A Broken Vessel Read Online Free Page B

afraid they may take this from me and read it before I can send it. Thank heaven, there’s someone I think I can trust to post it for me secretly, so that no one will see your direction on the outer sheet. So if you choose not to answer it, no one will ever know what has become of me. I shall be forgotten as one dead, like the broken vessel in the Psalm.
    I love you dearly. Pray for me.
    Sally stared. “Well, carry me out and bury me decent!”
    “You know nothing about this at all?”
    “No, I told you, I must’ve lifted it off one of them flats I picked up. There was three of ’em: I called ’em Bristles, Blue Eyes, and Blinkers.”
    He was momentarily diverted. “Why do they all begin with ‘B’?”
    “I dunno. They just do. I al’ays gives me flats names. I’ll think of one for you, maybe.”
    “I don’t see any need,” he said lightly. “I wasn’t planning we should enter into a business relationship.” He ran his eyes over the letter. “No signature, no direction. She mentions an outer sheet—I suppose she used another sheet of paper as an envelope. Saturday evening —that must have been the day before yesterday. There hasn’t been another Saturday in October so far. If she sent the letter by the twopenny post, it could have arrived today. Have you any idea at all which man you got it from?”
    “I couldn’t, could I? Soon as I nicked them wipes, I stowed ’em away double-quick, in that pocket under me skirt. I could’ve pinched that letter along with any of ’em, and not knowed a thing about it.”
    “I wonder if the man you got it from is the person she was writing to?”
    “Must’ve been. How else would he get it?”
    “I don’t know.” He frowned at the letter. “What sort of place do you suppose it is—this place where she says she’s being held against her will? A house of correction?”
    “A knocking-house, more like.”
    He grimaced. “I think Stark Street is in a fairly respectable neighbourhood, near Russell Square. But God knows, there are discreet ‘houses’ tucked away all over London. It’s curious, though. This letter is from an educated woman—the penman-ship alone shows that. Some governess taught her to write like this, all curlicues and feminine flourishes. And the language is literate, eloquent. She sounds young, though, don’t you think? Naive, bewildered. How did she ever come to this?—ruined, shut up and spied upon, afraid to see her family again?”
    Sally shrugged. “I expect some cove made up to her, and next thing she knew, she was seeing stars lying on her back.”
    “It does sound as if she’d been seduced. Her shame, her self-disgust, her regret for some rash act, all point to that. My ruin has not been all my fault. That could be a reference to her seducer. I do not think I could face anyone I know, ever again—not you, nor anyone else in our family. So the person she wrote to was a relative. Perhaps even her husband—no, it must be a blood relation. Because she next speaks of him I once thought I loved —that could be a husband, though it sounds more like a suitor. Perhaps she turned from him to another man, who compromised her. And after that false step, she could all too easily have gone on sliding downward.”
    “It’s the end of the world to a lady, ain’t it?” marvelled Sally. “Losing her character, and all?”
    “Because there’s no going back from it—not if it becomes known. Casting the first stone being a favourite recreation in this Christian land.” He added, “How are you feeling?”
    “I’m all right. ’Cept I’ve got a cobweb in me throat.”
    He refilled her glass. As she drank, her eyes fell on the handkerchiefs, which he had laid on a nearby table. She suddenly snatched one up. “It was him, I’ll take me oath on it!”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “See this wipe? I lifted it off the cove I called Blue Eyes. He was a real gentry-cove, togged out to the nines, very swell in his speech. Now, if this gal