A Brighter Tomorrow by Maggie Ford (read with me .txt) 📕

post and been handed to her by Mrs Lowe, having been opened. To Dora it seemed she had no privacy at all, but complaining would have evoked a prolonged and hurt reproach so cleverly designed that she’d immediately feel ashamed at having complained, the reproach so subtly manipulative that it trapped her every time.

She sometimes wished she’d taken up Ellie’s offer to go with her. If she’d known where her sister was, she’d have upped and left as Ellie had done. But she wasn’t like Ellie. She couldn’t have upped and gone off all alone out into the wide world like she had. She hadn’t her courage and, with no idea where Ellie was, she was stuck here.

Dora put down her book and hurried to answer Mrs Lowe’s call.

‘Why did you take so long answering me, child?’ The reprimand was aggrieved but had a sharp edge to it. ‘What were you doing?’

‘I was reading, madam.’

‘Haven’t you anything better to do, Dora? Doctor Lowe and I will be out this evening. Come and help me choose a gown. Something warm. It is such a chilly night and our host’s home is always so cold. I do believe they are not so affluent as they like to pretend and I am sure that they must be trying to save on fuel. I am not at all looking forward to this evening.’

Going to the great satinwood wardrobe, she opened it to gaze at the row of gowns she possessed. There were dozens, all of them beautiful. They made Dora’s mouth practically water to see them, but though Mary Lowe adored buying, she rarely wore what she bought.

‘I wish Doctor Lowe would not accept these invitations,’ she went on. ‘But I suppose as it is in connection with his profession I must suffer to meet people in whom I myself find no interest.’

She sighed mightily, surveying the row of gowns. ‘Now, which do you think would be suitable for this evening?’

Dora glanced along the row. What Mrs Lowe was already wearing looked to her to be as suitable as any, but it was a house gown. Of grey watered silk, the fashionably pouting bodice was all tucks and frilled lace, the lower part of the skirt ringed with a swirl of ribbon, the sweep of the hem trailing the carpet as she walked. The sleeves, following the mode, were puffed, narrowing down to the wrist – not a gown for an ample figure like hers but in Dora’s estimation beautiful enough to indeed be worn for a social occasion rather than just around the house; but then what did she know about it?

Mrs Lowe was running her fingers along the row, making each gown shimmer. Her fingers paused at one particular gown of pale-blue silk, its length striped with evenly spaced tucks, the skirt decorated with artificial flowers. The décolletée, not as low as some were, had a bertha, a small fichu and epaulettes of cream silk and deep-blue velvet with more artificial flowers. At the waist was a huge bow edged in deep-blue velvet, again not something that flattering to the shorter, plumper figure like Mrs Lowe’s, but again a really lovely thing.

Dora took her cue from the pause. ‘What about the blue silk one, madam?’ she suggested cautiously.

She had learned always to suggest, never to inform. Mrs Lowe might be indecisive about what she should wear, but to be told would immediately put her back up, no doubt because she felt she could be easily belittled. The only times she became set in her views were when she felt put out, such as in her ongoing dislike of Ellie.

Dora thought again of her sister as she helped her mistress prepare for her apparently miserable evening with Doctor Lowe’s colleagues, easing her into the gown, doing up the hooks at the back, making sure the slightly greying hair was dressed nicely, the way she had been taught.

Last week Ellie had written to her, this time with an address. It had been delivered by hand and passed to her by the new housemaid Sarah.

‘The gel give me sixpence ter give it ter you only an’ no one else,’ she said, beaming, enjoying the conspiracy. ‘Said she was yer sister.’

The new girl was nice but Mrs Lowe’s diktat that a lady’s maid didn’t fraternize with the lower servants had made it doubly difficult to pass on the letter. But Sarah agreed to post an answer. Florrie might not have done. She no longer worked here, having left not long after Ellie to look after her mother, who had fallen sick following the death of her father. Dora was glad she had gone because after Ellie had left, Florrie had become very full of herself.

The next day Dora wrote Ellie a letter, handed it to Sarah and set herself to wait hopefully for her sister to reply.

Ellie stood back to survey her work. It was finished. It was everything she had envisaged, as if a ghostly hand, perhaps even her mother’s, had guided her brush strokes – the hazel eyes staring out of the canvas straight at the viewer as if defying anyone to try to look down on her.

It had taken several weeks to finish. This one she would frame and take with the other silly little landscapes to display to the public. Would that man Hunnard come by? It was a slim hope. Yet if he did, would he turn up his nose and tell her it was a piece of rubbish? Oddly enough, it was him she had painted it for as much as for herself. The man haunted her just as her paintings did, refusing to be flushed out of her mind. Why did he find the painting he’d bought from her so interesting? She’d only put them out for the public because she had needed money and could only hope someone would buy, but she had never expected someone to practically drool over them.

This Monday morning she parcelled up a