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"So all the servants have left Woodview? I wonder what has become of them." "You remember my mother, the cook? She died a couple of years ago." "Mrs. Latch! Oh, I'm so sorry." "She was an old woman. You remember John Randal, the butler? He's in a situation in Cumberland Place, near the Marble Arch.
They've gone to the races; there was nothing to do, so I came down here." Mrs. Randal's lips moved as if she were going to say something. But she did not speak. Soon after she rose to her feet. "I think that it must be getting near tea-time; I must be going. You might come in and have a cup of tea with me, if you're not in a hurry back to Woodview."
On questioning a passer-by she learnt that the first house was the Rectory, the second was Woodview Lodge. If that was the lodge, what must the house be?
She drew her hand away; he got up, and sat down beside her, and put his arm around her waist. "No, no. I'll have none of that. All that sort of thing is over between us." He looked at her inquisitively, not knowing how to act. "I know you've had a hard time, Esther. Tell me about it. What did you do when you left Woodview?"
So Jack wrote at Esther's dictation, and before they expected an answer, a letter came from Mrs. Barfield saying that she remembered Esther perfectly well. She had just returned from the South. She was all alone at Woodview, and wanted a servant. Esther could come and take the place if she liked. She enclosed five pounds, and hoped that the money would enable Esther to leave London at once.
Amid the violences of her stepfather there had always been her mother and the meeting-house. In Woodview there was nothing, only Margaret, who had come to console and persuade her to come downstairs. The resolution she had to call out of her soul to do this exhausted her, and she went downstairs heedless of what anyone might say.
The Gaffer and his race-horses, the Saint and her greenhouse so went the stream of life at Woodview. What few visitors came were entertained by Miss Mary in the drawing-room or on the tennis lawn. Mrs. Barfield saw no one.
Drink and expensive living, dancing and singing upstairs and downstairs, and the jollifications culminated in a servants' ball given at the Shoreham Gardens. All the Woodview servants, excepting Mrs. Latch, were there; likewise all the servants from Mr. Northcote's, and those from Sir George Preston's two leading county families.
No, she must bear with all insults and scorn, and forget that they thought her as dirt under their feet. But what were such sufferings compared to those she would endure were she to return home? In truth they were as nothing. And yet the girl longed to leave Woodview. She had never been out of sight of home before.
Barfield, the Saint you remember we used to call her the Saint well, she has her fortune, about five hundred a year, and they just manage to live there in a sort of hole-and-corner sort of way. They can't afford to keep a trap, and towards the end of October they go off and don't return till the beginning of May. Woodview ain't what it was.
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