Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

She had not been sure how to go on, but the arrival of Rose Porter had given her inspiration.

I have just admitted to this hospital a young woman in a certain condition who has walked here from Bath.

The editor would probably delete the words "in a certain condition" as being vulgar, but Maisie was not going to do his censoring for him.

I note that Dr Wickham writes from the Cowes Club, and I cannot help but wonder how many members of the club could walk from Bath to London?

Of course as a woman I have never been inside the club, but I often see its members on the steps, hailing hansom cabs to take them distances of a mile or less, and I am bound to say that most of them look as if they would find it difficult to walk from Piccadilly Circus to Parliament Square.

They certainly could not work a twelve-hour shift in an East End sweatshop, as thousands of Englishwomen do every day--

She was interrupted again by a knock at the door. "Come in," she called.

The woman who entered was neither poor nor pregnant. She had big blue eyes and a girlish face, and she was richly dressed. She was Emily, the wife of Edward Pilaster.

Maisie got up and kissed her. Emily Pilaster was one of the hospital's supporters. The group included a surprising diversity of women--Maisie's old friend April Tilsley, now the owner of three London brothels, was a member. They gave cast-off clothes, old furniture, surplus food from their kitchens, and odd supplies such as paper and ink. They could sometimes find employment for the mothers after confinement. But most of all they gave moral support to Maisie and Rachel when they were vilified by the male establishment for not having compulsory prayers, hymn-singing and sermons on the wickedness of unmarried motherhood.

Maisie felt partly responsible for Emily's disastrous visit to April's brothel on Mask Night, when she had failed to seduce her own husband. Since then Emily and the loathsome Edward had led the discreetly separate lives of wealthy couples who hated each other.

This morning Emily was bright-eyed and excited. She sat down, then got up again and checked that the door was firmly shut. Then she said: "I've fallen in love."

Maisie was not sure this was unqualified good news, but she said: "How wonderful! Who with?"

"Robert Charlesworth. He's a poet and he writes articles about Italian art. He lives in Florence most of the year but he's renting a cottage in our village; he likes England in September."