第9章

"Impossible!" cried Francesca. "Dusenberry is unlikely enough, but who ever heard of such a name as Benella! It sounds like a flavouring extract."

"She came over to see the world, she says."

"Oh! then she has money?"

"No--or at least, yes; or at least she had enough when she left America to last for two or three months, or until she could earn something."

"Of course she left her little all in a chamois-skin bag under her pillow on the steamer," suggested Francesca.

"That is precisely what she did," Salemina replied, with a pale smile. "However, she was so ill in the steerage that she had to pay twenty-five or thirty dollars extra to go into the second cabin, and this naturally reduced the amount of her savings, though it makes no difference since she left them all behind her, save a few dollars in her purse. She says she is usually perfectly well, but that she was very tired when she started, that it was her first sea-voyage, and the passage was unusually rough."

"Where is she going?"

"I don't know; I mean she doesn't know. Her maternal grandmother was born in Trim, near Tara, in Meath, but she does not think she has any relations over here. She is entirely alone in the world, and that gives her a certain sentiment in regard to Ireland, which she heard a great deal about when she was a child. The maternal grandmother must have gone to Salem at a very early age, as Benella herself savours only of New England soil."

"Has she any trade, or is she trained to do anything whatsoever?" asked Francesca.

"No, she hoped to take some position of 'trust.' She does not care at all what it is, so long as the occupation is 'interestin' work,' she says. That is rather vague, of course, but she speaks and appears like a nice, conscientious person."

"Tell us the rest; conceal nothing," I said sternly.

"She--she thinks that we have saved her life, and she feels that she belongs to us," faltered Salemina.

"Belongs to us!" we cried in a duet. "Was there ever such a base reward given to virtue; ever such an unwelcome expression of gratitude! Belong to us, indeed! We can't have her; we won't have her. Were you perfectly frank with her?"

"I tried to be, but she almost insisted; she has set her heart upon being our maid."

"Does she know how to be a maid?"

"No, but she is extremely teachable, she says."

"I have my doubts," remarked Francesca; "a liking for personal service is not a distinguishing characteristic of New Englanders; they are not the stuff of which maids are made. If she were French or German or Senegambian, in fact anything but a Saleminian, we might use her; we have always said we needed some one."

Salemina brightened. "I thought myself it might be rather nice--that is, I thought it might be a way out of the difficulty.

Penelope had thought at one time of bringing a maid, and it would save us a great deal of trouble. The doctor thinks she could travel a short distance in a few days; perhaps it is a Providence in disguise."

"The disguise is perfect," murmured Francesca.

"You see," Salemina continued, "when the poor thing tottered along the wharf the stewardess laid her on the pile of wool sacks-"

"Like a dying Chancellor," again interpolated the irrepressible.

"And ran off to help another passenger. When she opened her eyes, she saw straight in front of her, in huge letters, 'Salem, Mass., U.S.A.' It loomed before her despairing vision, I suppose, like a great ark of refuge, and seemed to her in her half-dazed condition not only a reminder, but almost a message from home. She had then no thought of ever seeing the owner; she says she felt only that she should like to die quietly on anything marked 'Salem, Mass.' Go in to see her presently, Penelope, and make up your own mind about her.

See if you can persuade her to--to--well, to give us up. Try to get her out of the notion of being our maid. She is so firm; I never saw so feeble a person who could be so firm; and what in the world shall we do with her if she keeps on insisting, in her nervous state?"

"My idea would be," I suggested, "to engage her provisionally, if we must, not because we want her, but because her heart is weak. I shall tell her that we do not feel like leaving her behind, and yet we ourselves cannot be detained in Dublin indefinitely; that we will try the arrangement for a month, and that she can consider herself free to leave us at any time on a week's notice."

"I approve of that," agreed Francesca, "because it makes it easier to dismiss her in case she turns out to be a Massachusetts Borgia.

You remember, however, that we bore with the vapours and vagaries, the sighs and moans of Jane Grieve in Pettybaw, all those weeks, and not one of us had the courage to throw off her yoke. Never shall I forget her at your wedding, Penelope; the teardrop glistened in her eye as usual; I think it is glued there! Ronald was sympathetic, because he fancied she was weeping for the loss of you, but on inquiry it transpired that she was thinking of a marriage in that 'won'erfu' fine family in Glasgy,' with whose charms she had made us all too familiar. She asked to be remembered when I began my own housekeeping, and I told her truthfully that she was not a person who could be forgotten; I repressed my feeling that she is too tearful for a Highland village where it rains most of the year, also my conviction that Ronald's parish would chasten me sufficiently without her aid."

I did as Salemina wished, and had a conference with Miss Dusenberry.

I hope I was quite clear in my stipulations as to the perfect freedom of the four contracting parties. I know I intended to be, and I was embarrassed to see Francesca and Salemina exchange glances next day when Benella said she would show us what a good sailor she could be, on the return voyage to America, adding that she thought a person would be much less liable to sea-sickness when travelling in the first cabin.