Story: It Wasn't Right. Epilogue.

by Jackie J

Epilogue

Richard said it wasn’t right, that we did not need a maid, and in truth, we didn’t, with many rooms unused, I have managed adequately after letting my maid Linda go.  Richard was reluctant but I convinced him that, if not for us, then for when and if the Mistress returns, Miss Millicent. We would have to leave Crestley House if she returned, and she would require an established and competent maid wouldn’t she.

A strong marriage holds no secrets, but it was not yet the time and perhaps it never will be, to inform my husband who the maid I have hired actually once was. However, it was worth letting Richard know that should Miss Millicent ever return we would be made to leave the luxury of Crestley House. A magnificent residence that we have come to treat like our own.

Milly arrived much as I believed she would. Settled into the maid’s quarters and dressed, in the new uniform’s that I had organised for her, I am genuinely impressed by her competence and servility. Two months my maid and I have no complaint. Milly pays due deference, the House is kept spotless, the laundry is never an issue, and our meals are prepared to the highest standard. Miss Millicent Williams, the former Mistress of Crestley House she may be, but I must admit, she makes the prefect maid. My late friend Agnes Burtonshaw having trained and conditioned her well for her new role in life.

I have kept the portrait of Miss Millicent Williams, that hangs at the end of the entrance hall. Bejewelled with golden flowing hair over her shoulders, fine features with a flawless complexion and smiling eyes. Not for any reason other than I did admire her before she chose a path to her social downgrade. I may despise Miss Millicent now, for what she dd to herself, but I no less admire the maid she now is.

During the last few months, I have purposely invited people to Crestley House for lunch, or in the evenings for dinner, who would have known Miss Millicent, not overly well admittedly. I doubt anyone knew Miss Millicent that well, apart from those she worked with, before selling the company. However, those invited, I knew to have met and conversed with Miss Millicent.  None have paid my curtsying maid any attention beyond that deserving of any domestic servant. The once Mistress of Crestley House, dowdy, aproned and hidden in clear site, perfect, the maid of Crestley House, Milly Brannigan.

For many months, after being made aware that Miss Millicent was overseas, I never considered even entering her wardrobes, let alone wearing her clothes. An invite to the theatre by Richard, prompted my only indiscretion in that regard. A lovely dress requiring minimal alteration.

Beyond Milly’s arrival, and increasingly sensing a permanency to my position, not that of housekeeper, but Mistress at Crestley House, I convinced Richard that most of Miss Millicent’s fine clothes would be dated and out of style when and if she returns, and it would be unlikely that she would ever wear them again. Why wouldn’t Richard agree that I make use of what I could, and I did. Milly, being quite the accomplished seamstress, altered the entire wardrobe of expensive clothing that Miss Millicent had left behind. 

With no longer having the chores of keeping the House in good order, especially the more arduous and dirty tasks such as the fires, the laundry and the sweeping and mopping. I find I am wearing the elegant outfits more regularly about the household, in fact most, if not all of the time. My old and utilitarian clothing being given to Milly to make use of.

At first, Richard thought me somewhat self-indulgent, but accepted that if I was, in effect, now the Mistress of Crestley House, that I should indeed dress accordingly. Neither Richard nor I have been extravagant, we have just grown naturally into a level of affluence. We eat better, we entertain more, and becoming patrons of the theatre, is more for the theatre and players than ourselves. 

Organising the monthly payment, to Mayfair Domestic Services, I chuckle at the irony, I do each time a payment is due. By a twist of fate, Miss Millicent actually paying for herself to be the maid of her once housekeeper in what was her own home.

Eight months and in all that time, and only at the outset of her service, my only cause to discipline my maid was finding her reading aloud seeking to recover her refined diction and pronunciation, and replace her engrained, common and course vocabulary. That would never do, for a common maid, to seek the voice and words of a lady. Milly fully accepts that now. Like she accepts there will be no emancipation for her, my maid she is, and the maid of Crestley House she will remain.

I thought, certainly at the outset of becoming the maid at Crestley House, that my ex-mistress would have tried to regain her figure, her looks, and grow her hair, but no. Her appetite remains strong and her hips broad, she trims her own hair, keeping her practical short style. Her looks, well, with her podgy blemished face and bushy eyebrows my maid bears little resemblance to the fine features of the portrait of Miss Millicent, that hung in the hallway. A portrait now replaced by one of Richard and me. Expensive of course, but then good artists are costly to commission.

Three years on and it still remains tempting to taunt her, for what she has done to herself, what she has become, but why. Whilst the Mistress of Crestley House, dressed in her finery, her finery that I now wear, she coveted the apron she now wears, and no less perversely, the life of her own maid, Linda. Due to her reckless abandonment, of all she was, she now wears that apron and lives the very life of servitude that she sought, enduring all the privations that a maid’s life brings. A common maid she is and no more, content in her subjugation, obediently serving her once housekeeper and husband, in what was once her own home. 

I have no pity or scorn for the Miss Millicent Williams that was. I take comfort in knowing that Milly Brannigan is exactly who she wished to be.  I am also thankful to have such a competent maid serving every need, of the now well-established Master and Mistress of Crestley House, Mr and Mrs Williams.