‘Perhaps. Have another cake. So where do you plan to travel first?’
‘Exeter, sir.’
‘Exeter! In midwinter with the snow falling? Why Exeter? Why not Brighton? That’s a short run.’
‘But it is the Exeter Fly that I watch going past,’ said Hannah. ‘I want to be on it. I want to see the house from the road.’
He took out his card case and extracted a card. ‘I fear for you, Miss Pym,’ he said. ‘Take my card and come and see me on your return and let me know your adventures.’
‘Oh, sir, I should be most honoured. How soon may I leave?’
‘Let me see, Mr Entwhistle is coming in two days’ time to Thornton Hall to pay off the few servants who qualify for the two hundred pounds. All the servants may as well be paid off at the same time. I will put a caretaker and his wife into Thornton Hall to keep it aired and cleaned until I decide to sell it. This can all be arranged quite quickly and there is really not much more for you to do. Say, in a week’s time. Now what is troubling you?’ he asked, seeing those odd eyes of hers lose colour.
Hannah gave a genteel cough. ‘I have to confess, sir, that this cloak and hat are not my own. They belong to Mrs Clarence. She left all her clothes behind and … and … I could not … did not want to appear in servant’s clothes on this momentous day. I wondered, sir, if I might pay you for them.’
‘There is no need for that. Take what you wish, although no doubt everything is sadly outmoded. All your worries are over, Miss Pym. Relax and enjoy your cakes and look forward to your first journey on a Flying Machine.’
Hannah was by now Sir George’s devoted slave. No one in all her life had treated her with such courtesy. He was a god. But some innate sensitivity made her mask her adoration. She feared that he might misread any admiration on her part and think this family servant was getting ideas above her station. She covertly looked around her at the well-bred faces, at the fearfully expensive clothes, at the snow whirling outside the leaded windows, at the piles of sweetmeats and pineapples and chocolate and fruit, and then at the high, arrogant face of Sir George Clarence and wondered if it were possible to die from sheer happiness. When they rose to leave, she shot quick little glances about her so that she might stamp the memory of this glorious afternoon on her mind for life.
To her disappointment, Sir George said he would not be staying at Thornton Hall. He would return in two days’ time with the lawyer.
Hannah went up the stairs to Mrs Clarence’s rooms that night when the other servants were asleep and took out coats and pelisses and mantles and hats and fine underwear like gossamer. Mrs Clarence had been slim as a young woman and of the same height as Hannah. Hannah did not want the other servants to know about Mrs Clarence’s clothes. They were already bitterly jealous of her because of her large inheritance and the present of such fine clothes would only add to their jealousy.
The week passed like the stage-coach, rumbling off slowly and gathering momentum. Hannah tipped the Clarences’ coachman to drive her into the City to purchase an inside ticket for the Exeter Fly. She then recklessly promised him more money if he would rise during the night to get her to the City to join the coach, which left at five in the morning. The coachman pointed out that she would need to pay for two grooms and the outside man as well as there was no way he was going to face the perils of Knightsbridge on his own. Hannah thought of her fortune and threw thrift to the winds. All that mattered now was to get on that coach.
There were so many preparations to make in such a short time. But she had waited so long for an adventure, she could hardly bear to wait any longer. She took modest lodgings in Kensington Village and then packed as many of Mrs Clarence’s clothes as she could into large trunks. The outside man wheeled them in a cart to her new home, two rooms above a bakery.
All that was left was the trunk to take on the journey.
She did not go to sleep the night before the Great Adventure, as she mentally called it. She walked about the house from room to room, seeing herself in every corner. There was the scullery maid Hannah bent over the pots, then kitchen maid Hannah over the stove, chambermaid Hannah screwing up her face as she took down the slops, then between-stairs maid Hannah polishing the oaken treads on the main staircase, then housemaid Hannah in the drawing-room, darting here and there, quick and light, and then her last shell, housekeeper Hannah, proud of her black gown and starched cap and with the bunch of keys jingling at her waist.
How happy she had been then! There was so much to do, so much pride in her new position. But after Mrs Clarence had run away and the staff of servants had shrunk and all the parties and callers and entertaining had ceased, time had hung heavy on her hands and her employer’s depression seemed to permeate every room. And yet she was loyal to Mr Clarence and ever hopeful that one day Mrs Clarence might appear on the doorstep, gay and laughing, saying she had done it all for fun. But Mrs Clarence had never come back. At first Hannah had glanced idly out at the stage-coach going by. Bit by bit, she had begun to imagine herself on it, until she could not start her day until she had seen the coach thunder by. The sight of that coach made her feel less trapped in the gloom of Thornton Hall, where Mr Clarence grew more grey-faced and the servants moved silently about the house, as if in a house of mourning.
Sometimes she felt like yelling and singing, doing anything to shatter the grim silence, but respect for her employer was in her very bones. She had always been practical and busy until Mrs Clarence had run away, and then she gradually began to live in dreams of bowling along the dusty roads of England where the sun always shone, the birds always sang, and she was as free as the air. One Hannah saw that the rooms were aired and dusted and that the meals were served on time. The other Hannah, the inside Hannah, escaped far away outside the walls of Thornton Hall and into a dream country of endless travel and movement.
As the hour approached for the coachman to bring the carriage round, she began to worry and worry. What if the lazy old man was still snoring? What if the grooms had refused to come?
But just when she had decided to walk over to the stables and find out, she heard the snorting of horses and the rumbling of wheels. She drew the blue cloak around her and settled the beaver hat more firmly on her head. A new century, a new life, a new Hannah.
She tugged open the main door and then turned briefly in salute, waving goodbye to her past, waving goodbye to her servant’s life, as she had waved so many times to the Flying Machine on the Kensington Road.
Hannah slammed the door behind her with a satisfying final bang, handed up her trunk to the coachman, and climbed inside.
2
G.K. Chesterton
Miss Hannah Pym would have found it hard to believe that members of the Quality regarded a journey by stage-coach as a sort of lingering death, preferring their own fast well-sprung carriages and teams of horses.
For to Hannah, standing, slightly open-mouthed, in the courtyard of the Bull and Gate in Aldersgate in the City of London at quarter to five on a freezing-cold morning, the stage-coach was romance on wheels. The coach was faced in dull black leather, thickly studded by way of ornament with broad black-headed nails tracing out the panels, in the upper part of which were four oval windows with heavy red wooden frames and leather curtains. Up on the roof, there were seats for the ‘outsiders’, surrounded by a high iron guard. In front of the outsiders sat the coachman and the guard, who always held his carbine ready cocked on his knees. Underneath them was a very long, narrow boot, or trunk, beneath a large spreading hammer-cloth hanging down on all sides and furnished with a luxuriant fringe. Behind the coach was the immense basket, stretching far and wide beyond the body, to which it was attached by long iron bars, or supports, passing underneath it. Travelling in the basket was cheap but highly uncomfortable.
A flake of snow drifted down and landed on Hannah’s nose, then another. She climbed inside and, as she was the first, secured a seat by the window. The coachman, many-caped and red-faced, came lumbering and wheezing out and climbed up on the roof. Then came the other passengers. Hannah studied them eagerly as they climbed in and took their places. There was a dainty woman in widow’s weeds supported by a military-looking man who smelt
