Mary Reilly Read Online Free PDF Page B

strong but not like hate, as that seems simple, pure and clean. Yet I feel that my father put this dark place in me that brings sadness on me unawares, when I should be happy to have my good place and such friends as I have and someone like Cook who can advise me on the way of gardening, and who is simple herself and finds happiness in doing her work and knowing her place. But for me, though I can get past it, there’s often this darkness and sadness, unexpected and coming from things that should bring happiness, like the thought of the garden and the working in it with Cook, but then it rises up inside like ablackness and I really am in that blackness where my father left me, with no way out and nothing to do but wait until somehow there’s some merciful release and I come to myself again.
    So I feel my father made me thus, or left me thus, with this sadness which has been hard to bear and will likely never leave me no matter what fortune I have, and it sets me apart from my fellows who seem never to know it. While I can’t forgive my father, neither can I regret what I am, and there are times when I would not give up the sadness and darkness because it do seem to me true that this is part of how we mun see life if we are to say we saw it, and it has to do with our being alone and dying alone, which we all mun do. So it seems to me that many people, especially gentlefolks, spend a great deal of money and all their time trying to push all sadness from their lives, which in my view they can never do, because it is
there
, no matter how well off we may be in this world, and it just mun be got through. I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light!
    And this is truly something I see in Master and why I am so drawn to serve him and what I think he mun see in me, and why he has wanted to look into my history, because we are both souls who knew this sadness and darkness inside and we have both of us learned to wait.
    I couldn’t seem to come back to myself after my talk with Master over the garden. It was as if I had been digging up my own childhood and for the rest of the day my thoughts was as hard and black as the soil. These many years I’ve seldom really thought on my past and have tried to put it behind me, going on with my work, for I see no good in brooding on things that can never be changed. I know Cook thought it odd to see me downcast at lunch, as she was pleased with me and full of plans for our garden, but I could scarcely lift my head. Afterwards I took my buckets and brushes and went out to scrub the flags in the front hall. This is a long, slow, dirty job which I like to do on my knees with my skirts tied up, using a lot of water and brushes, first to loosen up all the dirt, then a deal more until it is clear again, taking it up with my big sponges and pouring more out until I’ve fair made a little river of the hall. Before I started I got the fireplace going so the hall would dry out fast when I was done, but as I worked it made me so hot that I was dripping and felt I was in a steam cabinet such as I have read about in the bathing establishments. I worked and worked, scrubbing hard, sloshing through the filthy water to fill my buckets, going round the house and in through the area, so many passersby saw me hurrying along in my bare feet and skirts tied up, then I had to use half a bucket on my feet at the front step before going back in. I was waiting formy spirits to lift with the dirt, but they would not. Then I had a thought that struck me so hard I dropped my brush and rose up on my knees like a rabbit trying to hear the fox and that was this, that my father is still alive somewhere.
    Why this should so stun me I don’t know, but it did, and all at once it was as if he was not just alive somewhere, but in the very hall with me. Our big house was