The Governess Read Online Free PDF Page B

be her duty if all were so set against her?
    Yes, she could. She must.
    ‘Yes,’ she repeated. ‘I can see that such a task is beyond you, Mrs Thackerton, and since Mrs Arthur will not take it up there is only one thing I can do. I shall have to go to Mr Thackerton himself.’
    It was a brave boast. But had she realised that in carrying it out she would come to place herself in a situation that held for her far more dangers than all the hostility of the house could bring to bear, would she have spoken with so much determination?

Chapter Four
    Late that evening Miss Unwin was listening from near the top of the stairs for Henry, down below, to take in to Mr Thackerton in the library his nightly whisky and seltzer. She had decided that this last quiet hour of the day would be the time when, if ever, the Master of the house would be disposed to give his grandson’s governess a hearing.
    If she still did not know a great deal about the servants under the roof of No 3 Northumberland Gardens, she had long before taken care to find out as much as she could about the man whose word in the house was law. His lightest shaft of anger could, she knew, send her sliding down from her hardly won position as swiftly as if she had landed on a long snake on the board game that was little Pelham’s favourite.
    Of all she had learned about Mr Thackerton one thing stood out: he was terribly quick to look down on anyone lower than himself in the social scale. Miss Unwin thought she knew why. Mr Thackerton’s beginnings had not been all that high. They were by no means as utterly low as her own, but they had been low enough. His father had been a hatter, owner of a business that provided no more than modest comforts, but shortly after Mr Thackerton himself had inherited the concern the remarkable invention that produced Thackerton’s Patent Steam-moulded Hats had been introduced. From then on progress had been extraordinary and now Thackerton hats put all their rivals to shame. Advertisements for them were to be seen everywhere, plastered on every poster-covered wall, blazoned on the sides of horse-buses, boldly inserted in half a dozen varieties of fancy type in every magazine and newspaper.
    The Thackerton family had soon moved from the mild prosperity of Lambeth across the stinking waters of the Thames (which had nevertheless somehow washed away all traces of humble origins) to the dignity and massive respectability of Bayswater.
    All this piecemeal gathered information had made Miss Unwin certain that if Mr Thackerton was to be approached at all on the matter of Joseph and the stolen sugar-mice it would have to be done at the most propitious moment.
    So now she listened for Henry to enter the library carrying in his white-gloved hands the silver salver on which there would be resting a tumbler, the whisky decanter and the seltzer siphon. She would wait, she had decided, until he came out and then for three minutes more. At that point, if she had guessed correctly, Mr Thackerton would be moderately at ease but not so much so that an interruption would be furiously resented.
    She had had to give herself a long vigil. There were some occasions, she knew, when Mr Thackerton received a visitor in the library and his nightcap was postponed. This visitor was a confidential clerk from the firm’s London office, one Ephraim Brattle, a young man of singularly dour appearance, black-haired, with a set round face that reminded her of nothing so much as the front of a steam locomotive so strongly determined was its expression. It was his task to go from London to the works in Lancashire with whatever orders were necessary, leaving by the first train from Euston Station having slept the night in a spare servants’ bedroom. His interviews in the library might be short or might be long, so Miss Unwin had had to station herself at her chosen post well in advance.
    It seemed, however, that this was not one of Ephraim Brattle’s nights. At quarter to