Read Jane Slayre for Free Online Page A

Georgiana, for Bessie was needed in the duty, and seeing them descend to the drawing room dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringleted. And afterwards in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and the footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed out, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stair-head to the silent nursery. There, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable.
    To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was rarely noticed. I could run down the stairs screaming that the Reeds were vampyres and that blood would be spilled, and no one would pay me any more mind than a mouse stealing a crumb.
    Instead I sat with my doll on my knee until the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room. I would show my doll the stakes I had cut that morning and how I planned to use them if my cousin vampyres dared to come near. She approved wholeheartedly, love that she was.
    When the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my bed. To this bed I always took my doll. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my nightgown, a stake tucked into its dress as I had a stake tucked into the sleeve of mine. When it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.
    Long did the hours seem while I waited for the shrieks of dying
    31
    company and listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs hours after she was done helping to clean up while the footmen buried corpses with some ceremony on the grounds in unmarked graves. Sometimes Bessie would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a cheesecake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me and said, "Good night, Miss Jane."
    It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning. Bessie had gone down to breakfast. My cousins were sleeping off their repast, a lighter meal than they'd become accustomed to during the holidays as they had gone back to hunting wildlife with the end of the season's celebrations. I was making my bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she returned. Having spread the quilt, checked my store of stakes in the pillowcase, and folded my nightdress, I went to the window seat to put in order some picture books and dollhouse furniture scattered there, then stopped and tried to see out the window through the frost. For days, it had been too cold to go out, overcast and grey. I breathed on the window to clear a space, just in case some of the sun's rays poked through the clouds.
    From this window, I could usually see the porter's lodge and the carriage road, and just as I had dissolved enough frost from the panes to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. Carriages did not often come to Gateshead, so I watched with growing interest. It stopped in front of the house. The doorbell rang loudly.
    Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery. "Miss Jane, take off your pinafore. What are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning?"
    I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations. She hauled me to the wash-stand,
    32
    inflicted a merciless but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel, disciplined my head with a bristly brush, took off my pinafore, and then, hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the drawing room.
    I would have asked