The bump between them effectively stopped Maggie’s tears. Still hugging Maisie, she pulled her head back and looked down at it. For a rare moment in her life she could not think of anything to say.
“You see, when Ma and Pa decided to go back to Piddletrenthide,” Maisie began, “it were so cold that they was afraid I weren’t strong enough for such a long journey. Then Mr. and Mrs. Blake said they’d take me in. First we went off to stay with their friends the Cumberlands, to escape from those awful men who came to their door. The Cumberlands live out a ways in the countryside-Egham, it were. Even that short ride gave me a chesty cold, an’ we had to stay there a month. They was ever so nice to me. Then we come back, an’ I been here all this time.”
“Do you never go out? I han’t seen you at all!”
Maisie shook her head. “I didn’t want to-not at first, anyway. It were so cold and I felt sick. An’ then I didn’t want Miss Pelham and others nosing about, especially not once I began to show. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” She laid a hand on top of her bump. “An’ those Association men had threatened to come after Pa. I just thought it were better to be quiet here. I didn’t mean to hide from you, really. I didn’t! Once, after we come back from Egham, you came to the door and asked Mr. Blake about Jem, d’you remember? You wanted to know where he were, when he had left. I were upstairs and heard you, and I so badly wanted to run down and see you. But I just thought it would be better-safer-to stay hidden, even from you. I’m sorry.”
“But what do you do here?” Maggie glanced through the back window into Mr. Blake’s study and thought she could make out his head, bent over his desk.
Maisie brightened. “Oh, all sorts of things! Really, they be wonderful to me. I help with the cooking and the washing and the gardening. And you know”-she lowered her voice-“I think it’s done them good to have me, as it frees Mrs. Blake to help Mr. Blake more. He han’t been himself since they come for him that night o’ the riot, you see. The neighbors is funny with him, an’ give him looks. Makes him nervous, an’ he don’t work so well. It takes Mrs. Blake to steady him, and with me here she can do that. An’ I help Mr. Blake too. You know the printing press in the front room? I helped him and Mrs. Blake with that. D’you know, we made books. Books! I never thought I’d touch a book in my life other than a prayer book at church, much less make one. An’ Mrs. Blake has taught me to read-I mean really to read, not just prayers and such, but real books! At night sometimes we read out from a book called Paradise Lost. It’s the story of Satan and Adam and Eve, and it’s so thrilling! Oh, I don’t always understand it, because it talks about people and places I never heard of, and uses such fancy words. But it’s lovely to listen to.”
“Pear tree’s loss,” Maggie whispered.
“An’ then sometimes he reads his poems aloud to us. Oh, I love that.” Maisie paused, remembering. Then she closed her eyes and began to chant:
Tyger tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat
What dread hand? And what dread feet?
“There’s more, but that’s all I remember.”
Maggie shivered, though it was a warm day. “I like it,” she said after a moment. “But what do it mean?”
“I heard Mr. Blake say once to a visitor that it were about France. But then to another he said it were about the creator and the created.” Maisie repeated the phrase with the same cadence Mr. Blake must have used. A stab of jealousy shot through Maggie at the thought of Maisie spending cozy evenings by the fire reading with the Blakes and listening to Mr. Blake recite poetry and talk to cultured visitors. The feeling vanished, however, when Maisie put a hand to her back to ease the strain of the baby’s weight, and Maggie was reminded that, whatever period of grace Maisie was having, it wouldn’t last. Guilt quickly replaced jealousy.
“I didn’t realize that”-Maggie hesitated-“well, that you and John Astley had actually-you know. I thought we’d got back to you in time, me and Mr. Blake. I wasn’t gone long from the stables that night. I came back as quick as I could.”
Maisie’s eyes dropped to the ground, as if to study her weeding. “It didn’t take long, in the end.”
“Does Jem know? Do your parents?”
Maisie’s face crumpled. “No!” She began to cry again, great sobs that shook the whole of her ample body. Maggie put an arm around her and led her over to the steps of the summerhouse, where she let Maisie lay her head in her lap and sob for a long time, weeping as she had wanted to do for months but didn’t dare to in front of the Blakes.
At last her sobs died down, and she sat up, wiping her eyes on her apron. Her face had gone blotchy, and was broader and fleshier than it had been months before. Her bonnet looked like an old one of Mrs. Blake’s, and Maggie wondered what had happened to her silly, frilly Dorset mop cap. “What we going to do with this baby, then?” she said, surprising herself with the “we.”
Maisie did not start to cry again-she had rid herself of the dam of tears and was now drained and weary. “Ma and Pa keep sending word for me to come back-say they’ll get Jem to come up and fetch me.” Maggie caught her breath at the thought of Jem returning. “I been putting them off,” Maisie continued, “thinking it be better to have the baby here. Mrs. Blake said I could stay and have it. Then I could-could give it away and go home and no one would know. If it be a girl I could just take her round the corner to the Asylum for Female Orphans and…and…”
“What if it’s a boy?”
“I don’t-I don’t know.” Maisie was twisting and untwisting a corner of her apron. “Find some place to-” She couldn’t finish the sentence, so began a different one. “It be hard staying here, what with him just next door.” She looked fearfully up at the windows of John Astley’s house, then turned her face and pulled her bonnet close so that no one from there could recognize her. “Sometimes I can hear him through the walls, and it just makes me feel-” Maisie shuddered.
“Does he know about this?” Maggie nodded at Maisie’s belly.
“No! I don’t want him to!”
“But he might help-give you some money, at least.” Even as she said it Maggie knew it was unlikely John Astley would do even that. “Shame old Mr. Astley an’t here-he might do something for you, seeing as it’ll be his grandchild.”
Maisie shuddered again at the word. “Oh, he wouldn’t. I know that. I heard him with Miss Devine. You know, the slack-rope dancer. She were in the same state as me-and by the same man. Mr. Astley were awful to her-threw her out of the circus. He wouldn’t help me.” She gazed at the brick wall dividing the Blakes from Miss Pelham. “Miss Devine were kind to me once. I wonder what she did.”
“I can tell you that,” Maggie said. “I heard she went back to Scotland to have her baby.”
“Did she?” Maisie brightened a little at this news. “Did she really?”
“Is that what you want to do-go back to Dorsetshire?”
“Yes. Yes, I would. Mr. and Mrs. Blake have been so good to me, and I’m so grateful, but I miss Ma and Pa, and especially Jem. I miss him dreadful.”
“So do I,” Maggie agreed before she could stop herself, so grateful to have someone else concur with her own feelings. “I miss him dreadful too.” After a pause, she added, “You should go home, then. Your family’d take you in, would they?”
“I think so. Oh, but how would I get there? I han’t any money, and besides, I can’t go alone, not when the baby be due soon. I don’t dare ask the Blakes-they be so busy these days, and besides, though they’ve a big house, they really han’t any money. Mr. Blake don’t sell much of what he makes because it be so…so…well, difficult to understand. I think even Mrs. Blake don’t understand what he means sometimes. Oh, Maggie, what do we do?”