The Constant Companion Read Free

as infrequently as possible. The house was, indeed, as small as Lady Amelia had heard it to be, being a sort of redbrick box with small, dark rooms. It had been many years since Miss Lamberton had had any servants, and such work as there was was done by herself and Constance.
    When her father had died, Constance had been a merry, happy little twelve-year-old. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday she was still very small but thin and bony. Her hands were deformed and scarred with the winter’s crop of chilblains and her skin was stretched tight over her high cheekbones. Her black hair was screwed up in a knot on the top of her small head and was greasy and dirty, Miss Lamberton having considered that cleanliness was an over preoccupation with vanity, rather than being next to godliness. Constance was very small in stature, being a mere five feet, two inches. The only thing that lent any color to her otherwise drab appearance was a pair of large and unusually beautiful eyes which were of a light, golden brown flecked with gold and fringed with heavy black lashes.
    Under the influence of her aunt, she had almost come to believe that dreams of balls and parties were sinful. But now, without the overbearing presence of her aunt, her imagination seemed to have run riot.
    As she sat holding Lady Amelia’s letter, she could almost
see
the ballroom of her dreams and smell the scent from the expensively gowned ladies. And if she closed her eyes very tightly, she could feel
his
arms about her, that forbidden dream lover, that young man with the boyish face and curly hair who had long haunted her thoughts. She had never actually seen such a man but over the years she had invented one—a man who would be the perfect companion and husband. Someone to laugh and have fun with. Someone gay and debonair who would stand between her and the rest of the forbidding world which stretched beyond Berry House.
    What else had Lady Amelia said in her letter? “I want some respectable lady of good birth to be my chaperone.”
    “Why couldn’t it be me?” thought Constance. “I’m a respectable lady of good birth!”
    It was then that a mad idea, born of insecurity and despair, began to take shape in her mind.
    The letter had been addressed to Miss Lamberton. “I am Miss Lamberton,” thought Constance. “Could I not just go to London and apply for the post? I am, after all, a relative of Lady Amelia. Surely she would not turn me away if I explain the situation.”
    The evening sky was turning black outside and a faint wind had begun to moan through the trees. Constance lit the foul-smelling tallow candles and went to look into the flyblown looking glass over the fireplace.
    Her thin, white face stared back at her, the eyes looking enormous in the flickering gloom. “You haven’t
said
you’ll do it,” she muttered. “But at least you could wash your hair.”
    With quick nervous steps, she descended to the kitchen and then began to pile wood into the fire. When the flames began to leap up, she hung the great kettle on the idle back, a long sort of hook with an ingenious contrivance by which it could be tipped to pour out boiling water.
    Then taking a sharp knife, she shaved fine pieces from a bar of soap into a cup, and adding a little water, mashed them into a paste. When the kettle began to boil, she first infused a jug of camomile tea and let it stand to cool so that she could use it for a rinse.
    She washed and washed her hair until her arms ached. Then she took down the tin bath from its hook on the wall and waited for more water to heat.
    By the time she had bathed, she decided to indulge in the extravagance of washing her clothes. Clothes at Berry House had only been washed every five weeks, in the same way as the laundry was done in almost every other genteel house in England.
    After two hours of hard work, she stood shivering in her wrapper in her bedroom, staring at the glossy tresses of black hair which fell almost to her