Subj: THE BOX Part Eight
Date: 5/27/00 12:18:27 PM Central Daylight Time
From: N.E. Collins

The "underbelly" of the great house of Collinwood consisted of a full staff of servants who often resembled active bees in a hive or ants scurrying about their hill. Jenson was the head of all of the rest of this distinguished collection of domestic help. His wife, Eliza, was just about as important in stature as her husband. He ruled over the great estate's workaday tasks, and she ruled over him. She was stern, but fair. She originally hailed from Queen Anne, Maryland, which was located on Tuckahoe Creek which ran into the Choptank River that eventually made it's way to the Chesapeake Bay and onward to the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

She had been visiting cousins in the village of Collinsport when she had first met Jenson Harris. After a respectable courtship and a proper engagement they were joined together as man and wife, and went to live in the servant quarter's of Collinwood, where Jenson was already employed as a gentleman's gentleman.

About one year later they gave birth to their first child, their feisty daughter, Claire Elizabeth. Claire had elevated herself to the position of upstairs maid and she attended primarily to the cleaning and continued maintenance of the family's personal sleeping quaters. She was not an attractive maiden and so much the better for her. In this household beauty was only something which a fine "gentleman" like Quentin Collins was growing up to be, would only corrupt and pervert.

One of their Collinsport cousins was a general manservant to the Collins family. His name was Riggs, and he was a bit of a rennaisance man. He assisted in heavy lifting and a great deal of outside errand activity. Edward Collins once was heard to say that Riggs was his right hand man. He would not know what to do without him.

The woman responsible for all of the wonderful food that the family and staff consumed three times or more a day, was Annabelle Kent, and she was joined by her only daughter, Mirabelle, who had chosen to follow in her dear mother's footsteps. Poor Mirabelle's father, Samuel, the late Mr. Kent, had died tragically from an outbreak of cholera several years back. Mirabelle had been pursuing an independent existence in Boston, but she had returned for her fathers' sake and she had stayed for her mothers'.

Dirk Wilson, had recently been hired as a stable hand and he also substituted as the family's driver. Abraham Jenkins was the stable master and his own son had up and vanished never to be heard from again. This was the self same young man with whom Virginia Semple had often times engaged in sins of the flesh. No one ever heard from him again, and his poor mother, Emily, watched over her only remaining son, Pete, perhaps a bit too closely. He was a sickly child as his mother would not let him run and play as other children are want to do. And then there was young, sweet, dear Mary Agnes who hailed from Dover, New Hampshire. She was the only child of a poor Catholic couple. She had expressed an early and devote interest in the Church and she had planned to join a convent and become a bride of Christ. But circumstances beyond her control had made that impossible. Her father lost his job due to ill health and her mother was not well her own self. So Mary Agnes unselfishly sought out employment at the age of fourteen. She was well past twenty now, and she had only had one previous position prior to landing the job of a ladies maid at the great house high atop Widow's Hill. She sent the major portion of her pay to her parents. She was a good girl.

How very, very unfortunate for her.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.