me-which is precisely what I wish to avoid!”
“Oh my dear-don’t be naive!” Priscilla waved her hands, dismissing the very idea. “I don’t mean domestic residences in Primrose Hill. I mean two or three blocks of old tenements in Mile End or Wapping, or St. Giles.”
“Wapping?” Emily said with careful incredulity. “What on earth would that be worth to me?”
“A fortune,” Priscilla replied. “Place it in the hands of a good business manager, who will see that it is let advantageously, and that the rent is collected every week or month, and it will double your outlay in no time.”
Emily frowned. “Really? How on earth would rent for places like that amount to much? Only the poorest people live in such areas, don’t they? They could hardly pay the kind of rents I should wish.”
“Oh yes they can,” Priscilla assured her. “If there are enough of them, it will be most profitable, I promise you.”
“Enough?”
“Certainly. Ask no questions as to what people do, and what profit they in turn can make, then you can let every room in the building to a dozen people, and they will sublet it, and so on. There is always someone who will pay more, believe me.”
“I am not sure I should care to be associated with such a place,” Emily demurred. “It is not-something-”
“Ha!” Priscilla laughed aloud. “Who would? That is why you do it through a business manager, and a solicitor, and his employees, and a rent collector, and so on. No one will ever know it is you who owns it, except your own man of affairs, and he will certainly never tell anyone. That is his purpose.”
“Are you sure?” Emily widened her eyes. “Does anyone else do such a thing?”
“Of course. Dozens of people.”
“Who-for instance?”
“My dear, don’t be so indiscreet. You will make yourself highly unpopular if you ask such questions. They are protected, just as you will be. I promise you, no one will know.”
“It is only a matter of-” Emily shrugged her shoulders high and opened her eyes innocently. “Really-people might not understand. There is nothing illegal, I presume?”
“Of course not. Apart from having no desire to break the law”-Priscilla smiled and pursed her lips-“these are all highly respectable people with positions to maintain-it also would be very foolish.” She spread elegant hands wide, palms upwards, her rings momentarily hidden. “Anyway, it is quite unnecessary. There is no law to prevent your doing everything I suggest. And believe me, my dear, the profits are exceedingly good.”
“Is there any risk?” Emily said lightly. “I mean-there are people agitating for reforms of one sort or another. Might one end up losing it all-or on the other hand being exposed to public dislike, if-”
“None at all,” Priscilla said with a laugh. “I don’t know what reformers you have heard of, but they have not even a ghost of a chance of bringing about any real changes-not in the areas I propose. New houses will be built here and there, in manufacturing towns, but it will not affect the properties we are concerned with. There will always be slums, my dear, and there will always be people with nowhere else to live.”
Emily felt such a passion of revulsion she found it almost impossible to hide it. She looked down to conceal her face, and searched in her reticule for a handkerchief, then blew her nose a good deal less delicately than was ladylike. Then she felt sufficiently composed to meet Priscilla’s eyes again and try to make the loathing in her own look like anxiety.
“I thought it was such slums that reformers were involved in?”
Now the contempt in Priscilla’s face was easily readable.
“You are being timid for no reason, Emily.” The use of her name added an infinite condescension to Priscilla’s words. “There are very powerful people involved. It would not only be quite pointless trying to ruin them, it would be extremely dangerous. No one will cause more than a little inconvenience, I promise, and that will be dealt with without your needing even to know about it, much less involve yourself.”
Emily leaned back and forced a smile to her face, although it felt more like the baring of teeth. She met Priscilla’s gaze without a flicker though inside she was burning with a hatred that made her want to react with physical violence.
“You have told me precisely what I wished to know. And I am sure you are totally reliable and unquestionably are fully aware what you are dealing with. No doubt we will meet again on the matter, or at least you will hear from me. Thank you so much for sparing me your time.”
Priscilla smiled more widely as Emily rose to her feet. “I am always happy to be of assistance to a friend. When you have realized your assets and decided what you would like to invest, come back and I shall put you in touch with the best person to help you, and to be utterly discreet.”
Money was not mentioned, but Emily knew perfectly well it was understood, and she was equally sure Priscilla herself took a proportion for her services.
“Of course.” Emily inclined her head very slightly. “You have been most gracious; I shall not forget it.” And she took her leave and went out of the house into the cold air of the street where even the manure on the cobbles could not spoil its comparative sweetness to her.
“Take me home,” she told the coachman as he handed her up. “Immediately.”
When Jack returned tired and dirty, his face ashen, she was waiting for him. He was just as somber, with an underlying anger equal to hers.
He stopped in the hallway where she had come from the withdrawing room to meet him. She still found his step on the black-and-white flagstones quickened her heart and the sound of his voice as the footman took his coat made her smile. She looked at him and searched his dark gray eyes, with the curling lashes she had marveled at- and envied-when they first met. She had considered him far too conscious of his own charm. Now that she knew him better, she still found him just as engaging, but knew the man behind the manners and liked him immensely. He was an excellent friend, and she knew the supreme value of that.
“Was it very bad?” She did not waste words in foolish questions like “How are you?” She could see in his face how he was, that he had been exhausted and hurt and was as violently angry as she, and as impotent to change or destroy the offenders or to help the victims.
“Beyond anything I can convey in words,” he replied. “I’ll be lucky if I can get the smell out of my clothes or the taste out of my throat. And I don’t think I’ll ever completely lose the picture of their misery. I can see their faces every time I close my eyes as if they were painted on the inside of my eyelids.” He looked around the huge hallway with its flagged floor, oak-paneled walls, the sweeping staircase up to a gallery, the paintings, the vases laden with flowers two and three feet tall, the huge carved furniture with gleaming wood and the umbrella stand with five silver- and horn-handled sticks.
Emily knew what he was thinking; the same thoughts had passed through her head more than once. But it was George’s house, Ashworth heritage, and belonged to her son Edward, not to her except as a trust until he was of age. Jack knew that too, but they both still felt a taste of guilt that they enjoyed its luxury as easily as if it had been theirs, which in all practical ways it was.
“Come into the withdrawing room and sit down,” she said gently. “Albert can draw you a bath. Tell me what you learned.”
Taking her arm he went with her and in a quiet, very grave voice he described where Anton had taken him. He chose few words, not wanting to harass her nor to relive the horror and the helpless pity he had felt himself, not the nauseating disgust. He told her of rat-and-lice-infected tenements where the walls dripped and hung with mold, of open sewers and drains and piles of refuse. Many rooms were occupied by fifteen or twenty people, all ages and both sexes, without privacy or sanitation of any kind, without water or drainage. In some the roofs or windows were in such disrepair the rain came in; and yet the rent was collected every week without fail. Some desperate people sublet even the few square yards they had, in order to maintain their own payments.
He forbore from describing the conditions in the sweatshops where women and girls worked beneath street level, by gaslight or candlelight and without ventilation, eighteen hours a day stitching shirts or gloves or dresses for people who inhabited another world.
He did not go into any detail about the brothels, the gin mills and the narrow, fetid rooms where men found oblivion in opium; he simply stated their existence. By the time he had said all he needed to, to share the burden and feel her understanding, her anguish at the same things, her equal sense of outrage and helplessness, Albert had been twice to say his bath was getting cold, and had finally come a third time to say that a fresh bath had been drawn.
There were in bed, close together and almost ready for sleep, when she finally told him what she had done,
