Pinhole has issued a challenge, and I am answering it here.  I am glad that he raised the challenge, given to me and to any other blogger willing to participate.  It reminds me of the various writing challenges that once passed back and forth on a regular basis at the blogsite where I first met Pinhole.  If you’ve not been a part of a writing challenge, visit Pinhole’s post, and use the writing prompt he’s given there (it’s the first line of a story on which you are to build).  And, while you are at it, visit the various entries to the challenge that other bloggers have linked to in the comments there.  I haven’t read many of the entries to this one (since I hadn’t posted my own yet), but if past history is any indication, you can expect some good writing to grow out of the challenge.

So, building on the first line assigned by Pinhole (the highlighted text below), here is my entry:

She couldn’t place the accent; it was thick, yet, undefined. And, though seeming to be lodged in memories now long distant (not to say quite forgotten), it was an accent she should know. 

She looked down at him from her seat in the carriage, hardly noticing as he mumbled, hat in hand.  She did perceive, though, that “...which I meantersay...” seemed an oft repeated refrain, and it was this phrase that had the puzzling effect on her of bringing to mind an old acquaintance.

“Have we met before, sir?” she asked him, knowing full well that it was impossible she would have made his acquaintance.  Any interaction with one of his class that was necessary for running her seemingly well-ordered life was most certainly handled by those more directly involved in the less pretty jobs of which she lived in blissful ignorance.  And she had enough of such servants to see to manage any unpleasantries.  Her adopted mother had, at least, seen to that before the old woman met her painful demise.

He put a hand to the golden curls at the side of his head, clearly taken aback that she had spoken to him, interrupting the business in which he was presently engaged (namely, securing a seat on the next coach).  With a monumental effort, he began to stammer, “Given the partickler circumstances in which the likes of me continiwally earns a living — not that a lady such as yourself would be expected to know of the goings on of the likes of me — I meantersay, what with the likes of me and the likes of one such as yourself not overlikely t’meet one another in the reg’lar course of our separate enterprisings and such, it don’t seem particklerly likely that you might know me, ma’am.”

“Quite so,” she replied, the more puzzled by the familiarity of his speech to her ears now that his logic presented itself to her as so clearly undeniable.

“That’s not to say, howsumever, that one in my position in this great world would not have set eyes on one so,” he paused, seeming to seek the most appropriate appellation he could find for the lady, “gentlefolked as yourself.  Meaning ter say, ma’am, that though it air not overlikely that you would know me, I might say that I know well of you.”

“Oh?”  she hoped that she had not quite gasped in her momentary surprise.  It was not at all her way to betray such feelings in any especially outward display.

“Well, I meantersay, one such as myself, living whereabouts I do dwell, could not help but know the near relation of one so great as she late of the grand old ‘ouse what sits — I meantersay, that which at one time did sit — uptown.”

“Ah.  You are of the area of my late guardian, then?”

“Yes, that I am.”

She looked at him a moment, considering his well-formed arms and humble demeanour, trying not to notice the black soot under his fingernails.  She was certain she’d never seen him, but somehow his speech was so familiar to her ears.

As she sat musing, it seemed he completed the business he was about.  Upon which, he turned and raised his hat to her in a bid of farewell, and moved toward the carriage house to begin a southward journey.  As she pondered his departing figure, a child’s voice sounded in her ear; a voice that had learned a much more genteel speech since the day she’d first laid eyes on him so long ago; a more genteel speech that had for many years displaced her earliest memories of him and what he had seemed to her then.  She recalled her mockery of him:  his reference to knaves as “jacks” while they sat at their card game under her ever-watchful benefactress’s eye; his thick boots and unrefined manner; how he had seemed to feel himself so above “the likes of such a one” as the man now boarding his carriage for his journey homeward.

She shook her head in an attempt to erase the memories.  It wouldn’t do for Mr. Drummle to think his wife in the least disloyal, even if her mind only strayed to a young boy whose heart she’d spent so many hours torturing.  No, it wouldn’t do at all.

© 2008 Shelly Bryant