just going to cross the river. So we went into one of the taverns and we hadn't been in that tavern before. If only we'd have known we'd never have gone inside the place. I didn't want the drink. Nor did Jim ... much. It was just to round off the day like. That makes it all the worse." She was silent for a moment before she went on: "We sat there laughing ... as happy as you like. It had been a lovely day. Then these men came in. I didn't know who they were. We didn't know what sort of a tavern it was. But they were bad ... them men. First they started to drink; then they put jewels and things on the table. Jim looked at me: 'Come on,' he said, 'we'll get out of here.' But as we went to the door one of them ... a big man in a red coat... got up. He was swaying with the drink. He caught me.... It was dreadful. I can't bear to think of it."

He filled her glass and told her to drink. She obeyed. He knew that she had been obeying someone all her life—her parents, Mistress Rickards, Jim.

"Tell me the rest quickly," he said. "Don't dwell on it, because it makes you unhappy."

She nodded. "There was a fight. I remember the glass breaking .. . and the screams.... One of them had a gun. They was highwaymen and they'd killed men before. One more didn't make no difference to them ... and that one was my Jim."

A deep silence had settled on them both. He knew that she was going over it all again, and he was angry with himself for being the means of reviving her melancholy memories. But silence would not help her now.

"Surely the law ..." he began.

"The law?" she said sadly. "That's for you and your sort. They couldn't find those men, and it wasn't worth much trouble ... not for a poor man."

He felt humiliated; eagerly he sought for some means of comforting her. He could think of nothing he could do; he found himself ineffectually patting the hand which lay on the table.

The rest of her story was pitiably inevitable. What could she do ? The rent had been paid in advance and there was still a little money left. But that had not lasted long. She had spent her last pennies on a trip to Vauxhall. After that? She did not know. She simply did not know. She thought she would go back to the tavern where he had died. Perhaps those men would be there. Perhaps they would kill her as she wished they had on that night.

"I don't know why I came here to-night," she said. "I truly don't know."

He said, to her surprise: "I don't know why I came."

After that he took her to her room and gave her money for food and rent. Perhaps, he told himself again and again, she is a clever beggar. There were many such in London. Some hired babies—the more deformed the better; some even mutilated the children and themselves to make them more almsworthy. Why should not a girl with appealing green eyes concoct a tragic story for a simple man from the country? Who knew—the lout in the gardens might have been an accomplice.

It would have been better to have believed this, to have paid the money that would appease his conscience, and then forget the incident. It could so easily have ended there. The money he had given her would take care of her needs for some weeks. What more could anyone expect of a chance encounter?