CHAPTER ONE
'No,' said Sally-Anne McAllister dazedly.
'No, please, no,' and she struggled fiercely against the arms which held her -- a man's, she noted, and that was enough to start her struggling even harder.
She would not be held by a man ever again.
No, not at all, and then, even in her confused state, her mind shied away from the reasons for her distaste, and she found herself saying even through her pain and shock, 'I will not think about that, I will not,' and so saying she stopped struggling and sank back into oblivion once more .
The next time she returned to consciousness she discovered that the whole right side of her face was numb, and that was all she registered.
The memory of being held in a man's hard arms had disappeared.
Her eyes opened; she was on her back.
Above her she saw a ceiling, grey and white, a plaster rose from which depended a gas-light inside a glass globe, engraved with roses.
She heard voices which at first made little sense, could not, for the moment, think where she might be or even who she was.
'Mama,' she said, her voice a thread, speech strangely difficult.
'She's coming round at last.'
It was a man's voice, educated, a pleasant if cold baritone.
An earlier memory returned.
Was he the man who had held her?
She did not want him to hold her again.
She tried to sit up, but was pushed gently back, by a woman's hand this time.
'Oh, dear God, Dr Neil.
Thanks be to Him she's conscious again.
I thought she would never recover,' said a woman's voice this time.
'The second blow was a cruel one.'
'Stupid,' said the man's cold voice.
'It was stupid of her to try to intervene between Jem Higgins and his Poll.'
Sally-Anne opened her eyes, tried to sit up -- a mistake that, everything reeled around her again; but memory had returned and she knew why she was in this room...and even why she had reached there, but not how.
And how dared the man standing between herself and the light so that she could not see him clearly speak so harshly of what she had done?
It might indeed be stupid to try to stop a man from attacking a helpless woman...but...
'Someone,' she announced, her voice suddenly strong again, 'someone has to try to prevent poor women from being beaten by great strong brutes.'
'Oh, yes,' said the man drily, 'I could not agree with you more.
But not young girls who could barely defend themselves against a schoolboy, let alone the professional bruiser Jem Higgins once was.
How came you here, anyway?'
And from what she could see of him, which was not much, he was giving her the coldest of stares.
Her memory returned fully...
She remembered quite clearly what she had been doing scarce ten minutes ago.
Sally-Anne McAllister -- although that was not her real name -- walked along Vetch Street in London's East End late on a hot afternoon in the early summer of 1903.
Not that summer did anything for Vetch Street; dust motes hung in the warm air and the sunlight was pitiless, starkly revealing the cracks in the broken pavement, the decaying brickwork of the small terrace houses, and the larger tenements which stood among them, and the rottenness of the wood in the unpainted doors and window-frames.
Here and there a larger house stood, once the home of some magnate now long gone, broken and rotten, a warren where different families lived in every room.
In all her short life Sally-Anne had never before encountered the squalor which she had seen in the few days since she had arrived in these poor streets in the hinterland between London Docks and Stepney.
Although she was not aware of it she was, in her shabby white cotton blouse and her dark green skirt, with her blue-black and glossy curls drawn up and knotted simply on the top of her head, her face glowing and vital, the only touch of colour in the grimy street.
She carried a small basket in her hand containing food for her frugal evening meal, although the rancid smells around her were strong enough to diminish any desire to eat -- she had not yet grown sufficiently accustomed to them to ignore them.
Later she was to think how little she was prepared for the simple events which were to change her life completely -- indeed she would have said that so much had happened to her already that any further incidents must be minor, a judgement which could not have been more faulty.
She had been living in Crow Court off Vetch Street for nearly a week, and the narrow lives of the people among whom she found herself appalled her.
What perhaps struck her the most was that, despite all, many of them appeared to be happy, while she, Sally-Anne, who could if she wished command the most luxurious life a woman could dream of, was most desperately unhappy, and had no idea of how she might become otherwise.
Her thoughts, which as usual these days were depressing, were disturbed by the noise of a fight, a fracas on the corner where Vetch Street met Millstone Lane.
A man, a large man, was beating a woman, a little woman who seemed scarcely more than a child, and was trying to drag her into one of the tenements which lined the opposite side of the road.
A group of ragged children and some idle women were watching him with amusement rather than disapproval, half applauding him with their cruel laughter, and although one woman boldly cried, 'Shame,' most seemed to be enjoying the unequal struggle.
The little woman suddenly broke away from him, ran across the ill-paved road towards her, tripped on the broken pavement, fell on to her knees before Sally-Anne, and, face wild, looked up at her imploringly, wailing, 'Help me, missis, please help me.
He'll kill me yet,' in a thin broken voice.
Sally-Anne, hampered by her basket, tried to pull herself free.
The woman stank of neglect, her clothes were torn and filthy, and tears had made twin furrows down her face.
Pity rose in her.
And anger -- anger at the man, at all men.
He had loomed up before her, had arrived to claim the woman again, pulling her away from Sally-Anne, his own face twisted with rage.
He cuffed the woman on the head, attempting to drag her back into the doorway.
Sally-Anne was almost choking between rage and fear.
She put her basket down on the pavement, held on to the woman with one arm, pulled on the man's huge arm with the other, said to him firmly, if more than a little fearfully, 'No, you are not to touch her again.
Leave her alone.'
This came out with more bravado than Sally-Anne really felt, and had she seen him more clearly before she intervened she might not have said anything at all.
The man was a bear, unshaven, face mottled purple, his eyes yellow and feral, his teeth broken, but his body, huge and strong, running to fat.
He paused to stare at Sally-Anne, face ugly.
'An' who might you be, to tell me what to do wi' mine?'
'Never mind who I might be,' said Sally-Anne firmly, trying to swallow her fear.
'Just stop what you're doing or I'll set the police on you.'
She might as well have saved her breath.
The feral eyes glared cruelly at her.
'Leave go, missis, or it'll be the worse for you.'
It was impossible for Sally-Anne to obey even if she had wished to.
The woman had sunk to the ground to avoid her tormentor, had clasped Sally-Anne around her knees, and was shrieking up at her, 'Oh, help me, help me, do.'
She cried and wailed into Sally-Anne's skirt so pitifully that Sally-Anne's own fear of the brute before her was lost in sympathy for his wretched victim.
The watchers were now bellowing encouragement to each of the players in a game which had taken a new turn.
They hallooed and shouted.
Windows were thrown open, heads appeared.
The unequal tug of war continued, and something kept the man from actually striking Sally-Anne, although he rained blows on the woman, who was now giving vent to a low, keening moan.
Emboldened, Sally-Anne cried to the watchers, 'Fetch a policeman.
He could arrest this man for assault.'
Guffaws greeted her.
'Not likely, missis; it's only Jem keeping his Poll in order.
No case for the Peelers.'
And their cruel laughter was that of any mindless mob finding entertainment in violence.
By now Jem had almost succeeded in prising Poll free from Sally-Anne, with the result that Poll's wailing went up an octave.
Almost dragged free, her hands had dropped around Sally-Anne's ankles, nearly bringing her, too, to the ground.
Looking up, eyes wild, Poll made one last supplication to Sally-Anne.
'Oh, don't let him take me, missis, please, don't let him take me.
He'll kill me this time, for sure.'
'No,' said Sally-Anne, breathless.
She fell on to her knees, held on to the woman, whose face was now on her shoulder.
She looked up at Jem bravely.
'No, I won't.
You, Jem, stop this at once.
Shame on you for hitting a woman.
I shall certainly set the police on you if you continue to go on as you are doing.'
This reasoned and ridiculous plea had no effect at all on Jem, other than to inflame him to further violence.
He bent down, thrust his unshaven face and stinking breath into Sally-Anne's, put his great hands under her armpits and hauled her to her feet by main force, Poll still clinging desperately to her.
'You will have it, then, damn you,' he growled, and he struck not Poll, but Sally-Anne, hard in the face.
She saw the blow coming, but hampered by Poll could take no avoiding action other than to turn her head slightly on receiving it.
All her senses stunned, she realised that he was about to strike her again, and this time, when he did so, oblivion took her, man, woman and jeering watchers all disappearing into the vacant dark...
And now, here she was, wherever here was, with a woman, short and comfortable, who possessed a kind face, and a man who was none of these things, judging by the coolly impersonal way in which he spoke to her.
She could see little of him, only his tall body, lean against the light.
'How did I get here?' she asked, looking around a shabby but pleasant room, feeling so frail that she might have been made of china, china broken into a thousand pieces.
She remembered Jem's first blow, but not his second.
'Dr Neil carried you in,' said the woman, who was now holding Sally-Anne's right hand with her own left hand, while gently wiping Sally-Anne's poor bruised face with a damp cloth held in her right.
Sally-Anne's returning senses told her that she was lying on an old-fashioned sofa with a high back at one end, and no sides.
The man standing before her had earlier been on his knees on the opposite side from the woman.
Painfully, looking up at him, she saw a good strong profile, sandy hair tipped with gold from the sun coming in through the lace-curtained window.
'Dr Neil?' she said questioningly.
'Dr Neil Cochrane,' he replied brusquely.
'What on earth possessed you to get involved with Jem Higgins?
Suicidal, if I may say so.
You have got off lightly, even if your face will be swollen and painful for some time.'
He looked hard at Sally-Anne, ignored her shabby clothes and shoes, looked instead at her hands and face, and all the signs of good care and feeding about her, so different from most of the women who lived around Vetch Street.
He was about to ask her what in the world she was doing in the East End when he was reproached by an angry Sally-Anne.
Oh, she hated all men, did she not?
Particularly officious, domineering ones.
She had not pushed into, or invited, the fight; Poll had involved her.
But she would not defend herself, by no means, and she answered him in tones as brusque and hard as his own.
'I could not see such a large man mistreating such a poor little woman.'
'I can only say, Miss...? that if you are to defend every maltreated woman in London's East End you will spend all your days in such labour, to no purpose.
The law does not like, or support, those who come between husband and wife.'
'Oh, indeed?' said Sally-Anne furiously to this supporter of wife-beaters -- and if only he would move so that she could see him, and not continue to stand between herself and the light --'How typically male.
Only a man could say such cruel things,' and then, belatedly, remembering her manners, which her mama had so often told her she was always forgetting, 'But I must thank you for taking me in.
And my name is Sally-Anne...
McAllister,' and she almost tripped over the last bit, but hoped he had not noticed.
She did notice that the nice little woman had gently squeezed her hand when Dr Neil was being at his most dictatorial over men's right to beat their wives.
Whether Dr Neil had noticed her hesitation or not, he said to the little woman -- ignoring both Sally-Anne's anger over his cruelty, and her thanks -- which just went to show, she thought crossly, that it was no use trying to placate the unpleasant creatures --'Matey, you will make us all a hot pot of tea, strong and sweet.
It will restore Miss...
McAllister a little.
She has received quite an unpleasant shock.'
'Thank you, no,' said Sally-Anne impatiently; she needed no condescension from him or any man.
Unpleasant shock, indeed.
She hardly knew which was worst, Jem with his blatant nastiness, or this man defending it -- implicitly, anyway.
'I will be on my way.
Drink your tea yourself.
You seem to need it more than I do.'
And how would Mama react to that ?
Oh, Sally-Anne, do you never think of what you are saying before you say it?-- all in the most sorrowful manner, no doubt.
She swung her legs over the side of the sofa, which reduced her defiance to mere childishness, alas, since her head began to swim dreadfully, and also caused him to say impatiently -- he really ought to meet Mama, at least he would agree with her --'Oh, do be quiet for a moment, madam.
You are in no condition to go any where.
Miss Mates will make us all some tea, give you some sweet biscuits, and only when I am fully satisfied that you are fit again shall I allow you to leave.
While you are here, in my home, you are my patient.
Perhaps some sweet tea will restore your temper a little-- or are you always so pointlessly combative?'
Pointlessly combative!
Only her spinning head prevented her from rising and leaving at once.
She stared fierily at him.
What was he doing in the East End?
His voice was educated, his clothing good, if a little careless -- a tweed suit, and a cream shirt, well cut, if his collar was a little frayed.
She could still see only his profile, and when he moved away, into the room's shadows, she could not even see that.
He seemed to take it for granted that everyone would do what he told them.
Miss Mates had already sped to do his bidding, giving Sally-Anne one last sympathetic squeeze of the hand before she left her.
Even in her dazed and painful state his imperious, if not to say imperial manner amused as well as annoyed her.
Few people ever expected Sally-Anne to do as she was told.
It was usually a vain hope.
She had been independent since childhood and hoped to remain so.
Thoroughly spoiled, her mama had said sadly, the last time she had seen her.
But suddenly the thought of her mama was painful to her, and to push it away she leaned back again, said, amusement plain in her voice, which, although she did not know it, surprised Neil Cochrane a little, 'Oh, I will be good, because in my present condition I cannot be anything else, I fear.'
She could almost feel her absent mother's approval of her belated politeness.
Dr Neil turned away from inspecting his own bookshelves, said, apropos of what she could not imagine, 'You are not English, I perceive, Miss McAllister.'
'You are quick, Dr Neil,' she said, a little surprised in her turn.
Her East Coast American accent deceived most people, it was so like, and yet in some ways so unlike, that of the society in which she had been living for the last six months.
'No, I am American, from the East Coast, but I have been living in England for some time.'
Neil Cochrane moved forward, sat down in an armchair facing her, and said, 'I am happy to see that you are prepared to rest a little, after all.'
But what he said had little effect on Sally-Anne compared with the sight of his face at last.
She had already noticed that when he walked he limped more than a little, favouring his left leg, but his face had taken a greater hurt.
His left profile, first glimpsed, was that of a handsome man, but the right side of his face was a ruin.
It was marred by a puckered scar which had destroyed his cheek, beginning just above the right-hand corner of his mouth, but, fortunately for him, narrowly missed his eye to disappear into his hair, twisting and distorting his whole face.
Neil Cochrane's mouth tightened when for the first time Sally-Anne saw his face plain, and reacted by controlling her own, so that the shock which she had received was only momentarily shown.
He gave no other sign of distress, merely turned his head to greet Miss Mates, saying coolly, 'You are prompt, Matey, even without your kitchen help.'
Miss Mates was carrying a black lacquered tray with a delicately flowered china tea-set on it -- Wedgwood, Sally-Anne noted -- and a silver teapot.
The elegantly shabby room in which she had found a haven was an oasis in the East End's desert, which could be glimpsed through the small bow window.
Sally-Anne took the tea which Miss Mates offered, and drank it gratefully.
Full awareness was returning to her, her head had ceased to swim, and all that was left of her recent encounter was the pain in her face, and her consequent anger at every member of the male sex.
'What happened to Poll?' she asked, determined not to be silenced by Dr Neil Cochrane, and not to allow the ruin of his looks to create any pity for him.
She did, though, wonder what dreadful accident had left him marked for life, and lame into the bargain.
She tried to eat a small biscuit, grimaced a little at the consequent pain.
This made her think suddenly of the pain which Neil Cochrane must have endured, so that she felt pity for him, after all.
'What do you think?' said Dr Neil, watching her.
He had already noted in her favour that she did not avoid looking him full in the face as many did; nor did she flinch or stare when she did.
'Jem took her home, as he intended to.'
He forbore to add that Poll might have earned a few more blows as the result of Sally-Anne's intervention, to prevent her from involving anyone else in future.
'And beat her again, no doubt,' said Sally-Anne acidly.
'No doubt.'
'You are annoyingly cool about it, sir.'
'Dr Neil, or Dr Cochrane, if you please,' he said, remaining determinedly cool -- to reproach her, no doubt, for what he considered misplaced pity.
'No sirs.
We cannot dance up and down about poor Poll; it would not help her.
That does not mean that I approve of what Jem does.'
'But the police --' began Sally-Anne.
'Oh, the police do not care about, or interfere in, domestic matters.
She is his wife, whether married in church, or what we call over here his common-law wife.
That is, she lives with him, and that, I fear, is the end of it.'
'You fear!' she flashed at him.
'The wrongs of women do not concern you?'
'Oh, everyone's wrongs concern me,' he said, but his voice was as cool as ever.
'But I do not flatter myself that I can do anything about them.
Except, of course, where they directly impinge on me, that is .
You are a suffragette, I take it?'
Sally-Anne could not tell whether he said this critically or not.
His cold, impassive manner had not changed when he spoke.
'What decent woman would not be,' said Sally-Anne, waving her biscuit at him, 'given the way in which society treats us?
It is not only East End bruisers who mistreat their women, by no means.'
She was fast recovering, Dr Neil saw; the pretty, wilful, if swollen and bruised face was vital, the springing blue-black curls were a sign of vigour and health.
Miss Sally-Anne McAllister had always been well fed and well cared for, he noted professionally.
She was also a young person well accustomed to having her own way -- there was no doubt of that.
'And what is this decent, well-educated woman doing wandering around London's East End?' he asked.
Before Sally-Anne could reply -- and fortunately for her, for she needed to consider her answer carefully -- there was a knocking at the door, and Dr Neil was required there for a moment.
In his temporary absence, Miss Mates refreshed Sally-Anne's cup again, said gently to her, 'Do not mind Dr Neil's manner, my dear.
He is the kindest of men beneath his brusque exterior.
His patients swear by him.
Do not let him frighten you.'
'Oh, he does not do that ,' said Sally-Anne cheerfully; all her normal brio had returned, and she was not going to allow Dr Neil to put her down, and when he came back she gave him her most dazzling smile, and prepared to do battle with him, whenever battle was necessary.
Kind he might be, although it seemed improbable from what she had so far seen of him, but Sally-Anne wanted nothing from men, neither kindness...nor love...nor anything.
CHAPTER TWO
But when Dr Neil Cochrane returned to the business of Miss Sally-Anne McAllister who had so strangely arrived in his home he was as firmly pressing of her as he was before.
Miss Mates had brought in Sally-Anne's basket after Dr Neil had intervened to save her, and driven off a Jem Higgins who was by then a little fearful at having laid Sally-Anne so low.
Dr Neil had seen her few poor items of food decently arranged upon a napkin in the bottom of the basket, and there seemed little doubt that she was actually living in the district -- although why he could not imagine.
He sat down by Sally-Anne, his ruined cheek slightly averted, poured himself another cup of tea and began to question her again.
Sally-Anne stirred restlessly.
He might have saved her from Jem, but did that give him the right to such a ruthless inquisition?
She demurred a little when he said, picking up his teacup, and looking at her over the top of it, 'You never answered my question, Miss McAllister.
What exactly are you doing here?
I see by your basket and your dress that you are domiciled in the neighbourhood.'
Domiciled in the neighbourhood, indeed!
What a pompous way of putting it.
Amusement at that made her tone light.
'If you must know, Dr Neil, and I suppose I owe you that, I am looking for work.'
'Work?' he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her as though she had said drilling for oil or prospecting for gold.
'Yes, work,' she said sharply.
'One must eat.
Money is needed to buy food.
One is given money for work.
What is so surprising about that?'
Dr Neil could have given her several answers, beginning with the beautiful hands lying in her lap which had visibly never done a stroke of work in their owner's life, but said instead, 'A strange place for a young lady like yourself to look for it.'
'Indeed not,' replied Sally-Anne, with all the fiery determination which her own family knew so well.
'It is hard for an unqualified and unapprenticed female to find any work in London, except in the East End where, I am reliably informed, there is casual labour aplenty, and unskilled work, too.'
'Yes, I know that,' he said, smiling a little at her charming vehemence.
'But how does a young American lady --' and he stressed the last word slightly '-- come to be alone and seeking work in London?'
How indeed? thought Sally-Anne ruefully.
Her fertile and inventive imagination came to her aid.
She was frequently appalled at her own ability to lie convincingly, thought that perhaps she got it from Papa, one of the world's great tricksters -- not knowing that on occasion her apparently innocent mama had the gift as well.
She had no alternative but to tell him a series of absolute whoppers, as her younger brother, Rob, would have said.
The poser being, of course, that she could not tell him either the true reason she was here, or even who she really was.
She improvised wildly and skilfully, dabbing at her eyes while she spoke with a rather grubby handkerchief.
'My papa died after he lost all our money in the last great depression.
My...mama...had long gone.'
Even an unscrupulous Sally-Anne could not quite kill her mama off completely -- if he thought that her mama had bolted, well, so be it.
She gave a half-sob, added, 'I had to find work.
An old acquaintance of the family needed a governess-companion for her little girl during a prolonged visit to Europe.
She came from New York State, too -- her husband was an executive in an automobile works there -- and I thought my troubles were over.'
She heaved a great sigh of which she was privately rather proud, thinking that it added a touch of verisimilitude to the sad tale she was spinning.
Later she was to wish that she had neither been so deceitful, nor so colourful, but at the time excitement and expediency combined carried her away.
'Unfortunately my employer's husband...'
And she cast her eyes modestly downwards.
'Yes?' prompted Dr Neil with a grin -- for some reason he did not believe a word of this farrago -- to hear her reply in a low voice,
'He took more than a proper liking to me, and when I indicated that I was not interested in his advances he had me cast off...without a reference, so that I cannot find suitable employment.'
Sally-Anne was particularly pleased with the last bit, and saw by Miss Mates's sympathetic expression that she was swallowing every word.
She was not quite so sure of Dr Neil, but she ploughed steadily on.
'I was left with very little money, came here to live in Crow Court, because it is cheap.
I need employment to live, and in the hope that I can save my passage home again.
I would do anything to earn a wage, however small -- be a servant, even.
I would not mind being trained, and I am not afraid of hard work.'
'A servant?' said Miss Mates, coming over and taking Sally-Anne's hand.
'You poor child,' and Sally-Anne swallowed a little at this, feeling ashamed of telling such a kind-hearted creature such whoppers.
'But the work is so hard, for so little.
And you are so old.'
'Old?' said Sally-Anne a little indignantly, to Dr Neil's amusement as he watched the two women.
'Why, I am not yet twenty-one.'
'Oh, but one starts training housemaids and cooks at twelve and thirteen,' said Miss Mates gently, but at the same time she was thinking of her own problems in finding and keeping satisfactory girls, and Miss McAllister looked both strong and willing.
A little high-spirited, perhaps, but hard work and long hours would soon cool her down.
'I learn very quickly,' said Sally-Anne submissively.
'And I really do need to earn my passage home.
I meant it when I said that I would do anything.
Perhaps you might know where I could usefully apply?'
Was it her imagination or was the man opposite her regarding her warily?
Since Miss Mates had intervened he had said little, although he had had enough to say before that, goodness knew, thought Sally-Anne briskly.
Strange how handsome he looked with the shadow concealing his ruined cheek a little.
What a pity for him.
She thought that perhaps her manner was somewhat too bold for one who so recently had been only a governess, and now wanted to be even less.
She smiled and bent her head.
She must remember not to be her usual confidently aggressive self if she was offering to take up such a subordinate post.
'Are you serious, Miss McAllister?'
Dr Neil asked.
'About becoming a servant, I mean.
You do know how hard the work is, I hope?'
'Oh, yes!' exclaimed Sally-Anne eagerly.
'But I do not intend to do it forever, and I am very strong.
Papa says that most horses would envy me in that line!'
This frankly offered statement brought an almost unwilling laugh from him.
'Did he, indeed?
Let us put Papa's notions to the test, then.
I know that Matey here wants a maid of all work, and that the last two were highly unsatisfactory.
You could hardly be worse, I suppose.'
Sally-Anne bridled a little at this.
She liked to think that she was very efficient in all she did.
From what she had seen of maid's work it was not very difficult.
An idiot could do it.
What she did not know was that it was not so much that the work was difficult, but that there was so very much of it, and all tiring.
Like most young ladies of her class she had no idea at all of the effort which went into making her own charmed life easy.
She was not so much spoilt as totally unaware.
'I'm sure that I should be satisfactory,' she said stiffly.
'You could put me on probation, I suppose.'
'I have no intention of doing anything else,' said Dr Neil briskly.
He was now all employer, coolly assessing Sally-Anne as a prospective slave about the house.
'I should be taking you on at a week's notice.
Your wage would be five shillings and all found, one evening and one afternoon off a week -- you can arrange all that with Miss Mates.
To church on Sunday, with Miss Mates, of course.
Oh, and no followers.
I want no policemen hanging about the kitchen.'
He thought that if Miss McAllister was not serious that would be sure to put her off.
He decided to inform her of her duties, said casually, watching her as he spoke, 'Your day would begin at six o'clock, finish at Miss Mates's bedtime between half-past ten and eleven, and you will have the attic bedroom.
Miss Mates will show you to it.'
Sally-Anne was scarlet.
Policemen followers, indeed!
And her hours!
She had genuinely possessed no idea of how long servants worked, and for how little.
She suspected that the good doctor might be laying it on a little thick, but she would not be put off, and said in her stiffest voice, 'Yes, I understand all that, and I am prepared to work hard,' and she added for good measure, 'You need not worry about followers.
I truly despise all men.'
This came out in Sally-Anne's best manner.
'So very glad to hear it,' said Dr Neil Cochrane brightly.
'Now we all know where we are.
You will not be flirting at the kitchen door with the milkman and the coalman, and Matey will not be chasing you for doing so.'
He was no fool.
Despite being an East End doctor he also knew the great and wide world outside.
There was something vaguely odd about Sally-Anne McAllister and the farrago to which she had treated them.
He did not doubt that she was an American, but as to her story -- well, he was not sure.
But he was a man who liked challenges and this wilful -- child -- for despite her boasted nearly twenty-one years, to Neil Cochrane she seemed little more -- appeared to offer one.
And Matey badly needed help; indeed, she was looking at him with something like approval.
She said to Sally-Anne, 'Well, I do need a maid of all work, that's true, but I never thought of hiring a lady...'
And her voice trailed off as she surveyed Sally-Anne in all her proud and pampered beauty.
Did she really understand what she was taking on?
'I said I was willing to work and to learn,' said Sally-Anne, exasperated by all this  havering .
Goodness, how the British went on.
A good American would have had her in the kitchen with a flue-brush, or making pastry, by now.
'I'm an excellent cook,' she announced proudly.
'Mama made sure of that.'
'Well, that's certainly something,' said Miss Mates, overwhelmed by such artless eagerness, so foreign to any maid of all work she had encountered before.
'I could start immediately,' Sally-Anne roared on, striking while the iron was hot, just as Papa always advised -- one maxim which she had not disdained to learn from him.
'Because I am running out of money,' she added, and she crossed her fingers beneath the light blanket which Miss Mates had thrown over her earlier and asked God to forgive her for such dreadful lies, and so many of them.
She brought her hands up, clasped them together, said impulsively, 'Oh, do say yes, Dr Neil, sir, Miss Mates -- help a poor, lonely orphan,' and this last flew out without her even thinking, and certainly dissolved Miss Mates, even if Dr C, as she privately thought of him, looked a little sardonic.
Miss Mates, indeed, kissed her on the cheek, said, 'Oh, you poor thing,' which made Sally-Anne feel a little mean, even if it was the last copper-bottomed clincher -- that was her Uncle Orrin this time, not Papa -- which got her the job.
For good measure, she added, a trifle pathetically, 'I am a good girl, really truly, even if I can't give you any references, and I will work hard, I promise.'
'Oh, we shan't give you any opportunity to be anything else, Miss McAllister.
You're sure you want her, Matey?' drawled Dr Neil, still sardonic, but his use of Miss Mates's nickname was the final sign that he was prepared to take her on.
But for Miss Mates the 'really truly' was the icing on the cake, even if she had more doubts about Sally-Anne's stamina than her missing references.
'Perhaps you could start this evening,' she offered.
'If Dr Neil says that you are fit.'
Sally-Anne tried to stand up, found that she was still somewhat rocky, looked at Dr Neil, and said doubtfully, 'I don't think that I am quite fully recovered yet.
I might be able to fetch my things from Crow Court where I am rooming a little later on, but as to work...'
'Oh, yes, work,' said Dr Neil in his rather hateful way, as though every word she said was dubious in itself, and, even though they were, Sally-Anne could not help feeling righteously indignant.
'I would not want to slave-drive you as early as this actual moment.'
And he looked pointedly at his watch, a fine gold hunter which he pulled out of his pocket and cocked an eye at.
'Five o'clock,' he announced.
'I should think you might be ready at six-thirty,' and now the quizzical eye was cocked at Sally-Anne.
'Surgery at five-fifteen,' he said.
'Matey will look after you, and perhaps later on we can collect your traps from Crow Court.
I take it that you will not need a pantechnicon?'
'You take it correctly,' said Sally-Anne, a little peevish, despite her pleasure at having found employment so easily, and in an area where she could observe and record the life going on around her.
She must not forget the other reason why she had wished to find work here, and exile from her old life was not the main one for her presence in Vetch Street.
Miss Mates, who had removed the tea things, came bustling back, said to Dr Neil, 'Mind you are ready for surgery,' and brought him a plain black coat which he put on instead of the rather sporty Harris tweed one which he was wearing.
'You see, McAllister,' he said gravely, 'were it not for Matey I should never look presentable.
I tend to forget what a proper doctor should wear.
That's why it's so important that she has efficient help.'
He strolled off to the surgery, Matey still fussing about him.
She came back, sat by the fireside, and said to Sally-Anne, 'The surgery's at the side of the house.
I suppose you've seen it when you've walked by.'
She sighed.
'He works too hard, but there, you can't tell him anything.
He's always gone his own way.
I've made another pot of tea for us.
It will do your head the world of good.
No restorative like tea.'
I wonder the British don't bath in it as well, thought Sally-Anne naughtily, but she was grateful for the extra cup, and for the sandwiches which Miss Mates brought in with it for them both.
'To tide us over.
We usually have a bit of supper when Dr Neil's day is ended.
Not that it ever really ends.
Many's the night he's been called out in the small hours...'
And Matey heaved another great sigh.
She spoke of him, Sally-Anne thought, as though he were still only twelve years old.
She giggled internally at this, visualising tall and haughty Dr Neil wearing the black knickerbockers, funny jacket and cap of an English schoolboy.
The smile this brought to her face pleased the old nurse.
'Beginning to feel a bit better, are you?' she said kindly.
She leaned forward, pulled the wrapper over Sally-Anne up to her chin.
'Have a bit of a doze, my dear.
You've had a hard day, and by the sound of it not an easy life.
Yes, have a little nap; it'll set you up for a day's work tomorrow.
I'll leave you to go and wash the pots.'
She tiptoed out, leaving Sally-Anne to fall into a light sleep -- but not before she felt a little mean, as she would have said in the USA, about deceiving the good old lady -- and Dr Neil Cochrane, of course.
Although she didn't feel so badly about him .
He was only a man when all was said and done, and men -- well, they deserved to be deceived.
But it was not a great deceit, after all, and perhaps one day she might be able to explain it to them, and apologise, but for the present matters could not have arranged themselves much better.
What a pity about Dr Neil's ruined face -- and his suspicious manner, were her last conscious thoughts before sleep took her.
CHAPTER THREE
Really, the worst thing about being a kitchenmaid-cum-parlourmaid-cum-everything else, Sally-Anne ruefully considered, was all the scrubbing and the grate-cleaning which had to be done every day.
It was not that she minded the hard work; it was what the hard work did to her poor hands.
The scrubbing was the nastiest, she thought despairingly, bad though blacking the grates, particularly the kitchen range, was.
She was down on her knees, finishing off the doorstep; an apron made from some coarse sacking was protecting her plain black dress, her legs were clad in thick black wool stockings and her feet were shod in heavy, much mended shoes -- second-hand into the bargain, as was most of her servant's clothing.
And what a ritual the doorstep was.
First the scrubbing, and then the almost religious whitening not only of the step, but their share of the pavement before the step.
It had to be done every day, too.
What was worse, within minutes people would be walking all over her back-breaking work -- it did not bear thinking of.
She straightened up, and carried the pail, the soap, the brush and the swab, as Miss Mates called the cloth, to the outdoor drain at the back of the house.
And she shuddered at the chore the whole thing would be in the winter -- if she lasted that long -- seeing that it was such a drag in the mildness of summer.
Her soft hands were so unaccustomed to such hard work that it became -- temporarily, Miss Mates said, until they hardened -- difficult for her to help with the fine sewing, and the darning and repairing needed in the little house.
Which was a pity, Miss Mates also said, looking approvingly at Sally-Anne's neat and careful stitchery, done before her hands became ruined.
'Oh, Mama always made sure that I learned to do the practical stuff, as well as fine embroidery and canvas work,' Sally-Anne had said.
'She always said that bread and butter was needed as well as cake.'
'Your mama sounds like a sensible woman,' said Miss Mates.
'A pity that you had to lose her and earn your own living.'
'Needs must,' lied Sally-Anne, who was beginning to wonder whether she would ever be able to tell the whole truth again.
That was the worst thing about duplicity, she was beginning to find.
That and having to watch what you were saying.
Keep it simple was a good motto.
She returned to the present, replaced the cleaned pail, the soap, the brush and the swab beside the pump in the lean-to outhouse at the back -- it stood in a small soot-encrusted yard where a few fearless London sparrows frequently gathered -- and returned to the house to clean the surgery.
She had already thrown yesterday's damp tea-leaves on to the parlour carpet, and when she had finished in the surgery would take a small, hard hand-brush and, down on her knees yet again, would painstakingly sweep them all up into a dustpan, to remove the previous day's dirt and dust, Miss Mates said, and purify the air.
Sally-Anne liked the surgery.
Small and cramped although it was, it reminded her a little of Papa's office back home: a room where a man obviously worked.
She briefly envied Dr Neil and Papa -- so easy for a man to do useful and purposeful work.
On the other hand, she conceded, someone had to do the kind of menial tasks she was at present condemned to -- but why was it always women who did them?
And for such a poor reward, too.
She knew what Papa would say to that .
'Now, Sally-Anne, men do menial work, a lot of it, and harsher often, than women's.
They go down the mines, herd cattle, tend sewers -- you must admit that.'
She knew what Papa would say because he had said it a few years ago when she had begun to reproach him and all men for their oppression of women.
He had not denied it -- he had explained it instead, which was worse, she had once said angrily.
Her eyes filled with tears.
Oh, she did miss them so, both Mama and Papa.
But she would not crawl home for comfort, defeated.
Twice defeated now, and the second one so bitter...and so irrevocable.
Humpty Dumpty could never be put back again...
No, she would not think of that -- no, never that, and she began to wield her feather duster with such angry vigour that Dr Neil, coming in, was amused at her bright energy which even the ever-lasting drudgery which she performed could not dim.
'You are supposed to be suppressing dust, McAllister, not raising it and spreading it about,' he said cheerfully to her back.
Sally-Anne could not get used to being known so abruptly by her surname.
She had never queried such a thing before -- indeed, had taken servants, their duties, and how one addressed them for granted, after the fashion of all wealthy and pampered girls, she now supposed.
She would never do so again.
She stopped, turned to face Dr Neil -- as everyone, she found, called him, even his poor patients as well as Miss Mates -- and said cheekily, 'Oh, come, Dr Neil.
If I am dull and slow I am reproached, and now it appears that being vigorous does not answer, either.'
Dr Neil put his head on one side and said gravely, 'You must learn not to be impudent to the Master, McAllister -- it really will not do,' but she knew by his manner that he was not serious, and she thought again what a pity it was that the ugly scar so spoiled and distorted his face.
And he minded that it did; Sally-Anne knew that.
She was not so young and giddy that she had no understanding of the desires and problems of others.
Besides, living as she now was in a small house on top of two other people, and Dr Neil's surgery boy, and seeing at close hand the wretched people who frequented his surgery, was giving her insights into the motivations and behaviour of the people around her because she had to consider them, whereas always before, in the past, other people had been compelled to consider her .
What pity she had possessed for others had been diffuse and impersonal, for women as a mass rather than for individual women such as poor, defeated Poll whom she saw daily, the marks of Jem's fists on her face.
Dr Neil was now seated at his desk and she lingered a little.
For some reason, even though he was often sharp and rather short with her, however kind he was to his poor patients, she had begun to like being with him.
Perhaps it was because he did not defer to her, flatter her, praise her beauty and her charm, admire her ready wit, as all the men she had known before had done, when what they really liked and deferred to was the knowledge of her father's immense fortune and the certainty that she was sure to inherit a great part of it.
Miss Mates worshipped him.
She had been his nurse when he was a little boy, she had told Sally-Anne when they were preparing dinner for him one evening.
Sally-Anne remembered the carrots falling into small red-gold coins as she cut them while Matey talked.
'He was a soldier, you know,' she had said, podding peas so rapidly that Sally-Anne was full of awe for such expertise, pea-podding being difficult, she had discovered.
'Sent into the army at eighteen, as younger sons always are.
And then, when he was doing so well, he was badly hurt in that nasty Africa.'
Africa was always nasty to Miss Mates because it had maimed and nearly killed her treasure.
'When he came home he had to leave the army, you see.
He was ill for a long time.
He still limps, as I suppose you have noticed.'
Yes, Sally-Anne had noticed.
'Well, he said that he wanted to do something useful with his life, seeing that it had been given back to him when he hadn't expected it.
Africa had changed him, you see, and he still only in his early twenties.
He said he wanted to be a doctor, and his papa, Sir Hanley, agreed in the end to him becoming one -- not a thing for a gentleman to be, he said, but Dr Neil insisted, even when Sir Hanley said that he didn't want an apothecary for a son.'
He had called Neil a damned snivelling apothecary, Miss Mates remembered, but she had never used, or repeated, such language.
'So, here we are,' Miss Mates had finished.
'He said that he didn't want to be a fashionable doctor.
He owed his life to his men, he said, and he had been horrified to discover the conditions in which they lived at home, particularly in the towns -- he being a gentleman, you see, and always living in the country in comfort.
Goodness, child, do hurry up.
You work carefully, but you must learn not to be so slow.'
'I shall be better with more practice,' Sally-Anne had said humbly.
She had thought that she was doing rather well, but that appeared to be a fatal thought to have.
Whenever she felt that it nearly always turned out that she was wrong.
Another lesson she was learning.
'Pay-day today,' said Dr Neil suddenly, watching her whisk the duster over the windows and the drapes -- she must remember to call them curtains while she was in England.
'So it is,' said Sally-Anne, struck.
Friday had come round so quickly again -- such a contrast to her old life when the week had often seemed boringly endless.
'Might as well pay you now,' he said, and pulled a little tin box out of one of his desk drawers, opened it, and began to count out her meagre wage.
Why was it, Sally-Anne thought when she went forward to take it, that this pitiful sum seemed more precious to her than her huge allowance which she could claim any day she wished?
Perhaps it was because the shining pennies were a reward for her hard work, some recompense for her sore knees and the work-reddened hands which took the coins from Dr Neil.
Her pleasure was written so plainly on her face that Dr Neil wondered again about the true nature of his new and strange housemaid.
Looking into her great eyes, their blue so dark that it was almost black, he was uncomfortably aware that having Miss Sally-Anne McAllister in the house was a most disturbing influence on a man who had not only denied himself sexually for some years, but who had rarely mixed with young women at all since he had left the army.
He had been a bit of a gay dog before that, he remembered, enjoying himself freely like all young men of his age and class.
Certainly he had not been in such close proximity to a pretty young girl for as long as he could remember.
He had forgotten how pleasing a woman's soft voice was, the faintly suggestive noise her skirts made, and the delightfully pleasant scent which accompanied McAllister everywhere, so different from Matey's sensible Lifebuoy and carbolic.
Was the scent essentially McAllister, or was it some subtle perfume she chose to wear?
As he had passed her in the little hall this morning a tendril of her silky black hair had brushed his ruined cheek, and the smell of it had been so distracting that he had feared for his composure.
Good God, what was he coming to, that his previously monastic life should be tottering, if ever so slightly under the impact of a pretty minx who had invaded his chaste home?
And a pretty minx who was an accomplished liar, and who doubtless had some ulterior motive, though God knew what, in choosing to live in a milieu so unlike her usual habitat.
There was no doubt that, disguise it as she might, McAllister reeked of wealth and privilege.
And he, Neil Cochrane, really did know about such Birds of Paradise, for had he not been loved and betrayed by one, and learned his bitter lesson -- never to love or trust a woman again?
To check his wandering thoughts he started to ask her to resume her labours elsewhere and finish the surgery when he had completed his own tasks in it -- Only to find that she was hopping gently from foot to foot, and was bursting to ask him a question.
Dr Neil sighed.
He decided that temptation would have to be removed later rather than sooner.
He could not snub the child so openly.
He mentally called her a child to avoid admitting that she was very much a woman.
Sally-Anne's question was, for her, a very important one.
It was one which she had been longing to ask him ever since the night on which he had come home so late, just before she had turned off all the gas-lamps.
He had arrived grimly silent, his face old and drawn, the great scar livid and prominent.
He had told a worried Miss Mates that his patient had just died having her twelfth child.
The child had survived, but it was deformed.
Sally-Anne had been horrified.
Twelve children!
Even she knew that there was no need for this...that there were ways and means.
Single girls of good family were not supposed to know of such things, but Sally-Anne, if not an active suffragette, knew about Miss Annie Besant, and those who said that women should not be tied to endless childbearing and that there were practical ways of avoiding it.
'Dr Neil,' she said bravely, her dusting finished.
She must ask him, she must, however forward he might think her.
'McAllister?' he said, looking up, surprised, to impress on her that maid servants, even American ones, were not supposed to quiz the Master when he was at work -- should not even originate a conversation with him.
'May I ask you a question, please?'
'Yes,' he said, his mouth quirking a little, despite himself.
McAllister's perfect manners, running in tandem with her fiery, impulsive nature, made a mix which had begun to amuse him, and added to her disturbing charm.
'That woman...the one who had twelve children.'
She trod on the word in her horror.
'You're a doctor.
Why don't you tell them?'
Somehow, in her mixed anxiety and embarrassment, this was coming out all wrong.
Perhaps Mama was right.
She should think more before she spoke.
'Tell them what?' he said, genuinely puzzled, admiring against his will the pretty, ardent face opposite him.
'Tell them...it's not necessary...to have twelve children.
That there are ways.
You could...instruct them.'
Sally-Anne was suddenly rosy red at her daring, but she had to say it; it needed to be said.
Women were dying .
Dr Neil came down to earth with a bump.
In all his thirty-three years no single woman had ever addressed him after such a fashion, or spoken of such a delicate matter.
'It's not my business, McAllister,' he said stiffly.
'Nor yours, either.'
'Not your business?
I suppose it's your business to watch them die having their deformed babies!
How dare you be so cool?'
Dr Neil was not cool at all beneath his impassive exterior.
He had grieved over the dead woman, and Sally-Anne had put her work-reddened finger on something which had frequently troubled him in his slum practice.
'Come now, McAllister.
You are talking about matters between a husband and a wife.'
He had never thought to find himself discussing such a thing with a single young woman, but he had heard of American girls' frankness, and he supposed that this was a sample of it.
'But even you, a man, must agree that the whole business is so unequal.
What chance has any woman, rich or poor, against the tyranny which her husband exercises?
As a doctor, you know that such suffering is not necessary.
Is it not your duty to do something about it, to help such victims?
If not you, then who?'
Sally-Anne was by now in full flow, and when she paused for breath Dr Neil said, as drily as he could, 'I will only say to you what I told you on the day when you arrived here: it is useless to take the world's burdens on your shoulders.
It is not a simple matter of informing people what to do as you seem to think.
No, wait,' he continued, when she opened her mouth to speak again.
'Think.
Since you seem to know whereof you speak I will only say that you must know that the burden of restraint by means of the...mechanism...employed will, of necessity, fall upon the man.
Think back to Jem Higgins and ask yourself of what use it would be for me to preach your message to him.'
It was just like arguing with Papa, thought Sally-Anne with some disgust.
He was so reasoned, and there was so much truth in what he said.
But against that was the suffering endured by women which she saw all about her in London's East End.
Not simply the women dying of too many children, but the women who were compelled to sell their bodies because that was all that they had to sell.
She might have said no more, except that, unluckily for him, Dr Neil felt impelled to continue.
'You see,' he said kindly, 'it is one thing for someone like yourself who has always had an easy life -- up to now, that is -- to speak glibly about suffering women, and think that there is an easy way out --'
He was violently interrupted by a Sally-Anne almost incandescent with rage.
Not know how a woman could suffer!
How dared he?
He knew nothing, nothing, of what Sally-Anne had had to suffer at the hands of one of the monsters who controlled...what were his weaselling words?...the mechanism.
How would he, a man, know anything?
And why should she expect him to change a system which benefited men so greatly?
'Oh, yes,' she said, waving her feather duster at him with such violence that the end tickled his nose.
'Do nothing.
That is the way, I see.
Why not do something?
Publicise, make the ability to control birth available to the poor women in the East End as well as to their rich sisters in the West End.
It may be indelicate of me, but I think that women will only be truly free when someone invents a...mechanism...which women can control.
That would be even better and more useful to poor women than the vote, desirable though that might be.'
Dr Neil could not but admire her.
However mistaken he thought that she might be, and that her vision of life was based on a charming naivete which took little account of the cruel realities of existence, it was, to him, admirable that she should care about such things, and in such a practical way when all was said and done.
The simple demand for the vote, the be-all and end-all of most suffragettes, was truly seen by McAllister as a minor step compared with relieving poor women's social and economic disabilities, a measure which had little to do with suffrage.
He gave a half-smile which was immediately interpreted by Sally-Anne as patronising contempt.
'Oh,' she said, 'I see that for all your fine words you are much like the rest,'and there were tears in her eyes when she turned away from him.
She should have known better.
Despite the cool way in which he had always spoken to her she had thought him different from other men.
For some reason which she could not understand a feeling of desolation swept over her.
She groped blindly for the door-knob, her glossy head bent.
Long suffering had made Dr Neil sensitive to the feelings of others.
He stood up, walked round his desk, put a hand on Sally-Anne's arm, and said gently, 'McAllister, look at me.'
His voice was so unexpectedly kind that Sally-Anne's anger drained away.
She looked up at him, mouth quivering a little.
'I did not mean to patronise you,' he said.
'Even if I thought that you were mistaken.'
He paused.
'It is hard enough for me to run my practice here, seeing that I am that strange animal, a gentleman.
If I started trying to come between husband and wife, and that is how it would be seen, I could hardly help anyone at all.
I must have these people's trust, the men's as well as the women's.'
Sally-Anne nodded mutely.
Perhaps he was not just another male ogre, after all.
She would like to think so -- even if he did defend the status quo, just like Papa.
Dr Neil put out a hand.
He suddenly did not want to lose her respect.
Woman she might be, but she was displaying a genuine compassion rarely seen among rich young girls.
'Come,' he offered, 'shake hands on it, McAllister.'
Something else occurred to Sally-Anne.
Almost for the first time in her life she checked her wilful and impulsive self, even questioned a little a previous action or speech.
'Dr Neil,' she said, and her manner was almost shy, 'I hope you do not think the less of me for raising such a delicate matter.'
Goodness, she thought, is this really me speaking?
And she looked down at her work-worn shoes, half afraid to meet his eyes.
Dr Neil looked down at the bent blue-black head, and some idea of the enormous concession she was making to him struck home.
'No, indeed,' he answered gravely, although he had been a little shocked if truth were told.
'Not at all.
On the contrary, I think it admirable that a gentlewoman should think seriously of such matters.'
And suddenly he, too, thought, Is this really I, Neil Cochrane speaking?
What can be coming over me?
For despite having an open mind in many ways, his attitude to women and their problems had always been the conventional one of the young aristocrat he had once been.
He held McAllister's hand for a little longer than propriety might demand, and the pair of them stood for a moment, rapt, until the surgery boy, who ran the doctor's errands on his bike, delivered prescriptions and generally did a great deal of donkey work, knocked on the door before he came in, saying excitedly and importantly, 'You're wanted, Dr Neil, sir.
Carrie Jackson in Vincent's Buildings is having her tenth and her ma has sent for you.
She says it's urgent.
Things going wrong.'
Her tenth!
Sally-Anne was indignant all over again.
Dr Neil dropped her hand smartly, picked up his bags, and was out of the room in a flash.
Miss Mates, who had followed young Eddie into the surgery, looked sadly after her departing treasure.
'He never thinks of himself these days.
Only lives for his work, and now he's bound to miss breakfast.
What he would do if I weren't here to look after him, I'm sure I don't know.'
The surgery seemed empty without Dr Neil Cochrane in it.
On impulse Sally-Anne went to the kitchen and picked up a jam jar which she had earlier filled with sweet peas brought by a grateful patient who owned a little garden.
She carefully carried it through, put it on his window-sill.
She hoped that he would not find the jam jar too utilitarian, but he appeared to possess few vases.
After all, despite his backward views about the wrongs of women, he really did work very hard for his poor patients!
CHAPTER FOUR
'Oh, shoot,' said Sally-Anne disgustedly when the candle flickered and almost went out -- again.
She was in her tiny attic bedroom, sitting up in bed, propped up against a hard and lumpy pillow, sitting on a hard and lumpy mattress.
Opposite her was a small washstand with a coarse crockery toilet set on a fake marble top.
A roller towel hung on the door.
Beside the washstand was a closet -- cupboard, the English said, containing her few clothes.
Side by side hung her coarse morning working outfits, made out of casement cloth, which she had had to buy herself, much of it second-hand to save money, and two afternoon ones -- a white cotton shirtwaister, black skirt, lacy cap with streamers and lacy white pinafore.
Her afternoon shoes, slightly better than her morning ones, were ranged neatly beneath them.
By her bed was a chest of drawers which contained her underwear -- several pairs of cheap directoire knickers, vests, petticoats, and corsets, plus black stockings of wool, cotton, and one precious silk pair which she had brought from her old life.
She was busily engaged in writing in a penny exercise book.
It was already eleven-thirty at night.
Through the gap in the curtains, also casement cloth, a romantic moon shone down on her, but Sally-Anne had little interest in romance or the moon.
She was bone-weary from a day's back-breaking labour, but it was essential that she finish what she was writing, for she had a deadline to reach and that deadline was the day after tomorrow, her half-day, and she had barely begun her task.
The candle flickered again, so badly that it almost flickered out.
There was nothing for it.
She would have to go downstairs to find and fetch a new one from the store cupboard in the kitchen.
She threw back the covers, slipped a light shawl around her shoulders above her coarse calico nightgown, thrust her bare feet into her felt slippers, and crossed the room, avoiding the small oak bureau by the door, which she opened cautiously.
The whole house was quiet and she told herself that she must be careful not to awaken the two other sleeping inhabitants.
Outside, for once, the East End was quiet, too.
She crept downstairs, holding the green enamel candlestick high above her head so that she didn't lose her footing on the narrow wooden stairs.
The stair carpet didn't begin until the floor below the attic -- another discovery she had made about the lifestyle of servants.
She would have to pass through the parlour to reach the kitchen, an arrangement which had shocked the pampered girl she had been, but it was obviously designed to conserve space in the small house.
Even so, Dr Neil's modest home was larger and better appointed than most around Vetch Street, and was vast compared with the one stifling room she had briefly occupied in Crow Court.
The hall at the bottom of the stairs was a tiny square, a door on one side opened to what had been designed as the best parlour, but was now converted to a waiting-room for the surgery, which was a lean-to structure at the back.
The door opposite gave access to the parlour where Dr Neil and Miss Mates lived and ate.
Sally-Anne's own preserve was the kitchen, where she ate either at the kitchen table, or, when that was full, at a small card table which was folded up and put away when she had finished.
A wooden Windsor chair, with a hard cushion, was provided for her when she was allowed to rest, which wasn't often, given the quantity of work which keeping even a small house clean necessitated.
She pushed the parlour door open and tiptoed in.
It was dark and quiet.
The candle she carried gave one last flicker -- and expired.
'Oh, shoot,' she whispered again, trying to avoid bumping into the large oval dining table which stood in the window.
Someone, something, moved in the dark shadows by the empty fire-grate, filled in summer with a copper jug stuffed full of artificial flowers.
'Who's there?' said a blurred voice.
'Matey?'
Sally-Anne jumped and said falteringly, 'It's only me -- McAllister.
Come for a new candle.'
The someone, who was, of course, Dr Neil, struck a Swan Vesta to light the oil-lamp which always stood on a side-table where he usually kept the book which he was currently reading.
He had a small but good library, much of it kept on shelves on the first landing.
The lamp's dim yellow light showed him to be seated, or rather slumped, in his big armchair.
His tie was pulled loose, his shirt unbuttoned, and his hair was tousled.
His face, too, was also blurred, only the scar on it was more livid and sharper than usual.
The reason for his blurred face and voice stood on an occasional table before him -- a whisky bottle and a shot glass.
She had never seen either him, or Miss Mates, take a drop of alcohol before in the weeks which she had already spent in Vetch Street.
'McAllister,' he said.
'And why do you want a candle at this hour?
You should be asleep.'
'So should you be,' said Sally-Anne, greatly daring.
'Touche ,' he said lazily, not at all put out.
'But you haven't given me an answer.'
'I don't like being up three flights of stairs at night without a candle.
This one,' she said, setting the candlestick down on the table.
'isn't satisfactory.
As you must have seen, it died on me a moment ago.'
'Fair enough,' Dr Neil replied, and by the careful way he spoke he had drunk quite a lot of the whisky from the half-empty bottle.
Sally-Anne had seen drunken and half-drunken men before in Washington and London.
American legislators were not noted for their abstemiousness, and nor were the denizens of London Society.
'If you will excuse me,' she said politely -- no single woman ought to be talking alone with a man at nearly midnight --'I will collect a new candle from the kitchen and retire again.'
'No, I will not excuse you, McAllister,' was his answer to that, made with a kind of growling good nature.
'I require entertainment, and it is a good servant's part to do the Master's bidding.
Sit down, McAllister, and entertain the Master.'
He had made no move to rise.
All his polite gentlemanliness which he particularly observed with his poor patients, Matey and herself, was quite missing.
On the other hand, it did not seem likely that he was prepared to do anything improper, such as jump on her.
Sally-Anne was very conscious that she was wearing only a nightgown and a light shawl, and the fear which she sometimes felt these days in the company of men, and had felt ever since -- no, forget that -- was threatening to overwhelm her.
Nevertheless she thought it best to humour him and sat down on the side of the table away from him and put her clasped hands on its polished top.
She took them off again when she remembered that it would be she who would have to Ronuk it again if Matey saw its shine marred.
'How shall I entertain you, Dr Neil?' she enquired, and then regretted what she had said -- it might bear the wrong meaning.
But he made no double-edged comment in return, simply said, 'Tell me of America, McAllister.
Of your old home.
I have never visited America and probably never shall.'
Well, that seemed innocent enough and it was probably best to humour a drunken man.
She had overheard Papa say that once to Mama about a particularly notorious senator whom he was compelled to entertain.
'My home?'
She thought for a moment, then decided to tell him of the little house in Washington where she and Mama had lived before Mama married Papa -- She wondered briefly what Dr Neil would have made of that story.
'We lived for a time in Washington DC,' she said slowly.
'We weren't rich, only comfortable.'
And that part, at least, was true.
'We had a frame house with a garden around it, quite small.
There was a picket fence, and a small gate.
I have seen nothing quite like it in England.
We were not in central Washington, you understand, but in a new suburb.
Mama worked as an aide to a senator...'
She knew immediately that she should not have said that.
Dr Neil picked her up immediately, saying, 'And your papa, McAllister -- he did not object to your mama working?
What did he do?'
Sally-Anne's fertile mind provided an answer which had a kind of truth in it, or at least made a passing gesture in that direction.
'Oh, Papa was an accountant then.
But after he inherited a little money and set up in his own business Mama stopped working, and then she had my little brothers.'
And that piece of undeniable truth was, perhaps, a mistake, too, for Dr Neil was not so drunk that he did not ask, without a pause, 'And what happened to them, McAllister, when you lost your parents and your fortune?'
This was a bit of a poser, but Sally-Anne, never at a loss, said, thinking of kind Uncle Orrin who would surely look after her and her three younger brothers if anything happened to Papa and Mama, 'An uncle took them in, but he said that he wasn't prepared to keep a great girl, and that I must fend for myself, and find employment, which I have done, ever since.'
'So, you didn't take to drink, McAllister, when you were disappointed in life and love.'
And his voice had a note of self-mockery in it which surprised her.
'Women usually don't,' she said.
'That's a man's privilege.'
'Oh,touche again,' he riposted, the laugh in his voice genuine this time.
'You have a sharp and perceptive tongue, McAllister.
Are many American girls like you?
If so, you all reproach me with your cheerful resilience.'
'I suppose,' said Sally-Anne.
She had never thought herself as part of a mass called American girls.
She was Sally-Anne...
McAllister.
Dr Neil picked up his glass, filled it from the bottle, waved the bottle at her, and asked, 'Do liberated American girls ever drink spirits, McAllister?
Am I being inhospitable?'
'Some do.'
Sally-Anne gave the matter as grave a consideration as though he were asking her her opinion of the latest exhibition of Japanese art, or Beerbohm Tree's newest play.
'But not the kind that I am likely to know.'
Dr Neil gave a crack of laughter at that.
'And that should teach me not to ask ridiculous and impertinent questions,' he remarked, and his normal cheerfulness seemed to have returned, which was a relief.
Sally-Anne thought that Dr Neil might be a man, and therefore to be hated, but he was a good and caring doctor, and really shouldn't be abusing himself with alcohol.
Papa said that it was a good servant, but a bad master, and he never joined in temperance rant.
'Should you be drinking so much?' she asked, greatly daring again.
'Probably not, McAllister, probably not.
But tell me, can you think of circumstances where one might get drunk to reduce pain?
Either physical pain -- or that induced by unwanted memories?'
Oh, he had struck home harder than he knew.
Sally-Anne had one pain, one memory of which she dared not even think for fear that she would lose all command of herself, one memory which she always pushed away when it tried to attack her.
She pushed it away now.
Would spirits dim that pain?
Had he a pain like that?
If she joined Dr Neil and his bottle, would she feel better?
Dr Neil had seen McAllister's face change even as he spoke so carelessly to her.
He knew that in some way he had hurt her.
He regretted it.
The man who had endured great mental and physical pain always, when in command of himself, tried to avoid inflicting it on others.
But the demon which had driven him to drink that night, after months of abstinence, had him in its thrall.
Perhaps -- no, not perhaps, but because McAllister, with all her youthful ebullience and charm, was in his house, she had revived something in him which he did not want to feel and he had called up the demon to assuage it -- no, to kill it.
'So,' he said, when she did not answer him, and the beautiful mouth quivered, ever so slightly, 'even pretty little McAllister has her secrets.
Not so young and green, after all.'
'Oh,' said Sally-Anne, rising, 'you are hateful like this.
You will not respect yourself in the morning.
And I don't think that you own me after my day is over, Dr Cochrane.
Pray excuse me.
I will return to my room, and dispense with the candle.'
Her own memories were so strong that she feared that she would burst into hysterics before him, and that would never do.
She had vowed never to give way to that.
The lonely dark was preferable to staying to be taunted.
She made for the door, but as perforce she had to pass him he put out a hand and caught her by the wrist.
Not hard, not tightly, but gently, a warm, almost loving clasp, but when he spoke his words were far from loving -- they were jeering, even.
'Oh, come, McAllister.
What's your game, eh?
Tell me that.'
'My game?' echoed Sally-Anne, her heart suddenly bumping now that he was holding her, acutely aware of how little she was wearing.
Besides, she had been caught like that by a man once before.
'Yes, your game, McAllister.
You are playing a game, are you not?
What are you doing here?
Is it a bet?'
'A bet?'
Scalding anger at him consumed her.
'Of course it's not a bet!
I...need the work.'
'You do?'
His voice was hatefully mocking, and whether it was the drink talking, or his resentment of all women because of what one beautiful woman had done to him, Dr Neil did not know.
'Now, why don't I believe you, McAllister?
Entertain me even more.
Tell me the truth for once.
That would make you a pearl among women, and no mistake.'
Sally-Anne tried to wrench her wrist away, but to no avail.
His grip tightened.
'No, indeed.
You are not to go.
The Master will not have it.
We may face the black night together for a time.
You may tell me why a young lady who, whatever she says, has never done any work in her life before, has come to the East End to find it.'
'I told you,' said Sally-Anne, exasperated by his probing, annoyed that he had seen through her whoppers.
'And,' she added a little triumphantly, 'if my performance as a parlourmaid doesn't satisfy, then have the goodness to dismiss me, not bully me in the middle of the night.'
One word in this impressive little speech was unfortunate.
'Ah, yes, performance,' he murmured, taking another great gulp of whisky from the glass in his left hand, still holding her tightly with his right.
'What a good word, McAllister.
I have never, in all my life, known such a diligent, hard-working, uncomplaining maid as you are.
As good as a play.
Real maids are quite different, moaning and wailing and kissing the local bobby between the dustbin and the outhouse.
I shouldn't complain, I suppose.
Matey and I get the benefit of your...performance.
No, don't pull away.
The Master commands you to stay.
Don't you know that a really submissive maid soon learns to please the Master in every way...every way, McAllister?
You take me, I'm sure.
I most desperately need entertaining, as you can see.'
He was playing with her, teasing her.
He had no real intention of assaulting her, however great the temptation which she presented to him.
But he felt that McAllister had to pay something back for all the fairy-tales which she had told Matey and himself, and which Matey had so gullibly swallowed.
He was not to know that a real fear was beginning to overwhelm Sally-Anne.
Oh, it could not happen again.
God could not be so unkind.
She began to tremble, tried to compose herself, to appeal to the coolly aloof Dr Neil of the day, not the drunken midnight man slouching in the great armchair.
She tried to control her voice, and was pleased that it was as steadily calm as she could have hoped.
'Please release me, Dr Cochrane.
I am sure that you do not really wish to frighten me.
I know that drink makes men...irresponsible.
I am not so young and green that I am unaware of that.
And if you let me go I will forgive you for the way in which you have just spoken to me.'
Dr Neil, thus so firmly rebuked, closed his eyes.
He heard the calm voice, but could feel the trembling body which gave it the lie.
He released the small hand, and said, his voice suddenly pleading, 'Don't go, McAllister.
I didn't mean to frighten you.
I...would rather not be alone.
Stay, if only for a little while.'
'And you should not ask me that, either,' said Sally-Anne, head erect, carriage proud, refusing to be won over.
'We should not be talking alone, down here, in the middle of the night.'
And then, free of his grip, she recovered her courage and her gallant spirit to say to him, 'And you really ought to stop drinking.
At once!
What would Miss Mates think if she found us here like this?'
'The worst, I suppose,' said Dr Neil, somewhat wryly.
'You recall me to common sense and my duties, McAllister.
A parlourmaid beyond compare.
You are right to rebuke the Master when he forgets himself so.'
He sat up, corked the bottle, picked up his glass, pushed it away, cocked his head on one side, and said in a pathetic, slightly injured voice, as though he were the victim, not Sally-Anne, 'There -- will that do, McAllister?
I promise not to offend again, although I cannot promise that I will keep the promise.'
Sally-Anne struggled to repress the laughter which suddenly swept over her -- relief after tension, she supposed.
'Oh, you really are too ridiculous.
You owe it to yourself to behave properly, not to me.'
'A female Solomon,' said Neil, sighing, and then he gave her the most charming grin, and through the ruin of his face she suddenly saw what Matey must have known -- the handsome soldier-boy he had once been.
'And even female Solomons must have their proper rest.
Goodnight, McAllister; take the lamp.
I can find my way up in the dark, or fetch a candle from the kitchen cupboard for myself.
Here --' And he handed her the lamp, which had been designed to be portable.
'Be careful on the stairs, mind.
I should not like my playing the Good Samaritan to end in a flaming holocaust.'
Sally-Anne could not demur.
She took the lamp from him.
At least she would be able to finish her article now.
'Goodnight, then,' she said, 'and thank you.'
She could not prevent herself from saying in a doubtful voice, 'You will be careful when you go to bed, won't you?'
Dr Neil laughed a little at that.
'I may be overset,' he said, his voice and manner that of the daylight man again, 'but I am still quite capable,'and he gave her his charming smile.
She took the memory of it upstairs to bed with her, but all the time that she wrote she could see him sitting there as he had been when he had first lit the lamp, his face full of an old pain.
Daylight brought the prosaic world back again, and a Dr Neil who was exactly like the man she had always known -- it was as though she had imagined the improper advances of the night hours.
'You're dreamy today, McAllister,' said Miss Mates accusingly, making Sally-Anne scrub the kitchen floor all over again, the first effort not being deemed sufficiently satisfactory.
The fact that she was basically a kind soul did not mean that she was soft on Sally-Anne or herself.
'You must try a little harder.
We are having company this afternoon.
The teapot, milk jug, sugar basin and tongs will require cleaning with Goddard's powder before midday, so that all will be proper, and the visitors will not be able to say that this house is a slum inside, even if there is one outside.'
'Who are we expecting, then?' said Sally-Anne, who, like all good servants, was beginning to identify herself with her employers, and was one reason for her surprising success as a maid of all work.
'Mrs Teresa Darrell,' said Matey, making a little of a face.
'She is a kind of cousin of Dr Neil's.
She was married to Dr Neil's captain who was killed in nasty Africa, as poor Dr Neil nearly was.'
She paused.
She did not feel that she could tell McAllister that Mrs Darrell had designs on Dr Neil, and that she, Matey, was not very happy about the idea that Mrs Darrell might become Mrs Cochrane.
To begin with, Mrs Darrell did not approve of Matey.
She thought that it was Matey who had encouraged Dr Neil to become a doctor and take up an East End practice.
'Not at all the thing for a Cochrane to do,' she had said more than once.
'After all, he is still poor Stair's heir, poor Stair never having married.'
Stair was Alastair, Neil's older and only brother, and was usually called 'poor Stair' because he had drunk, gambled and wenched away the small remains of the Cochrane estate, most of which his father had already dissipated before him.
Matey thought unkindly that Mrs Darrell rather liked the idea of becoming Lady Cochrane when Stair went to his last rest, which at the rate he was living might not be long.
Sally-Anne knew that Neil was Stair's brother; she had met him, and had not liked him much.
He had been a friend...of...him.
Neil's origins made his presence in the East End even stranger -- and he had the impertinence to quiz her for her presence, when his own was just as odd.
Dressing for the afternoon, she wondered what Mrs Darrell was like, and whether she was worth all the tohu-bohu of preparing a slap-up tea, and being formally 'At Home', which had resulted in even more work for McAllister, as Sally-Anne was increasingly beginning to think herself when she was being a maid of all work.
Prompt at four o'clock, Dr Neil, complainingly dressed in his best suit at Matey's request --'Do I have to?' he had said, rolling his eyes at McAllister -- Matey in a bottle-green velvet gown which McAllister had not seen before, McAllister in her best sateen skirt, white blouse, and small lacy cap with streamers, were all sitting in the parlour when the doorbell rang.
At least Dr Neil and Miss Mates were sitting; McAllister was standing at the kitchen door, and moved sedately forward to answer the urgent bell.
Not promptly enough, apparently, for the bell rang again, peremptorily.
Mrs Darrell was in her middle thirties, was tall and statuesque and had been a bit of a beauty in her day.
She was not, McAllister thought, very tastefully turned out, being inclined to the upholstered look, with a remarkable array of feathers in her hat above a maroon walking dress, trimmed with black.
Her hat was nearly extinguished by the feathers.
She had brought along her companion, Norton, a thin, harassed-looking woman, whose drab grey attire set off her employer's brilliance.
McAllister took their hats, boas, parasols and wraps into the waiting-room, there being nowhere else to take them, after showing the visitors in.
'Well, my deeah Neil, you are looking positively deevy.
So much bettah,' said Mrs Darrell in what McAllister recognised as an imitation of the society shriek affected by those around His Majesty King Edward VII.
She kissed his cheek, managing to avoid the scarred one by some contortion recognised by both her victim and McAllister, who had taken an instant dislike to her.
Why, she could not think.
'Do sit down, Tess,' requested Dr Neil.
'Yes, I am feeling better these days.
I must say that you look in health.'
Doubtless so rosy because of all the rouge on top of papier poudre, thought McAllister nastily.
She had taken up her post by the kitchen door, standing there, hands neatly folded over her spotless apron.
'I see that you have a new gel, Matey,' remarked Mrs Darrell.
'Bit elderly, ain't she, for a maid?'
Dr Neil avoided looking at a bridling McAllister, particularly when Mrs Darrell went on to say, still in the same shriek, 'Hope she's honest, Neil.
The last chit I hired not only got herself -- well, you know, with the coachman, but made off with some of my best lace when I turned her away.
Oh, servants, servants!'
'Just as well I have so few of them,' said Dr Neil.
He still dared not look in McAllister's direction, for Teresa Darrell, frequently calling on Norton for support, continued her diatribe about the servant question.
I really should not be surprised by this, thought McAllister, fuming.
As I well know, the servant question is a constant subject for conversation in every drawing-room, so why do I resent it so much now?
Because I have spent the whole day since six o'clock this morning working, and working hard, and this...painted maypole has done nothing all day long and will do nothing tomorrow, except complain about those who do work.
Does she think that I have no feelings, or have been struck deaf because I stand by the kitchen door, silent?
'Tea, McAllister,' said Matey, to stem Teresa Darrell's flow.
This, diverted, now turned into a recital about every distant relative Neil Cochrane possessed, all of whom, apparently, had only one wish -- to see him back in polite society again.
She had not finished exhorting Dr Neil about this when McAllister, who could hear every word in the kitchen, returned with the tea-tray, staggering under its weight.
By the time that she had balanced the tray on a small table, the silver teapot carefully placed where Matey could preside over it, Mrs Darrell had embarked on an attack on Dr Neil and the profession which he had taken up.
It was all done so genteelly that it set McAllister's teeth on edge.
She was busy handing around cups and saucers, damask napkins, silver knives and cake forks, setting out the cake-stand, circulating plates of cucumber sandwiches, little patties and everything else considered appropriate for an afternoon tea in 1903.
'And I have no appetite, no appetite at all,' shrieked Teresa Darrell at Dr Neil, and consuming her fourth sandwich while she spoke.
'Now, if you set up a decent practice, somewhere in Belgravia, instead of this...slum, you could come and treat me.
Think of the fortune such a charming creature as yourself could make.
No one would mind calling in a doctor of your social standing.'
'Now, Tess, I have told you often enough that I have no wish to set up in Belgravia, Harley Street, or Wimpole Street,' said Dr Neil quietly, refusing the sandwiches which a servile McAllister was handing him.
'There are plenty of medical men to do that, and few to practise here, where the need is so great.'
'Oh, but you are a saint, Neil.
We all know that.
He is a saint, is he not, Norton, and Matey, my dear?
But you should think of yourself a little; a halo is all very well...'
And she burst into tinkling and self-approving laughter.
And what sort of halo does a drunken man at midnight, threatening to assault his parlourmaid, wear? thought McAllister nastily.
And how could Dr Neil, who was such a man of sense, tolerate such a...nodcock?
Teresa Darrell waved for the cake-stand.
McAllister took it round to her, at the point where she began again on the necessity of Dr Neil to rejoin polite society.
This went on for some time, with Dr Neil fencing politely, Matey looking grim, and Norton sighing in counterpoint to la Darrell.
The climax to the whole tasteless display came when tea ended, and McAllister was required to take everything away.
Balancing the tray, to which Mrs Darrell had kindly added the plate containing those cream cakes which she had not managed to devour, she heard her say to Dr Neil, 'You really ought to go into society again, my dear.
You must surely have recovered from your shyness over your unfortunate injury.
After all, we all know what you look like by now!'
Rage, pure and delightful, exploded inside McAllister.
She could look neither at Dr Neil, nor at the tasteless harpy who was tormenting him with her tactlessness.
The rage incited her to the most positive and extreme action.
A small tuffet stood between herself, Mrs Darrell and the kitchen door.
With the most artfully devised deliberation she managed not to avoid it, tripped spectacularly in such a fashion that she fell forward, the contents of the tea-tray, cups, saucers, dregs of tea, milk, sugar and cream cakes, all cascading neatly into Mrs Darrell's lap, with McAllister herself, purple in the face as a consequence of stifling a dreadful desire to laugh, landing gracefully on her knees at the good lady's feet.
For a moment the noise was indescribable, much of it contributed by McAllister, who set up a keening cry, and, in endeavouring to make matters better by dabbing at the debris on Mrs Darrell's lap with a damask napkin, made them worse.
Inside McAllister, who was enjoying her own performance as a clumsy hoyden, a wicked devil was laughing itself stupid, until she felt strong hands under her armpits and Dr Neil hoisted her clear of her victim.
He set her on her feet, and said in a voice which she hardly recognised, 'You will go immediately to the kitchen, McAllister, to await further instructions, but only after you have apologised to Mrs Darrell, at once!'
And his voice rose on the last two words.
Dr Neil knew perfectly well that what had been done was no accident.
He had seen McAllister's face just before her trip and something had alerted him, even before everything had landed in Teresa Darrell's lap.
'No,' said Mrs Darrell violently to McAllister, who was dipping a curtsy, and beginning a stammering apology, but only because Dr Neil had asked her, not because she was sorry for what she had done.
No, indeed.
It was no more and no less than such a creature deserved.
'No, you wicked gel.
I don't want your apologies.
You have quite ruined my gown.
I demand that you turn her away, Neil.
You surely cannot wish to keep such a clumsy thing.'
'No,' said McAllister in her turn, face white, and trembling as though to lose her post would be the tragedy which it would have been to the servant she was pretending to be.
But she did not wish to lose her place, hard though her life as a servant was; such an outcome would be a failure which she could not endure.
'It was an accident; please don't turn me away.'
And the slight wail in her voice was genuine, as Dr Neil could tell.
'Go to the kitchen, McAllister!' he commanded.
'Matey, you must help Tess and Miss Norton to clean Tess's ruined gown.
I am truly sorry, my dear cousin, but the girl is new, not yet trained.'
'From what I have seen of her, she never will be trained,' snapped Teresa Darrell.
'An insolent little piece.
You ought to turn her away.
But there, you were always soft-hearted.'
And she suffered Matey to lead her upstairs to try to repair the ravages which McAllister had wrought.
Left alone, Dr Neil walked to the kitchen to find a strange scene.
McAllister sat in the Windsor chair, her head bent, crying.
It was the very last thing he had expected to discover given McAllister's fiery and impetuous nature.
He had fully intended to tell her exactly what he thought of her disgraceful conduct, for he had no doubt at all that what had been done had been done deliberately.
But the sight of her in tears disarmed him in the strangest way.
Crying women had always annoyed him, and he briefly wondered why McAllister's tears should affect him so differently.
She was crying with an almost fierce abandon.
One might have thought her heart was broken.
'McAllister,' he said gently.
'Why did you do it?'
McAllister looked up.
She did not know what had come over her.
Always before, after similar wickednesses, she had felt almost gleeful triumph, but this time, although she was not truly sorry for what she had done to Mrs Darrell, she felt something like remorse.
And to be turned away as well!
'Do what?' she sobbed.
'I tripped.'
'Tell the truth, McAllister,' said Dr Neil, still gentle.
'I saw you, immediately before you fell.
I know that you tripped, but you tripped deliberately.
Why?'
McAllister dropped her head.
Why did she feel so strange, so...ashamed?
Almost as though she had let Dr Neil down, rather than defend him, as she had meant to, by punishing a tactless fool who was hurting him.
Why did she mind his being hurt so much?
For once, she must tell him the truth, never mind that he had behaved so badly last night.
'Yes,' she said into her sodden handkerchief.
'It was deliberate.'
'But why?' he repeated, genuinely puzzled.
He was hardened to Teresa Darrell's tactlessness.
She had been practising it on him for years.
'I didn't like her,' said McAllister stiffly.
'She deserved it.'
And then, with a flash of her usual impetuous spirit, 'She was horrible to you, not once but again and again.'
'She doesn't mean to be,' said Dr Neil perceptively.
'She thinks that she is helping and encouraging me.'
'That makes it worse, not better,' burst out McAllister.
'What a fool!'
Dr Neil sighed.
Like McAllister, he wanted to know what was coming over him.
He wanted to comfort naughty McAllister, not punish her.
'It was a very unkind thing to do, McAllister,' he said.
'Was it right to criticise her for being, as you thought, unkind, and then be even more unkind yourself?
Teresa Darrell is a most unhappy creature who lost her young husband shortly after their honeymoon, and I am one of the few people left who can remember and mourn him.'
McAllister began to cry again, dreadfully.
It was as though all that had happened to her in the past year was suddenly before her, and all her own shortcomings into the bargain had landed on her in a heap, and were destroying her.
She had been almost unnaturally brave for so long, and now it was as though she had been given licence to cry over everything.
Worse, Dr Neil was being so kind, when reason told her that no one would blame him if he turned her away for what she had done.
It was plain that he was not going to.
Suddenly, as much to his own surprise as McAllister's, Dr Neil went on his knees beside her.
He pulled out his own spotlessly white handkerchief, which McAllister had laundered and ironed earlier that week, and said urgently, 'Oh, do stop crying, McAllister.
It is not like you at all.
I am not going to ask Matey to turn you away.
Suppose I suggest to you that we stop part of your wages to help pay for the damage to the china and to Mrs Darrell's dignity, and you promise to be good in future?'
'Oh, dear,' said McAllister tragically.
zzz