“God! That’s true; your father used to say that. He never flinched at unpleasantness. You are very like him, in that sense. He always said you were as true as steel.”
Lady Beatrice heard the phrase with a sense of wonder, remembering that long-ago life. It seemed to her, now, as though it had happened to some other girl.
The old friend was regarding her with a strange mixture of compassion and a certain calculation. “For your father’s sake, and for your own, I should like to assist you. May I know where you live?”
Lady Beatrice gave him her address readily enough. “Though I do not advise you to visit,” she said. “And if you have any gallant ideas about rescuing me, think again. No lady in London would receive me, after what I endured, and you know that as well as I do.”
“I know, my dear.” He stood and bowed to her. “But women true as steel are found very rarely, after all. It would be shameful to waste your excellent qualities.”
“How kind,” said Lady Beatrice.
She expected nothing from the encounter, and so Lady Beatrice was rather surprised when someone knocked at the door of her lodging three days thereafter.
She was rather more surprised when, upon opening the door, she beheld a blind woman, who asked for her by her name.
“I am she,” admitted Lady Beatrice.
“May I come in for a moment, miss, and have a few words with you?”
“As many as you wish,” said Lady Beatrice. Swinging her cane before her, the blind woman entered the room. Seemingly quite by chance she encountered a chair and lowered herself into it. Despite her infirmity, she was not a beggar; indeed, she was well-dressed and well-groomed, resembling, if not a lady, certainly someone’s respectable mother. Her accents indicated that she had come from the lower classes, but she spoke quietly, with precise diction. She drew off her gloves and bonnet, and held them in her lap, with her cane crooked over one arm.
“Thank you. I’ll introduce myself, if I may: Mrs. Elizabeth Corvey. We have a friend in common.” She uttered the name of the gentleman who had known Lady Beatrice in her former life.
“Ah,” said Lady Beatrice. “And I expect you administer some sort of charity for fallen women?”
Mrs. Corvey chuckled. “I wouldn’t say that, miss, no.” She turned her goggled face toward Lady Beatrice. The smoked goggles were very black, and quite prominent. “None of the ladies in my establishment require charity. They’re quite able to get on in the world. As you seem to be. Your friend told me the sort of things you’ve seen and done. What’s done can’t be undone, more’s the pity, but there it is.
“That being the case, may I ask you whether you’d consider putting your charms to better use than streetwalking?”
“Do you keep a house of prostitution, madam?”
“I do and I don’t,” said Mrs. Corvey. “If it was a house of prostitution, you may be sure it would be of the very best sort, with girls as beautiful and clever as you, and some of them as well-bred. I am not, myself; I was born in the work house.
“When I was five years old they sold me to a pin factory. Little hands are needed for the making of pins, you see, and little keen eyes. Little girls are preferred for the work; so much more painstaking than little boys, you know. We worked at a long table, cutting up the lengths of wire and filing the points, and hammering the heads flat. We worked by candlelight when it grew dark, and the shop-mistress read to us from the Bible as we worked. I was blind by the age of twelve, but I knew my Scripture, I can tell you.
“And then, of course, there was only one work I was fit for, wasn’t there? So I was sold off into a sort of specialty house.
“You meet all kinds of odd ducks in a place like that. Sick fellows, and ugly fellows, and shy fellows. I was got with child twice, and poxed, too. I do hope I’m not shocking you, am I? Both of us being women of the world, you see. I lost track of the years, but I think I was seventeen when I got out of there. Should you like to know how I got out?”
“Yes, madam, I should.”
“There was this fellow came to see me. He paid specially to have me to himself a whole evening and I thought, oh, Lord, no, because you get so weary of it, and the gentlemen don’t generally like it if you seem as though you’re not paying proper attention, do they? But all this fellow wanted to do was talk.
“He asked me all sorts of questions about myself — how old I was, where had I come from, did I have any family, how did I come to be blind. He told me he belonged to a club of scientific gentlemen. He said they thought they might have a way to cure blindness. If I was willing to let this Gentlemen’s Speculative Society try it out on me, he’d buy me out of the house I was in and see that I was physicked for the pox as well, and found an honest living.
“He did warn me I’d lose my eyes. I said I didn’t care — they weren’t any use anyhow, were they? And he said I might find myself disfigured, and I said I didn’t mind that — what had my looks ever gotten me?
“To be brief, I went with him and had it done. And I did lose my eyes, and I was disfigured, but I haven’t regretted it a day since.”
“You don’t appear to be disfigured,” said Lady Beatrice. “And clearly they were unable to cure your blindness.”
Mrs. Corvey smiled. “Oh, no? The clock says half-past-twelve, and you’re wearing such a lovely scarlet dressing-gown, miss, and you have such striking gray eyes — quite unlike mine. You’re made of stern stuff, I know, so you won’t scream now.” Having said that, she slid her goggles up to reveal her eyes.
Lady Beatrice, who had been standing upright, took a step backward and clutched the edge of the table behind her.
“Dear me, you have gone quite pale,” said Mrs. Corvey in amusement. “Sets off that scarlet mouth of yours a treat. House of Rimmel Red No. 3, isn’t it? Not so pink as their No. 4. And, let me see, why, what a lot of books you have! Sartor Resartus, Catherine, Falkner — that’s her last one, isn’t it? — and, what’s that on your bedside table?” The brass optics embedded in Mrs. Corvey’s face actually protruded forward, with a faint whirring noise, and swiveled in the direction of Lady Beatrice’s bed. “Nicholas Nickleby. Yes, I enjoyed that one, myself.
“I do hope I have proven my point now, miss.”
“What a horror,” said Lady Beatrice faintly.
“Oh, I shouldn’t say that at all, miss! My condition is so much improved from my former state that I would go down on my knees and thank God morning and night, if I thought He ever took notice of the likes of me. I have my sight back, after all. I have my health — for I may say the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society has an excellent remedy for the pox — and agreeable employment. I am here to offer you the same work.”
“Would I pay for it with my eyes?” Lady Beatrice inquired.
“Oh, dear me, no. It would be a crime to spoil your looks, especially when they might be so useful. You were a soldier’s daughter, as I understand it, miss. What would you think of turning your dishonor into a weapon, in a just cause?
“The Society’s very old, you see. In the old days they had to work secretly, or folk would have burnt them for witchcraft, with all the astonishing things they invented. The secrecy was still useful even when times became more enlightened. There are all manner of devices that make our lives less wretched, that first came from the Society. They work to make the world better still.
“Now, it helps them in their work, miss, to have some sway with ministers and members of Parliament. And who better controls a man than a pretty girl, eh? A girl with sufficient charm can unlock a man’s tongue and find out all sorts of things the Society needs to know. A girl with sufficient charm can persuade a man to do all sorts of things he’d never dream of doing, if he thought anyone else could see.