"By writing it down," said Mrs. Gill, "on the day, in the book, in the ordinary way of business, in among the measures, because a fitting book is not evidence, Hannah, and it is not a diary, and nobody in this world ever subpoenaed a dressmaker. It is just the book. And a book that has been kept the same way for one-and-thirty years, in order, with the measures in it, is a thing no attorney alive can say was got up afterwards."
Hannah Poole sat in that workroom and felt the whole of the last four days turn over. "You want the fitting book."
"I want to see the fitting book," said Mrs. Gill, "and then I am going to write to Mrs. Vane and tell her that my girl was in Vine Court on the 4th of June, and that she said what she saw, and that I stand behind her. And I am going to lose eleven ladies out of that book by Michaelmas, and possibly this house. And I have been sitting here two hours making up my mind to it, and I have made it up, and I want you to know it was the two I did nothing about, and not you."
The letter went on the Saturday. The eleven ladies were gone by the 4th of August, and two more that Mrs. Gill had not counted on.
***
The Duke of Marchford came to Duke Street on the 9th of June and asked for Miss Poole, which caused a degree of upheaval in that house that Hannah never afterwards described without laughing. He was shown into the front room and stood there with his hat.
"Miss Poole, I have come to say two things and then I shall go. And I have thought about whether coming here would make it worse for you, and I concluded that a duke asking for a girl at a dressmaker's cannot possibly be worse than what is already being said. And if I was wrong about that, then I am sorry and I shall not come again."
"Say them, sir."
"Caroline is at Bath with an aunt. She wrote to me on the 6th." He said it steadily. "She is safe. She is not coming back, and I am not asking her to. And I want to say plainly that the letter was four pages long, and that I have read it eleven times, and there is not one word in it about me. That is the entire content of it. Four pages about her brother and nothing about me. And I have been three days understanding what that means."
"That she never disliked me at all," said the Duke of Marchford. "She was marrying me to get out of that house and she could not go through with using a man to do it. And she wrote and told me so in the plainest language I have ever read from anybody. And I find I respect her a very great deal more than I did on the 3rd of June."
Hannah did not know what to say to that at all.
"The second thing," he said, "is the reason I have come, and it is not an easy one. Mrs. Vane has written to my solicitors. She wishes it to be established," said the Duke of Marchford, "that my—that the events of the 4th of June arose from the interference of a person in the dressmaking line who made improper representations respecting Miss Vane's health and spirits, and who was seen with me in a public court within a quarter of an hour of the ceremony." He said it as though every word tasted of something. "It is not an action. There is nothing to bring an action about. It is a letter that will sit in a file, and it says in the fourth paragraph that the person in question is Miss Hannah Poole of Duke Street."
Hannah sat down on the nearest chair, which was extremely improper and which neither of them noticed. "Why?" she said.
"Because there are two versions of the 4th of June," said the Duke of Marchford. "And in one of them, a girl of one-and-twenty ran away from her own wedding on account of her brother. And in the other one, a dressmaker's assistant filled her head with nonsense and then threw herself at the bridegroom in an alley. And the second version is a great deal more comfortable for that family, and it has the enormous advantage of being about somebody who cannot answer."
"I can answer."
"With what?" he said, not unkindly. "Miss Poole, I have been to my solicitor twice this week. You are three-and-twenty. You are in trade. You were seen with your arms round me, and everything you would say in your own defense you would be saying about a family that has £11,000 a year. There is not a magistrate in England who would hear it, and there is nothing to hear it about."
Hannah Poole looked at the floor of the front room at Duke Street for some time. Then she looked up. "Sir," she said, "does Mrs. Vane know that I keep a fitting book?"
The Duke of Marchford stopped. "A what?"
"A fitting book. Every gown in this house has one, and I have kept mine since I was sixteen." Hannah's voice had gone entirely steady. "Date, measures, alterations, and a line at the bottom for what wants doing next time. Eleven entries for Miss Vane between the 9th of March and the 2nd of June in my hand, in order, with the measures in them. And the measures are the thing, sir, because they are numbers and they go down, and nobody on this earth can say I got up a set of measurements afterwards to suit a story."
He did not say anything at all.
"And there are notes," said Hannah Poole, "in among the measures in the ordinary way, same as I have written in that book about four hundred other ladies since I was sixteen. 'Would not stand still', 'half an inch off bust second time', 'let out waist not asked', 'Mr. E.V. in the room would not turn'."
"Miss Poole—"
"Mrs. Gill has one-and-thirty years of those books in a press upstairs, sir," said Hannah, "and she showed me the drawer on Friday, and she has just written a letter that is going to cost her eleven customers and possibly this house, and she did it before she ever saw my book. I should be extremely obliged if you would take your solicitor's letter and put it away for a fortnight."
"And do what?"
"Ask me what is in the book," said Hannah Poole, "the way you asked me in that alley. Because you are the only person in eleven years who ever has."
***