Fingersmith

I watched her then, seeming not to, as I moved about her rooms, taking up books and cushions, putting away the thimble and closing her box. I saw her turn the letter and fumble with it— of course, she could not tear the paper, with her gloves on. So then she sneaked a look at me, and then she lowered her hands and— still trembling, but making a show of carelessness, that was meant to say it was nothing to her, yet showed that it was everything— she unbuttoned one glove and put her finger to the seal, then drew the letter from the envelope and held it in her naked hand and read it.

Then she let out her breath in a single great sigh. I picked up a cushion and hit the dust from it.

'Good news, miss, is it?' I said; since I thought I ought to.

She hesitated. Then: 'Very good,' she answered, '— for my uncle, I mean. It is from Mr Rivers, in London; and what do you think?' She smiled. 'He is coming back to Briar, tomorrow!'

The smile stayed on her lips all day, like paint; and in the afternoon, when she came from her uncle, she wouldn't sit sewing, or go for a walk, would not even play at cards, but paced about the room, and sometimes stood before the glass, smoothing her brows, 62

touching her plump mouth— hardly speaking to me, hardly seeing me at all.

I got the cards out anyway, and played by myself. I thought of Gentleman, laying out the kings and queens in the Lant Street kitchen while he told us all his plot. Then I thought of Dainty. Her mother— that had ended up drowned— had been able to tell fortunes from a pack of cards. I had seen her do it, many times.

I looked at Maud, standing dreaming at the mirror. I said,

'Should you like to know your future, miss? Did you know that you can read it, from how the cards fall?'

That made her turn from looking at her own face, to look at mine. She said after a moment,

'I thought it was only gipsy women could do that.'

'Well, but don't tell Margaret or Mrs Stiles,' I said. 'My grandmother, you know, was a gipsy-princess.'

And after all, my granny might have been a gipsy-princess, for all I knew of it. I put the cards together again, and held them to her. She hesitated, then came and sat beside me, spreading her great skirt flat, saying, 'What must I do?'

I said she must sit with her eyes closed for a minute, and think of the subjects that were nearest her heart; which she did. Then I said she must take the cards and hold them, then set out the first seven

of them, face down— which is what I thought I remembered Dainty's mother doing; or it might have been nine cards. Anyway, Maud set down seven.

I looked her in the eye and said, 'Now, do you really want to know your fortune?'

She said, 'Sue, you are frightening me!'

I said again, 'Do you really want to know it? What the cards teach you, you must obey.

It is very bad luck to ask the cards to show you one path, then choose another. Do you promise to be bound by the fortune you find here?'

'I do,' she answered quietly.

'Good,' I said. 'Here is your life, laid all before us. Let us see the first part of it. These cards show your Past.'

I turned over the first two cards. They were the Queen of Hearts, followed by the Three of Spades. I remember them because of course, while she had been sitting with her eyes tight shut, I had sprung the pack; as anyone would have I think, being in my place then.

I studied them and said, 'Hmm. These are sad cards. Here is a kind and handsome lady, look; and here a parting, and the beginning of strife.'

She stared, then put her hand to her throat. 'Go on,' she said. Her face was pale now.

'Let us look,' I said, 'at the next three cards. They show your Present.'

I turned them over with a flourish.

'The King of Diamonds,' I said. 'A stern old gentleman. The Five of Clubs: a parched mouth. The Cavalier of Spades— '

I took my time. She leaned towards me.

'What's he?' she said. 'The Cavalier?'

I said he was a young man on horseback, with good in his heart; and she looked at me in such an astonished believing sort of way, I was almost sorry. She said, in a low 63

voice, 'Now I am afraid! Don't turn over the next cards.'

I said, 'Miss, I must. Or all your luck will leave you. Look here. These show your Future.'

I turned the first. The Six of Spades.

'A journey!' I said. 'Perhaps, a trip with Mr Lilly? Or perhaps, a journey of the heart..."

She didn't answer, only sat gazing at the cards I had turned up. Then: 'Show the last one,' she said in a whisper. I showed it. She saw it first.

'Queen of Diamonds,' she said, with a sudden frown. 'Who's she?'

I did not know. I had meant to turn up the Two of Hearts, for lovers; but after all, must have muddled the deck.

'The Queen of Diamonds,' I said at last. 'Great wealth, I think.'

'Great wealth?' She leaned away from me and looked about her, at the faded carpet and the black oak walls. I took the cards and shuffled them. She brushed at her skirt and rose. 'I don't believe,' she said, 'that your grandmother really was a gipsy. You are too fair in the face. I don't believe it. And I don't like your fortune-telling. It's a game for servants.'

She stepped away from me, and stood again before the glass; and though I thought she would turn and say something kinder, she didn't. But as she went, she moved a chair: and then I saw the Two of Hearts. It had fallen on the floor— she had had her slipper on it, and her heel had creased the pips.

The crease was a deep one. I always knew that card, after that, in the games we played, in the weeks that followed.

That afternoon, however, she made me put the cards away, saying the sight of them made her giddy; and that night she was fretful. She got into bed, but had me pour her out a little cup of water; and as I stood undressing I saw her take up a bottle and slip three drops from it into the cup. It was sleeping-draught. That was the first time I saw her take it. It made her yawn. When I woke next day, though, she was already awake, lying with a strand of her hair pulled to her mouth, and gazing at the figures in the canopy over the bed.

'Brush my hair hard,' she said to me, as she stood for me to dress her. 'Brush it hard and make it shine. Oh, how horrid and white my cheek is! Pinch it, Sue.' She put my fingers to her face, and pressed

them 'Pinch my cheek, don't mind if you bruise it. I'd rather a blue cheek than a horrid white one!'

Her eyes were dark, perhaps from the sleeping-drops. Her brow was creased. It troubled me to hear her talk of bruises. I said,

'Stand still, or I shan't be able to dress you at all.— That's better. Now, which gown will you have?'

The grey?'

'The grey's too soft on the eye. Let's say, the blue . . .'

The blue brought out the fairness of her hair. She stood before the glass and watched as I buttoned it tight. Her face grew smoother, the higher I went. Then she looked at me. She looked at my brown stuff dress. She said,

'Your dress is rather plain, Sue— isn't it? I think you ought to change it.'

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I said, 'Change it? This is all I have.'

'All you have? Good gracious. I am weary of it already. What were you used to wearing for Lady Alice, who was so nice? Did she never pass any of her own dresses on to you?'

I felt— and I think I was right in feeling it— that Gentleman had let me down a bit here, sending me off to Briar with just the one good gown. I said,

'Well, the fact is, miss, Lady Alice was kind as an angel; but she was also rather near.

She kept my frocks back, to take to India for her girl there.'

Maud blinked her dark eyes and looked sorry. She said,

'Is that how ladies treat their maids, in London?'

'Only the near ones, miss,' I answered.

Then she said, 'Well, I have nothing to be near for, here. You must and shall have another gown, to spend your mornings in. And perhaps another besides that, for you to change into when— Well, say we ever had a visitor?'

She hid her face behind the door of her press. She said,

'Now, I believe we are of a similar size. Here are two or three dresses, look, that I never wear and shan't miss. You like your skirts long, I see. My uncle does not care to see me in a long skirt, he believes long skirts unhealthy. But he shan't mind, of course, about

you. You need only let down this hem a little here. You can do that, of course?'

Well, I was certainly used to taking stitches out; and I could sew a straight seam when I needed to. I said, 'Thank you, miss.' She held a dress before me. It was a queer thing of orange velvet, with fringes and a wide skirt. It looked like it had been blown together by a strong wind in a ladies' tailor's. She studied me, and then said,

'Oh, try it, Susan, do! Look, I shall help you.' She came close, and began to undress me. 'See, I can do it, quite as well as you. Now I am your maid, and you are the mistress!'

She laughed, a little nervously, all the time she worked. 'Why, look here in the glass,'

she said at last. 'We might be sisters!'

She had tugged my old brown dress off me and put the queer orange one over my head, and she made me stand before the glass while she saw to the hooks. 'Breathe in,'

she said. 'Breathe harder! The gown grips tight, but will give you the figure of a lady.'

Of course, her own waist was narrow, and she was taller by an inch. My hair was the darker. We did not look like sisters, we just both looked like frights. My dress showed all my ankle. If a boy from the Borough had seen me then, I should have fallen down and died.

But there were no Borough boys to see me; and no Borough girls, either. And it was a very good velvet. I stood, plucking at the fringes on the skirt, while Maud ran to her jewel box for a brooch, that she fastened to my bosom, tilting her head to see how it looked. Then there came a knock on the parlour door.

'There's Margaret,' she said, her face quite pink. She called, 'Come here to the dressing- room, Margaret!'

Margaret came and made a curtsey, looking straight at me. She said,

'I have just come for your tray, mi— Oh! Miss Smith! Is it you, there? I should never 65

have known you from the mistress, I'm sure!'

She blushed, and Maud— who was standing in the shadow of the bed-curtain— looked girlish, putting her hand before her mouth. She shivered with laughter, and her dark eyes shone.

'Suppose,' she said, when Margaret had gone, 'suppose Mr Rivers were to do what Margaret did, and mistake you for me? What would we do, then?'

Again she laughed and shivered. I gazed at the glass, and smiled.

For it was something, wasn't it, to be taken for a lady?

It's what my mother would have wanted.

And anyway, I was to get the pick of all her dresses and her jewels, in the end. I was only starting early. I kept the orange gown and, while she went to her uncle, sat turning the hem down and letting out the bodice. I wasn't about to do myself an injury, for the sake of a sixteen- inch waist.

'Now, do we look handsome?' said Maud, when I fetched her back. She stood and looked me over, then brushed at her own skirts. 'But here is dust,' she cried, 'from my uncle's shelves! Oh! The books, the terrible books!'

She was almost weeping, and wringing her hands.

I took the dust away, and wished I could tell her she was fretting for nothing. She might be dressed in a sack. She might have a face like a coal- heaver's. So long as there was fifteen thousand in the bank marked Miss Maud Lilly, then Gentleman would want her.

It was almost awful to see her, knowing what I knew, pretending I knew nothing; and with another kind of girl, it might have been comical. I would say, 'Are you poorly, miss? Shall I fetch you something? Shall I bring you the little glass, to look at your face in?'— and she would answer, 'Poorly? I am only rather cold, and walking to keep my blood warm.' And, 'A glass, Sue? Why should I need a glass?'

'I thought you were looking at your own face, miss, more than was usual.'

'My own face! And why should I be interested in doing that?'

'I can't say, miss, I'm sure.'

I knew his train was due at Marlow at four o'clock, and that William Inker had been sent to meet it, as he had been sent for me. At three, Maud said she would sit at the window and work at her sewing there, where the light was good. Of course, it was nearly dark then; but I said nothing. There was a little padded seat beside the rattling panes and mouldy sand-bags, it was the coldest place in the room; but she kept there for an hour and a half, with a shawl about her, shivering, squinting at her stitches, and sneaking sly little glances at the road to the house.

I thought, if that wasn't love, then I was a Dutchman; and if it was love, then lovers were pigeons and geese, and I was glad I was not one of them.

At last she put her fingers to her heart and gave a stifled sort of cry. She had seen the light coming, on William Inker's trap. That made her get up and come away from the window, and stand at the fire and press her hands together. Then came the sound of the horse on the gravel. I said, 'Will that be Mr Rivers, miss?' and she answered, 'Mr Rivers? Is the day so late as that? Well, I suppose it is. How pleased my uncle will be!'

Her uncle saw him first. She said, 'Perhaps he will send for me, to bid Mr Rivers 66

welcome.— How does my skirt sit now? Had I not rather wear the grey?'

But Mr Lilly did not send for her. We heard voices and closing doors in the rooms below, but it was another hour again before a parlourmaid came, to pass on the message that Mr Rivers was arrived.

'And is Mr Rivers made comfortable, in his old room?' said Maud.

'Yes, miss.'

And Mr Rivers will be rather tired, I suppose, after his journey?'

Mr Rivers sent to say that he was tolerable tired, and looked forward to seeing Miss Lilly with her uncle, at supper. He would not think of disturbing Miss Lilly before then.

'I see,' she said when she heard that. Then she bit her lip. 'Please to tell Mr Rivers that she would not think it any sort of disturbance, to be visited by him, in her parlour, before the supper-hour came . . .'

She went on like this for a minute and a half, falling over her words, and blushing; and finally the parlourmaid got the message and went off. She was gone a quarter of an hour. When she came back, she had Gentleman with her.

He stepped into the room, and did not look at me at first. His eyes were all for Maud.

He said,

'Miss Lilly, you are kind to receive me here, all travel-stained and tumbled as I am.

That is like you!'

His voice was gentle. As for the stains— well, there wasn't a mark upon him, I guessed he had gone quickly to his room and changed his coat. His hair was sleek and his whiskers tidy; he wore one modest little ring on his smallest finger, but apart from that his hands were bare and very clean.

He looked what he was meant to be— a handsome, nice- minded gentleman. When he turned to me at last, I found myself making him a curtsey and was almost shy.

And here is Susan Smith!' he said, looking me over in my velvet, his lip twitching towards a smile. 'But I should have supposed her a lady, I am sure!' He stepped towards me and took my hand, and Maud also came to me. He said, 'I hope you are liking your place at Briar, Sue. I hope you are proving a good girl for your new mistress.'

I said, 'I hope I am too, sir.'

'She is a very good girl,' said Maud. 'She is a very good girl, indeed.'

She said it in a nervous, grateful kind of way— like you would say it to a stranger, feeling pushed for conversation, about your dog.

Gentleman pressed my hand once, then let it fall. He said, 'Of course, she could not help but be good— I should say, no girl could help but be good, Miss Lilly— with you as her example.'

Her colour had gone down. Now it rose again. 'You are too kind,' she said.

He shook his head and bit at his lip. 'No gentleman could but be,' he murmured, 'with you to be kind to,'

Now his cheeks were pink as hers. I should say he must have had a way of holding his breath to make the blood come. He kept his eyes upon her, and at last she gazed at him and smiled; and then she laughed.

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And I thought then, for the first time, that he had been right. She was handsome, she was very fair and slight— I knew it, seeing her stand beside him with her eyes on his.

Pigeons and geese. The great clock sounded, and they started and looked away.

Gentleman said he had kept her too long. 'I shall see you at supper, I hope, with your uncle?'

'With my uncle, yes,' she said quietly.

He made her a bow, and went to the door; then, when he was almost out of it he seemed to remember me, and went through a kind of pantomime, of patting at his pockets, looking for coins. He came up with a shilling, and beckoned me close to take it.

'Here you are, Sue,' he said. He lifted my hand and pressed the shilling in it. It was a bad one. 'All well?' he added softly, so that Maud should not overhear.

I said, 'Oh, thank you, sir!' And I made another curtsey, and winked.— Two curious things to do together, as it happened, and I would not recommend you try it: for I fear the wink unbalanced the curtsey; and I'm certain the curtsey threw off the wink.

I don't think Gentleman noticed, however. He only smiled in a satisfied way, bowed again, and left us. Maud looked once at me, then went silently to her own room and closed the door— I don't know what she did in there. I sat until she called me, a half- hour later, to help her change into her gown for dinner.

I sat and tossed the shilling. 'Well,' I thought, 'bad coins will gleam as well as good.'

But I thought it in a discontented sort of way; and didn't know why.

That night she stayed an hour or two after supper, reading to her uncle and to Gentleman in the drawing-room. I had not seen the drawing-room then. I only knew what she did when I wasn't with her, through Mr Way or Mrs Stiles happening to remark on it as we took our meals. I still passed my evenings in the kitchen and in Mrs Stiles's pantry; and pretty dull evenings they generally were. This night, however, was different. I went down to find Margaret with two forks in a great piece of roasting ham, and Mrs Cakebread spooning honey on it. Honeyed ham, said Margaret, plumping up her lips, was Mr Rivers's favourite dish. Mr Rivers, said Mrs Cakebread, was a pleasure to cook for.

She had changed her old wool stockings for the black silk pair I had given her. The parlourmaids had changed their caps, for ones with extra ruffles. Charles, the knife-boy, had combed his hair flat, and made the parting straight as a blade: he sat whistling, on a stool beside the fire, rubbing polish into one of Gentleman's boots.

He was the same age as John Vroom; but was fair, where John was swarthy. He said,

'What do you say to this, Mrs Stiles? Mr Rivers says that, in London, you may see elephants. He says they keep elephants in pens in the parks of London, as we keep sheep; and a boy can pay a man sixpence, and ride on an elephant's back.'

'Well, bless my soul!' said Mrs Stiles.

She had fastened a brooch at the neck of her gown. It was a mourning brooch, with more black hair in it.

Elephants! I thought. I could see that Gentleman had come among them, like a cock into a coop of roosting hens, and set them all fluttering. They said he was handsome.

They said he was better-bred than many dukes, and knew the proper treating of a 68

servant. They said what a fine thing it was for Miss Maud that a clever young person like him should be about the house again. If I had stood up and told them the truth— that they were a bunch of flats; that Mr Rivers was a fiend in human form, who meant to marry Maud and steal her cash, then lock her up and more or less hope she died— if I had stood and told them that, they should never have believed it. They should have said that I was mad.

They will always believe a gentleman, over someone like me.

And of course, I wasn't about to tell them any such thing. I kept my thoughts to myself; and later, over pudding in her pantry, Mrs Stiles sat, fingering her brooch, and was also rather quiet. Mr Way took his newspaper away to the privy. He had had to serve up two fine wines with Mr Lilly's dinner; and was the only one, out of all of us, not glad that Gentleman had come.

At least, I supposed I was glad. 'You are,' I told myself, 'but just don't know it. You'll feel it, when you've seen him on his own.'— I thought we would find a way to meet, in a day or two. It was almost another two weeks, however, before we did. For of course, I had no

reason for wandering, without Maud, into the grand parts of the house. I never saw the room he slept in, and he never came to mine. Besides, the days at Briar were run so very regular, it was quite like some great mechanical show, you could not change it.

The house bell woke us up in the mornings, and after that we all went moving on our ways from room to room, on our set courses, until the bell rang us back into our beds at night. There might as well have been grooves laid for us in the floorboards; we might have glided on sticks. There might have been a great handle set into the side of the house, and a great hand winding it.— Sometimes, when the view beyond the windows was dark or grey with mist, I imagined that handle and thought that I could almost hear it turning. I grew afraid of what would happen if the turning was to stop.

That's what living in the country does to you.

When Gentleman came, the show gave a kind of jog. There was a growling of the levers, people quivering for a second upon their sticks, the carving of one or two new grooves; and then it all went on, smooth as before, but with the scenes in a different order. Maud did not go to her uncle, now, to read to him while he took notes. She kept to her rooms. We sat and sewed, or played at cards, or went walking to the river or to the yew trees and the graves.

As for Gentleman: he rose at seven, and took his breakfast in his bed. He was served by Charles. At eight o'clock he began his work on Mr Lilly's pictures. Mr Lilly directed him. He was as mad over his pictures as he was over his books, and had fitted up a little room for Gentleman to work in, darker and closer even than his library. I suppose the pictures were old and pretty precious. I never saw them. Nobody did. Mr Lilly and Gentleman carried keys about with them, and they locked the door to that room whether they were out of it or in it.

They worked until one o'clock, then took their lunch. Maud and I took ours alone. We ate in silence. She might not eat at all, but only sit waiting. Then, at a quarter to two, she would fetch out drawing-things— pencils and paints, papers and cards, a wooden triangle— and she would set them ready, very neatly, in an order that was always the 69

same. She would not let me help. If a brush fell and

I caught it, she would take everything up— papers, pencils, paints, triangle— and set it out all over again.

I learned not to touch. Only to watch. And then we would both listen, as the clock struck two. And at a minute after that there would come Gentleman, to teach her her day's lesson.

At first, they kept to the parlour. He put an apple, a pear and a water-jug upon a table, and stood and nodded while she tried to paint them on a card. She was about as handy with a paint-brush as she would have been with a spade; but Gentleman would hold up the messes she made and tilt his head or screw up his eye and say,

'I declare, Miss Lilly, you are acquiring quite a method.' Or,

'What an improvement, on your sketches from last month!'

'Do you think so, Mr Rivers?' she would answer, all in a blush. 'Is not the pear a little lean? Had I not ought to practise my perspective?'

'The perspective is, perhaps, a little at fault,' he'd say. 'But you have a gift, Miss Lilly, which surpasses mere technique. You have an eye for an essence. I am almost afraid to stand before you! I am afraid of what might be uncovered, were you to turn that eye upon me.'

He would say something like that, in a voice that would start off strong and then grow sweet, and breathless, and hesitating; and she would look as though she were a girl of wax and had moved too near to a fire. She would try the fruit again. This time the pear would come out like a banana. Then Gentleman would say that the light was poor, or the brush a bad one.

'If I might only take you to London, Miss Lilly, to my own studio there!'

That was the life he had faked up for himself— an artist's life, in a house at Chelsea.

He said he had many fascinating artist friends. Maud said, 'Lady artist friends, too?'

'Of course,' he answered then. 'For I think that'— then he shook his head— 'well, my opinions are irregular, and not to everyone's taste. See here, try this line a little firmer.'

He went to her, and put his hand upon hers. She turned her face to his and said,

'Won't you tell me what it is you think? You might speak plainly. I am not a child, Mr Rivers!'

'You are not,' he said softly, gazing into her eyes. Then he gave a start. 'After all,' he went on, 'my opinion is mild enough. It concerns your— your sex, and matters of creation. There is something, Miss Lilly, I think your sex must have.'

She swallowed. 'What is that, Mr Rivers?'

'Why, the liberty,' he answered gently, 'of mine.'

She sat still, then gave a wriggle. Her chair creaked, the sound seemed to startle her, and she drew her hand away. She looked up, to the glass, and found my eyes on her, and blushed; then Gentleman looked up too, and watched her— that made her colour still harder and lower her gaze. He looked from her to me, then back to her again. He lifted his hands to his whiskers and gave them a stroke.

Then she put her brush to the picture of the fruit, and— 'Oh!' she cried. The paint ran like a tear-drop. Gentleman said she must not mind it, that he had worked her quite enough. He went to the table, took up the pear and rubbed the bloom from it. Maud 70

kept a little pen-knife with her brushes and leads, and he got this out and cut the pear into three wet slices. He gave one to her, kept one for himself, and the last he shook free of its juice and brought to me.

'Almost ripe, I think,' he said, with a wink.

He put his slice of pear to his mouth and ate it in two sharp bites. It left beads of cloudy juice on his beard. He licked his fingers, thoughtfully; and I licked mine; and Maud, for once, let her gloves grow stained, and sat with the fruit against her lip and nibbled at it, her look a dark one.

We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.

At last he said she might try painting from nature. I guessed at once what that meant.

It meant that he could take her wandering about the park, into all the shady, lonely places, and call it instruction. I think she guessed it, too. 'Will it rain today, do you think?'

she asked in a worried sort of way, her face at the window, her eyes on the clouds.

This was the end of February, and still cold as anything; but just as everyone in that house perked up a bit to see Mr Rivers come back to it again, so now even the weather seemed to lift and grow sweet. The wind fell off, and the windows stopped rattling. The sky turned pearly instead of grey. The lawns grew green as billiard tables.

In the mornings, when I walked with Maud, just the two of us, I walked at her side.

Now, of course, she walked with Gentleman: he would offer her his arm and, after a show of hesitation, she would take it; I think she held it more easily, through having grown used to holding mine. She walked pretty stiffly, though; but then, he would find little artful ways to pull her closer. He would bend his head until it was near hers. He would pretend to brush dust from her collar. There would start off space between them, but steadily the space would close— at last, there would only be the rub of his sleeve upon hers, the buckling of her skirt about his trousers. I saw it all; for I walked behind them. I carried her satchel of paints and brushes, her wooden triangle, and a stool.

Sometimes they would draw away from me, and seem quite to forget me. Then Maud would remember, and turn, and say,

'How good you are, Sue! You do not mind the walk? Mr Rivers thinks another quarter of a mile will do it.'

Mr Rivers always thought that. He kept her slowly walking about the park, saying he was looking for scenes for her to paint, but really keeping her close and talking in murmurs; and I had to follow, with all their gear.

Of course, I was the reason they were able to walk at all. I was meant to watch and see that Gentleman was proper.

I watched him hard. I also watched her. She would look sometimes at his face; more often at the ground; now and then at some flower or leaf or fluttering bird that took her fancy. And when she did that he would half turn, and catch my eye, and give a devilish kind of smile; but by the time she gazed at him again his face would be smooth.

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You would swear, seeing him then, that he loved her.

You would swear, seeing her, that she loved him.

But you could see that she was fearful, of her own fluttering heart. He could not go too fast. He never touched her, except to let her lean upon his arm, and to guide her hand as she painted. He would bend close to her, to watch her as she dabbled in the colours, and then their breaths would come together and his hair would mix with hers; but if he went a little nearer she would flinch. She kept her gloves on.

At last he found out that spot beside the river, and she began a painting of the scenery there, adding more dark rushes each day. In the evening she sat reading in the drawing- room, for him and Mr Lilly. At night she went fretfully to her bed, and sometimes took more sleeping-drops, and sometimes shivered in her sleep.

I put my hands upon her, when she did that, till she was still again.

I was keeping her calm, for Gentleman's sake. Later on he would want me to make her nervous; but for now I kept her calm, I kept her neat, I kept her dressed very handsome. I washed her hair in vinegar, and brushed it till it shone. Gentleman would come to her parlour and study her, and bow. And when he said, 'Miss Lilly, I believe you grow sweeter in the face with every day that passes!', I knew he meant it. But I knew, too, that he meant it as a compliment not to her— who had done nothing— but to me, who did it all.

I guessed little things like that. He couldn't speak plainly, but made great play with his eyes and with his smiles, as I have said. We waited out our chance for a talk in private; and just as it began to look as though that chance would never come, it did and it

was Maud, in her innocent way, who let us have it.

For she saw him one morning, very early, from the window of her room. She stood at the glass and put her head against it, and said,

'There is Mr Rivers, look, walking on the lawn.'

I went and stood beside her and, sure enough, there he was, strolling about the grass, smoking a cigarette. The sun, being still rather low, made his shadow very long.

Ain't he tall?' I said, gazing sideways at Maud. She nodded. Her breath made the glass mist, and she wiped it away. Then she said,

'Oh!'— as if he might have fallen over— 'Oh! I think his cigarette has gone out. Poor Mr Rivers!'

He was studying the dark tip of his cigarette, and blowing at it; now he was putting his hand to his trouser pocket, searching for a match. Maud made another swipe at the window-glass.

'Now,' she said, 'can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don't believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets ..."

She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking.

I said, 'It won't kill him, miss.'

'But poor Mr Rivers,' she said again. 'Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!'

We didn't have any matches. Margaret kept them in her apron. When I told Maud that she said,

72

'Then take a candle! Take anything! Take a coal from the fire! Oh, can't you be quicker?— Don't say I sent you, mind!'

Can you believe she had me doing that?— tripping down two sets of stairs, with a lighted coal in a pair of fire-tongs, just so a man might have his morning smoke? Can you believe I did it? Well, I was a servant now, and must. Gentleman saw me stepping across the grass to him, saw what I carried, and laughed.

I said, All right. She has sent me down with it for you to light your cigarette from.

Look glad, she is watching. But make a business of it, if you want.'

He did not move his head, but raised his eyes to her window.

'What a good girl she is,' he said.

'She is too good for you, that I do know.'

He smiled. But only as a gentleman should smile to a servant; and his face he made kind. I imagined Maud, looking down, breathing quicker upon the glass. He said quietly,

'How do we do, Sue?'

'Pretty well,' I answered.

'You think she loves me?'

'I do. Oh, yes.'

He drew out a silver case and lifted free a cigarette. 'But she hasn't told you so?'

'She don't have to.'

He leaned close to the coal. 'Does she trust you?'

'I think she must. She has nobody else.'

He drew on the cigarette, then breathed out in a sigh. The smoke stained the cold air blue. He said, 'She's ours.'

He stepped back a little way, then gestured with his eyes; I saw what he wanted, let the coal fall to the lawn, and he stooped to help me get it. 'What else?' he said. I told him, in a murmur, about the sleeping-drops, and about her being afraid of her own dreams. He listened, smiling, all the time fumbling with the fire- tongs over the piece of coal, and finally catching it up and rising, and placing my hands upon the handle of the tongs and pressing them tight.

'The drops and the dreams are good,' he said quietly. 'They'll help us, later. But you know, for now, what you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She's our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.— Keep it like this,' he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. 'Like this, so the coal won't fall and scorch Miss Lilly's carpets . . .'

I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:

'They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.'

He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.

73

From his place on the step, I saw Mr Way studying him rather as the hard boys of the Borough did— as if not quite sure what he wanted to do most: laugh at him, or punch his lights out. But

Gentleman kept his eyes very innocent. He only lifted his face to the sun, and stretched, so that Maud might see him better from the shadows of her room.

She stood and watched him walk and smoke his cigarette, every morning |ifter that.

She would stand at the window with her face pressed to the glass, and the glass would mark her brow with a circle of red— a perfect circle of crimson in her pale face. It was like the spot upon the cheek of a girl with a fever. I thought I saw it growing darker and fiercer with every day that passed.

Now she watched Gentleman, and I watched them both; and the three of us waited for the fever to break.

I had thought it might take two weeks, or three. But two weeks had gone by already, and we had got nowhere. Then another two passed, and it was all just the same. She was too good at waiting, and the house was too smooth. She would give a little jump out of her groove, to be nearer to Gentleman; and he would sneak a little way out of his, to be closer to her; but that would only make new grooves for them to glide in.

We needed the whole show to go bust.

We needed her to grow confiding, so that I could help her on her way. But, though I dropped a thousand little hints— such as, what a kind gentleman Mr Rivers was; and how handsome and how well-bred; and how her uncle seemed to like him; and how she seemed to like him, and how he seemed to like her; and if a lady ever thought of marrying, didn't she think a gent like Mr Rivers might be just the gent for the job?— though I gave her a thousand little chances like that, to open up her heart, she never took one. The weather turned cold again, then grew warmer. It got to March.

Then it was almost April. By May, Mr Lilly's pictures would all be mounted, and Gentleman would have to leave. But still she said nothing; and he held back from pressing her, out of fear that a wrong move would frighten her off.

I grew fretful, waiting. Gentleman grew fretful. We all grew nervy as narks— Maud would sit fidgeting for hours at a trot, and when the house clock sounded she would give a little start, that

would make me start; and when it came time for Gentleman to call on her, I would see her flinching, listening for his step— then his knock would come, and she would jump, or scream, or drop her cup and break it. Then at night, she would lie stiff and open-eyed, or turn and murmur in her sleep.

All, I thought, for love! I had never seen anything like it. I thought about how such a business got worked out, in the Borough. I thought of all the things a girl could ordinarily do, when she liked a fellow that she guessed liked her.

I thought of what I would do, if a man like Gentleman liked me.

I thought perhaps I ought to take her aside and tell her, as one girl to another.

Then I thought she might think me rude.— Which is pretty rum, in light of what happened later.

But something else happened first. The fever broke at last. The show went bust, and all our waiting paid off.

74

She let him kiss her.

Not on her lips, but somewhere altogether better.

I know, because I saw it.

It was down by the river, on the first day of April. The weather was too warm for the time of year. The sun shone bright in a sky of grey, and everyone said there would be thunder.

She had a jacket and a cloak above her gown, and was hot: she called me to her, and had me take away the cloak, and then the jacket. She was sitting at her painting of the rushes, and Gentleman was near her, looking on and smiling. The sun made her squint: every now and then she would raise her hand to her eyes. Her gloves were quite spoiled with paint, and there was paint upon her face.

The air was thick and warm and heavy, but the earth was cold to the touch: it had all the chill of winter in it still, and all the dampness of the river. The rushes smelt rank.

There was a sound, as of a locksmith's file, that Gentleman said was bullfrogs. There were long- legged spiders, and beetles. There was a bush, with a show of tight, fat, furry buds.

I sat beside the bush, on the upturned punt: Gentleman had carried it there for me, to the shelter of the wall. It was as far away from him and Maud as he dared place me. I kept the spiders from a basket of cakes. That was my job, while Maud painted, and Gentleman looked on, smiling, and sometimes putting his hand on hers.

She painted, and the queer hot sun went lower, the grey sky began to be streaked with red, and the air grew even thicker. And then I slept. I slept and dreamt of Lant Street— I dreamt of Mr Ibbs at his brazier, burning his hand and shouting. The shout woke me up. I started from the punt, not knowing for a second where. I was. Then I looked about me. Maud and Gentleman were nowhere to be seen.

There was her stool, and there the terrible painting. There were her brushes— one was dropped upon the ground— and there her paints. I went over and picked up the fallen brush. I thought it would be like Gentleman, after all, to have taken her back to the house and left me to come up, sweating, with everything behind them. But I could not imagine that she would go with him, alone. I felt almost afraid for her. I felt almost like a real maid, worried for her mistress.

And then I heard her voice, murmuring. I walked a little way, and saw them.

They had not gone far— only just along the river, where it bent about the wall. They did not hear me come, they did not look round. They must have walked together along the line of rushes; and then I suppose he had spoken to her at last. He had spoken, for the first time, without me to overhear him— and I wondered what words he had said, that could make her lean against him, like that. She had her head upon his collar. Her skirt rose at the back, almost to her knees. And yet, her face she kept turned hard from his. Her arms hung at her side, like a doll's arms. He moved his mouth against her hair, and whispered.

Then, while I stood watching, he lifted one of her weak hands and slowly drew the glove half from it; and then he kissed her naked palm.

And by that, I knew he had her. I think he sighed. I think she sighed, too— I saw her 75

sag still closer to him, then give a shiver. Her skirt rose even higher, and showed the tops of her stockings, the white of her thigh.

The air was thick as treacle. My gown was damp where it gripped. A limb of iron would have sweated, in a dress on such a day. An eye of marble would have swivelled in its socket to gaze as I did. I could not look away. The stillness of them— her hand, so pale against his beard, the glove still bunched about her knuckles, the lifted skirt— it seemed to hold me like a spell. The purr of the bullfrogs was louder than before. The river lapped like a tongue among the rushes. I watched, and he dipped his head, and softly kissed her again.

I should have been glad to see him do it. I was not. Instead, I imagined the rub of his whiskers upon her palm. I thought of her smooth white fingers, her soft white nails.— I had cut them, that morning. I had dressed her and brushed her hair. I had been keeping her, neat and in her looks— all for the sake of this moment. All for him.

Now, against the dark of his jacket and hair, she seemed so neat— so slight, so pale— I thought she might break. I thought he might swallow her up, or bruise her.

I turned away. I felt the heat of the day, the thickness of the air, the rankness of the rushes, too hard; I turned, and stole softly back to where the painting was. After a minute there came thunder, and another minute after that I heard the sound of skirts, and then Maud and Gentleman walked quickly about the curving wall, she with her arm in his, her gloves buttoned up and her eyes on the ground; him with his hand upon her fingers, his head bent. When he saw me he gave me a look. He said,

'Sue! We didn't like to wake you. We have been walking, and lost ourselves in gazing at the river. Now the light is all gone, and we shall have rain, I think. Have you a coat for your mistress?'

I said nothing. Maud, too, was silent, and looked nowhere but at her feet. I put her cloak about her, then took the painting and the paints, the stool and the basket, and followed her and Gentleman back, through the gate in the wall, to the house. Mr Way opened the

door to us. As he closed it the thunder came again. Then the rain began to fall, in great, dark, staining drops.

'Just in time!' said Gentleman softly, gazing at Maud and letting her draw her hand from him.

It was the hand he had kissed. She must have felt his lips there still, for I saw her turn from him and hold it to her bosom, and stroke her fingers over her palm.

C h a p t e r F i v e

T he rain fell all that night. It made rivers of water that ran ^y beneath the basement doors, into the kitchen, the still-room and the pantries. We had to cut short our supper so that Mr Way and Charles might lay down sacks. I stood with Mrs Stiles at a backstairs window, watching the bouncing raindrops and the flashes of lightning. She 76

rubbed her arms and gazed at the sky.

'Pity the sailors at sea,' she said.

I went up early to Maud's rooms, and sat in the darkness, and when she came she did not know, for a minute, that I was there: she stood and put her hands to her face. Then the lightning flashed again, and she saw me, and jumped.

'Are you here?' she said.

Her eyes seemed large. She had been with her uncle, and with Gentleman. I thought,

'She'll tell me now.' But she only stood gazing at me, and when the thunder sounded she turned and moved away. I went with her to her bedroom. She stood as weakly for me to

undress her as she had stood in Gentleman's arms, and the hand he had kissed she held off a little from her side, as if to guard it. In her bed she lay very still, but lifted her head, now and then, from her pillow. There was a steady drip, drip in one of the attics.

'Do you hear the rain?' she said; and then, in a softer voice: 'The thunder is moving away

I thought of the basements, filling with water. I thought of the sailors at sea. I thought of the Borough. Rain makes London houses groan. I wondered if Mrs Sucksby was lying in bed, while the damp house groaned about her, thinking of me.

Three thousand pounds! she had said. My crikey!

Maud lifted her head again, and drew in her breath. I closed my eyes. 'Here it comes,'

I thought.

But after all, she said nothing.

When I woke, the rain had stopped and the house was still. Maud lay, as pale as milk: her breakfast came and she put it aside and would not eat it. She spoke quietly, about nothing. She did not look or act like a lover. I thought she would say something lover- like soon, though. I supposed her feelings had dazed her.

She watched Gentleman walk and smoke his cigarette, as she always did; and then, when he had gone to Mr Lilly, she said she would like to walk, herself. The sun had come up weak. The sky was grey again, and the ground was filled with what seemed puddles of lead. The air was so washed and pure, it made me bilious. But we went, as usual, to the wood and the ice- house, and then to the chapel and the graves. When we reached her mother's grave she sat a little near it, and gazed at the stone. It was dark with rain. The grass between the graves was thin and beaten. Two or three great black birds walked carefully about us, looking for worms. I watched them peck. Then I think I must have sighed, for Maud looked at me and her face— that had been hard, through frowning

grew gentle. She said,

'You are sad, Sue.'

I shook my head.

'I think you are,' she said. 'That's my fault. I have brought you to this lonely place, time after time, thinking only of myself. But you have known what it is, to have a mother's love and then to lose it.'

I looked away.

'It's all right,' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'

77

She said, 'You are brave ..."

I thought of my mother, dying game on the scaffold; and I suddenly wished— what I had never wished before— that she had been some ordinary girl, that had died in a regular way. As if she guessed it, Maud said quietly now,

'And what— it doesn't trouble you, my asking?— what did your mother die of?'

I thought for a moment. I said at last that she had swallowed a pin, that had choked her.

I really did know a woman that died that way. Maud stared at me, and put her hand to her throat. Then she gazed down at her own mother's tomb.

'How would you feel,' she said quietly, 'if you had fed her that pin yourself?'

It seemed an odd sort of question; but, of course, I was used by now to her saying odd sorts of things. I told her I should feel very ashamed and sad.

'Would you?' she said. 'You see, I have an interest in knowing. For it was my birth that killed my mother. I am as to blame for her death as if I had stabbed her with my own hand!'

She looked strangely at her fingers, that had red earth at the tips. I said,

'What nonsense. Who has made you think that? They ought to be sorry.'

'No-one made me think it,' she answered. 'I thought it myself.'

'Then that's worse, because you're clever and ought to know better. As if a girl could stop herself from being born!'

'I wish I had been stopped!' she said. She almost cried it. One of the dark birds started up from between the stones, its wings beating the air— it sounded like a carpet being snapped out of a window. We both turned our heads to see it fly; and when I looked at her again, her eyes had tears in them.

I thought, 'What do you have to cry for? You're in love, you're in love.' I tried to remind her.

'Mr Rivers,' I began. But she heard the name and shivered.

'Look at the sky,' she said quickly. The sky had grown darker. 'I think it will thunder again. Here is the new rain, look!'

She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears. I went to her and touched her arm.

'Put your cloak about you,' I said. Now the rain fell quick and hard. She let me lift her hood and fasten it, as a child might; and I think, if I had not drawn her from the grave, she would have stayed there and been soaked. But I made her stumble with me to the door of the little chapel. It was shut up fast with a rusting chain and a padlock, but above it was a porch of rotted wood. The rain struck the wood and made it tremble.

Our skirts were dark with water at the hems. We stood close to one another, our shoulders tight against the chapel door, and the rain came down— straight down, like arrows. A thousand arrows and one poor heart. She said,

'Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.'

She said it in a flat voice, like a girl saying a lesson; and though I had waited so hard to hear her say it, when I answered my words came out heavy as hers. I said,

'Oh, Miss Maud, I am gladder than anything!'

A drop of rain fell between our faces.

78

Are you truly?' she said. Her cheeks were damp, her hair clinging to them. 'Then,' she went on miserably, 'I am sorry. For I have not told him yes. How can I? My uncle—

My uncle will never give me up. It wants four years until I am twenty-one. How can I ask Mr Rivers to wait so long?'

Of course, we had guessed she'd think that. We had hoped that she would; for in thinking it she'd be all the more ready to run and be married in secret. I said, carefully, Are you sure, about your uncle?'

She nodded. 'He will not spare me, so long as there are books still, to be read and noted; and there will always be those! Besides, he is proud. Mr Rivers, I know, is a gentleman's son, but— '

'But your uncle won't think him quite enough a swell?'

She bit her lip. 'I'm afraid that if he knew Mr Rivers had asked for my hand, he would send him from the house. But then, he must go anyway, when his work here is finished! He must go— ' Her voice shook. 'And how will I see him, then? How may you keep a heart, for four years, like that?'

She put her hands to her face and wept in earnest. Her shoulders jumped. It was awful to see. I said, 'You mustn't cry.' I touched her cheek, putting the damp hair from it. I said, 'Truly, miss, you mustn't cry. Do you think Mr Rivers will give you up now?

How could he? You mean more to him than anything. Your uncle will come round, when he sees that.'

'My happiness is nothing to him,' she said. 'Only his books! He has made me like a book. I am not meant to be taken, and touched, and liked. I am meant to keep here, in a dim light, for ever!'

She spoke more bitterly than I had ever heard her speak before. I said,

'Your uncle loves you, I'm sure. But Mr Rivers— ' The words got caught in my throat, and I coughed. 'Mr Rivers loves you, too.'

'You think he does, Sue? He spoke so fiercely yesterday, beside the river, while you slept. He spoke of London— of his house, his studio— he says he longs to take me there, not as his pupil, but as his wife. He says he thinks of nothing but that. He says he thinks that to wait for me will kill him! You think he means it, Sue?'

She waited. I thought, 'It's not a lie, it's not a lie, he loves her for her money. I think he would die if he lost it now.' I said,

'I know it, miss.'

She looked at the ground. 'But, what can he do?'

'He must ask your uncle.'

'He cannot!'

'Then'— I drew in my breath— 'you must find another way.' She said nothing, but moved her head. 'You must do that.' Still nothing. 'Isn't there,' I said, 'another way you might take . . .?'

She lifted her eyes to mine and blinked back her tears. She looked anxiously to left and to right, then drew a little closer. She said, in a whisper:

'You'll tell no-one, Sue?'

'Tell them what, miss?'

She blinked again, hesitating. 'You must promise not to tell. You must swear it!'

79

'I swear!' I said. 'I swear!'— all the time thinking, Come on, say it Now!— for it was dreadful, seeing her so afraid to give up her secret, when I knew what the secret was.

Then she did say it. 'Mr Rivers,' she said, more quietly than ever, 'says we might go away, at night.'

'At night!' I said.

'He says we might be privately married. He says my uncle might try to claim me then; but he does not think he will. Not once I am a— a wife.'

Her face, as she said the word, grew pale, I saw the blood fall out of her cheek. She looked at the stone on her mother's grave. I said,

'You must follow your heart, miss.'

'I am not sure. After all, I am not sure.'

'But to love, and then to lose him!' Her gaze grew strange. I said, 'You love him, don't you?'

She turned a little, and still looked queer, and would not answer. Then she said,

'I don't know.'

'Don't know? How can you not know a thing like that? Doesn't your blood beat hard when you see him coming? Doesn't his voice thrill in your ears, and his touch set you shaking? Don't you dream of him, at night?'

She bit her plump lip. And those things mean I love him?'

'Of course! What else could they mean?'

She did not answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and gave a shiver. She put her hands together, and again she stroked the spot upon her palm where he had yesterday touched his lips.

Only now I saw, she was not stroking the flesh so much as rubbing at it. She was not nursing the kiss. She felt his mouth like a burn, like an itch, like a splinter, and was trying to rub the memory of it away.

She didn't love him at all. She was afraid of him.

I drew in my breath. She opened her eyes and held my gaze.

'What will you do?' I said, in a whisper.

'What can I do?' She shivered. 'He wants me. He has asked me. He means to make me his.'

'You might— say no.'

She blinked, as if she could not believe I had said it. I could not believe it, either.

'Say no to him?' she said slowly. 'Say no?' Then her look changed. 'And watch him leave, from my window? Or perhaps when he goes I shall be in my uncle's library, where the windows are all dark; and then I shan't see him leave at all. And then, and then— oh, Sue, don't you think I should wonder, over the life I might have had? Do you suppose another man will come visiting, that will want me half as much as he?

What choice have I?'

Her gaze, now, was so steady and so bare, I flinched from it. I did not answer for a moment, but turned and gazed down at the wood of the door we stood against, and the rusting chain that held it closed, and the padlock. The padlock is the simplest kind of lock. The worst are the kind that keep their business parts guarded. They are devils to crack. Mr Ibbs taught me that. I closed my eyes and saw his face; and then, Mrs 80

Sucksby's. Three thousand pounds— .' I drew in my breath, looked back to Maud, and said,

'Marry him, miss. Don't wait for your uncle's word. Mr Rivers loves you, and love won't harm a flea. You will learn to like him as you ought, in time. Till then go with him in secret, and do everything he says.'

For a second, she looked wretched— as if she might have been hoping I would say anything but that; but it was only for a second. Then her face grew clear. She said,

'I will. I'll do it. But, I can't go alone. You mustn't make me go with him, quite on my own. You must come with me. Say you will. Say you'll come and be my maid, in my new life, in London!'

I said I would. She gave a high, nervous laugh and then, from having wept and been so low, she grew almost giddy. She talked of the house that Gentleman had promised her; and of the fashions of London, that I would help her choose; and of the carriage she

would have. She said she would buy me handsome gowns. She said she wouldn't call me her maid then, but her companion. She said she would get me a maid of my own.

'For you know I shall be very rich,' she said simply, 'once I am married?'

She shivered and smiled and clutched at my arm, and then she drew me to her and put her head against mine. Her cheek was cool, and smooth as a pearl. Her hair was bright with beads of rainwater. I think she was weeping. But I did not pull away to try and find out. I did not want her to see my face. I think the look in my eyes must have been awful.

That afternoon she set out her paints and her painting, as usual; but the brushes and the colours stayed dry. Gentleman came to her parlour, walked quickly to her, and stood before her as if he longed to pull her to him but was afraid. He said her name— not Miss Lilly, but Maud. He said it in a quiet, fierce voice, and she quivered, and hesitated once, then nodded. He gave a great sigh, seized her hand and sank before her— I thought that was pushing it a bit, myself, and even she looked doubtful.

She said, 'No, not here!' and gazed quickly at me; and he, seeing her look, said, 'But we may be quite free, before Sue? You've told her? She knows all?' He turned to me with an awkward gesture of his head, as if it hurt his eyes to look at anything but her.

Ah, Sue,' he said, 'if you were ever a friend to your mistress, be her friend now! If you ever looked kindly on a pair of foolish lovers, look kindly on us!'

He gazed hard at me. I gazed hard back.

'She has promised to help us,' said Maud. 'But, Mr Rivers— '

'Oh, Maud,' he said at that. 'Do you mean to slight me?'

She lowered her head. She said, 'Richard, then.'

'That's better.'

He was still on his knee, with his face tilted upwards. She touched his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her hands, and then she drew them quickly back. She said,

'Sue will help us all she can. But we must be careful, Richard.'

He smiled and shook his head. He said,

'And you think, seeing me now, I shall never be that?' He rose and stepped from her.

81

He said, 'Do you know how careful my love will make me? See here, look at my hands. Say there's a cobweb spun between them. It's my ambition. And at its centre there's a spider, of the colour of a jewel. The spider is you. This is how I shall bear you— so gently, so carefully and without jar, you shall not know you are being taken.'

He said that, with his white hands cupped; and then, as she gazed into the space between them, he spread his fingers and laughed. I turned away. When I looked at her again, he had taken her hands in his and was holding them loosely, before his heart.

She seemed a little easier. They sat, and talked in murmurs.

And I remembered all she had said at the graves, and how she had rubbed her palm. I thought, 'That was nothing, she has forgotten it now. Not love him, when he's so handsome and seems so kind?'

I thought, 'Of course she loves him.' I watched as he leaned to her and touched her and made her blush. I thought, 'Who wouldn't?'

Then he raised his head and caught my gaze and, stupidly, I blushed, too. He said,

'You know your duties, Sue. You've a careful eye. We shall be glad of that, in time.

But today— well, have you no other little business, that will take you elsewhere?'

He gestured with his eyes to the door of Maud's bedroom.

'There's a shilling in it for you,' he said, 'if you do.'

I almost stood. I almost went. So used had I got, to playing the servant. Then I saw Maud. The colour had quite gone from her face. She said, 'But suppose Margaret or one of the girls should come to the door?'

'Why should they do that?' said Gentleman. And if they do, what will they hear? We shall be perfectly silent. Then they will go again.' He smiled at me. 'Be kind, Sue,' he said slyly. 'Be kind, to lovers. Did you never have a sweetheart of your own?'

I might still have gone, before he said that. Now I thought suddenly, Who did he think he was? He might pretend to be a lord; he

was only a con-man. He had a snide ring on his finger, and all his coins were bad ones.

I knew more than he did about Maud's secrets. I slept beside her in her own bed. I had made her love me like a sister; he had made her afraid. I could turn her heart against him if I wanted to, like that! It was enough that he was going to marry her at last. It was enough that he could kiss her, whenever he liked. I wouldn't leave her now to be tugged about and made nervous. I thought, 'Damn you, I'll get my three thousand just the same!'

So I said, 'I shan't leave Miss Lilly. Her uncle wouldn't like it. And if Mrs Stiles was to hear of it, then I should lose my place.'

He looked at me and frowned. Maud did not look at me at all; but I knew she was grateful. She said gently,

After all, Richard, we shouldn't ask too much of Sue. We shall have time enough to be together, soon— shan't we?'

He said then that he supposed that that was true. They kept close before the fire, and after a while I went and sat and sewed beside the window and let them gaze at one another's faces undisturbed. I heard the hiss of his whispers, the rush of his breath as he laughed. But Maud was silent. And when he left, and took her hand and pressed it to his mouth, she trembled so hard, I thought back to all the times I had watched her 82

tremble before, and wondered how I had ever mistaken that trembling for love. Once the door was closed she stood at the glass, as she often did, studying her face. She stood there for a minute, then turned. She stepped very slowly and softly, from the glass to the sofa, from the sofa to the chair, from the chair to the window— she moved, in short, across the whole of the room, until she reached my side. She leaned to look at my work and her hair, in its net of velvet, brushed my own.

'You sew neatly,' she said— though I had not, not then. I had sewn hard, and my stitches were crooked.

Then she stood and said nothing. Once or twice she drew in her breath. I thought there was something she longed to ask me, but dared not. In the end she moved away again.

And so our trap— that I had thought so lightly of, and worked so hard to lay— was finally set; and wanted only time to go quickly by

and spring it. Gentleman was hired to work as Mr Lilly's secretary until the end of April, and meant to stay out his contract to the last— 'So that the old man won't have the breaking of that to charge me with,' he said to me, laughing, 'alongside the breaking of certain other things.' He planned to leave when he was meant to— that is, the evening of the last day of the month; but, instead of taking the train for London, he would hang about, and come back to the house at the dead of night, for me and Maud. He must steal her away and not be caught, and then he must marry her— quick as he could, and before her uncle should hear of it and find her and take her home again. He had it all figured out. He could not fetch her in a pony and cart, for he should never have got it past the gate-house. He meant to bring a boat and take her off along the river, to some small out-of-the-way church where she would not be known as Mr Lilly's niece.

Now, to marry a girl at any church you must have been living in the parish of it for fifteen days; but he fixed that up, as he fixed everything. A few days after Maud had promised him her hand, he found some excuse and took a horse and went riding off to Maidenhead. He got a special licence for the wedding there— that meant they should not have to put out the banns— and then he went about the county, looking out for the right kind of church. He found one, in a place so small and broken-down it had no name— or anyway, that's what he told us. He said the vicar was a drunkard. Hard by the church there was a cottage, owned by a widow who kept black-faced pigs. For two pounds she said she would keep him a room and swear to whoever he liked that he had lived there a month.

Women like that will do anything for gentlemen like him. He got back to Briar that night looking pleased as a weasel, and handsome than ever; and he came to Maud's parlour and sat us down anc spoke to us in murmurs of all he had done.

When he had finished, Maud looked pale. She had begun to leave off eating, and was grown thin about the face. Her eyes were dark at the lids. She put her hands together.

'Three weeks,' she said.

I thought I knew what she meant. She had three weeks left to

make herself want him. I saw her counting the days in her head, and thinking.

She was thinking of what was coming at the end of them.

For, she never learned to love him. She never grew to like his kisses or the feel of his 83

hand upon hers. She still shrank from him in a miserable fright— then nerved herself to face him, let him draw her close, let him touch her hair and face. I supposed at first he thought her backwards. Then I guessed he liked her to be slow. He would be kind to her, then pressing, and then, when she grew awkward or confused he would say,

'Oh! now you are cruel. I think you mean only to practise on my love.'

'No indeed,' she would answer. 'No, how can you say it?'

'I don't think you love me as you ought.'

'Not love you?'

'You won't show it. Perhaps'— a n d h e r e h e ' d g i v e a s l y g l a n c e , t o c a t c h m y eye— 'perhaps there's someone else you care for?'

Then she would let him kiss her, as if to prove that there was not. She would be stiff, or weak as a puppet. Sometimes she would almost weep. Then he would comfort her.

He would call himself a brute that did not deserve her, that ought to give her up to a better lover; then she would let him kiss her again. I heard the meeting of their lips, from my cold place beside the window. I heard the creeping of his hand upon her skirt.

Now and then I would look— just to be sure he had not put her in too much of a fright.

But then, I didn't know what was worse— seeing her face shut up, her cheek made pale, her mouth against his beard; or meeting her eye as the tears were pressed from it and came spilling.

'Let her alone, why don't you?' I said to him one day, when she had been called from the room to find a book for her uncle. 'Can't you see she don't care for it, having you pestering her like that?'

He looked at me queerly for a second; then raised his brows. 'Not care for it?' he said.

'She is longing for it.'

'She is afraid of you.'

'She is afraid of herself. Girls like her always are. But let them squirm and be dainty as much as they like, they all want the same thing in the end.'

He paused, then laughed. He thought it a filthy kind of joke.

'What she wants from you is to be taken from Briar,' I said. 'For the rest, she knows nothing.'

'They all say they know nothing,' he answered, yawning. 'In their hearts, in their dreams, they know it all. They take it in their milk from the breasts of their mothers.

Haven't you heard her, in her bed? Doesn't she wriggle, and sigh? She is sighing for me. You must listen harder. I ought to come and listen with you. Shall I do that? Shall I come to your room, tonight? You could take me to her. We could watch to see how hard her heart beats. You could put back her gown for me to see.'

I knew he was teasing. He would never have risked losing everything, for a lark like that. But I heard his words, and imagined him coming. I imagined putting back her gown. I blushed, and turned away from him. I said,

'You should never find my room.'

'I should find it, all right. I've had the plan of the house, from the little knife-boy. He's a good little boy, with a chattering mouth.' He laughed again, rather harder, and stretched in his chair. 'Only think of the sport! And how would it harm her? I would creep, like a mouse. I am good at creeping. I would only want to look. Or, she might 84

like to wake and find me there— like the girl in the poem.'

I knew many poems. They were all about thieves being plucked by soldiers from their sweethearts' arms; and one was about a cat being tipped down a well. I didn't know the one he mentioned now, however, and not knowing made me peevish.

'You leave her alone,' I said. Perhaps he heard something in my voice. He looked me over, and his voice turned rich.

'Oh, Suky,' he said, 'have you grown squeamish? Have you learned sweet ways, after your spell with the quality? Who would have said you should take so to serving ladies, with pals like yours, and a home like your home! What would Mrs Sucksby say— and Dainty, and Johnny!— if they could see your blushes now?'

'They would say I had a soft heart,' I said, firing up. 'Maybe I do. Where's the crime in that?'

'God damn it,' he answered, firing up in his turn. 'What did a soft heart ever do for a girl like you? What would it do, for a girl like Dainty? Except, perhaps, kill her.' He nodded to the door through which Maud had gone to her uncle. 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'she wants your qualms? She wants your grip, on the laces of her stays— on her comb, on the handle of her chamber-pot. For God's sake, look at you!' I had turned and picked up her shawl, and begun to fold it. He pulled it from my hands. 'When did you become so meek, so tidy? What do you imagine you owe, to her? Listen to me. I know her people. I'm one of them. Don't talk to me as if she keeps you at Briar for kindness' sake— nor as if you came out of sweetness of temper! Your heart— as you call it— and hers are alike, after all: they are like mine, like everyone's. They resemble nothing so much as those meters you will find on gas-pipes: they only perk up and start pumping when you drop coins in. Mrs Sucksby should have taught you that.'

'Mrs Sucksby taught me lots of things,' I said, 'and not what you are saying now.'

'Mrs Sucksby kept you too close,' he answered. 'Too close. The boys of the Borough are right, calling you slow. Too close, too long. Too much like this.' He showed me his fist.

'Go and fuck it,' I said.

At that his cheeks, behind his whiskers, grew crimson, and I thought he might get up and hit me. But he only leaned forward in his seat, and reached to grip the arm of my chair. He said quietly,

'Let me see you in your tantrums again and I will drop you, Sue, like a stone. Do you understand me? I have come far enough now, to do without you if I must. She will do anything I tell her. And say my old nurse, in London, should grow suddenly sick, and need her niece to tend her? What would you do then? Should you like to put on your old stuff gown again, and go back to Lant Street with nothing?'

I said,'I should tell Mr Lilly!'

'Do you think he would have you in his room, long enough to hear you?'

'Then, I should tell Maud.'

'Go ahead. And why not tell her, while you are about it, that I have a tail with a point, and cloven hooves? So I would have, were I to act my crimes upon the stage. No-one expects to meet a man like me in life, however. She would choose not to believe you.

She cannot afford to believe you! For she has come as far as we have, and must marry 85

me now, or be more or less ruined. She must do as I say— or stay here, and do nothing, for the rest of her life. Do you think she'll do that?'

What could I say? She had as good as told me herself that she would not. So I was silent. But from that point on, I think I hated him. He sat with his hand on my chair, his eyes on mine, for another moment or two; then there came the pat of Maud's slippers on the stairs, and after a second her face about the door. And then, of course, he sat back and his look changed. He rose, and I rose, and I made a hopeless sort of curtsey. He went quickly to her and led her to the fire.

'You are cold,' he said.

They stood before the mantel, but I saw their faces in the glass. She looked at the coals in the hearth. He gazed at me. Then he sighed and shook his hateful head.

'Oh, Sue,' he said, 'you are terribly stern today.'

Maud looked up. 'What's this?' she said.

I swallowed, saying nothing. He said,

'Poor Sue is weary of me. I've been teasing her, while you were gone.'

'Teasing her, how?' she asked, half- smiling, half- frowning.

'Why, by keeping her from her sewing, by talking of nothing but you! She claims to have a soft heart. She has no heart at all. I told her my eyes were aching for want of gazing at you; she told me to wrap them in flannel and keep to my room. I said my ears were ringing, for want of your sweet voice; she wanted to call for Margaret to bring castor-oil to put in them. I showed her this blameless white hand, that wants your kisses. She told me to take it and— ' He paused.

'And what?' said Maud.

'Well, put it in my pocket.'

He smiled. Maud looked once at me, in a doubtful way. 'Poor hand,' she said at last.

He lifted his arm. 'It still wants your kisses,' he said.

She hesitated, then took his hand and held it in her own two slender ones and touched his fingers, at the knuckles, with her lips.— 'Not there,' he said quickly, when she did that. 'Not there, but here.'

He turned his wrist and showed his palm. She hesitated again, then dipped her head to it. It covered her mouth, her nose, and half her face.

He caught my eye, and nodded. I turned away and wouldn't look at him.

For he was right, damn him. Not about Maud— for I knew that, whatever he said about hearts and gas-pipes, she was sweet, she was kind, she was everything that was gentle and handsome and good. But, he was right about me. How could I go back to the Borough, with nothing? I was meant to make Mrs Sucksby's fortune. How could I go back to her, and to Mr Ibbs— and to John— saying, I had thrown off the plot, let slip three thousand pounds, because—

Because what? Because my feelings were finer than I thought? They would say my nerve had failed me. They would laugh in my face! I had a certain standing. I was the daughter of a murderess. I had expectations. Fine feelings weren't in them. How could they be?

And then, say I gave it all up— how would that save Maud? Say I went home: Gentleman would go on and marry her, and lock her up anyway. Or, say I peached 86

him up. He would be sent from Briar, Mr Lilly would keep her all the closer— she might as well be put in a madhouse, then. Either way, I didn't say much to her chances.

But her chances had all been dealt her, years before. She was like a twig on a rushing river. She was like milk— too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.

Besides, nobody's chances were good, where I came from. And though she was to do badly, did that mean I must?

I didn't think it did. So though, as I have said, I was sorry for her, I was not quite sorry enough to want to try and save her. I never really thought of telling her the truth, of showing up Gentleman as the villain he was— of doing anything, anything at all, that would spoil our plot and keep us from our fortune. I let her suppose he loved her and was kind. I let her think that he was gentle. I watched her try to make herself like him, knowing all the time that he meant to take her, trick her, fuck her and lock her away. I watched her grow thin. I watched her pale and dwindle. I watched her sit with her head in her hands, passing the points of her fingers across her aching brow, wishing she might be anyone but herself, Briar any house but her uncle's, Gentleman any man but the man she must marry; and I hated it, but turned away. I thought, It can't be helped. I thought, It's their business.

But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there. All day I sat or walked with her, so full of the fate I was bringing her to I could hardly touch her or meet her gaze; and all night I lay with my back turned to her, the blanket over my ears to keep out her sighs. But in the hours in between, when she went to her uncle, I felt her— I felt her, through the walls of the house, like some blind crooks are said to be able to feel gold. It was as if there had come between us, without my knowing, a kind of thread. It pulled me to her, wherever she was. It was like—

It's like you love her, I thought.

It made a change in me. It made me nervous and afraid. I thought she would look at me and see it— or Gentleman would, or Margaret, or Mrs Stiles. I imagined word of it getting back to Lant Street, reaching John— I thought of John, more than any of them.

I thought of his look, his laugh. 'What have I done?' I imagined I'd say. 'I haven't done anything!' And I hadn't. It was only, as I've said, that I thought of her so, that I felt her so. Her very clothes seemed changed to me, her shoes and stockings: they seemed to keep her shape, the warmth and scent of her— I didn't like to fold them up and make them flat. Her rooms seemed changed. I took to going about them— just as I had done, on my first day at Briar—

and looking at all the things I knew she had taken up and touched. Her box, and her mother's picture. Her books. Would there be books for her, at the madhouse? Her comb, with hairs snagged in it. Would there be anyone to dress her hair? Her looking- glass. I began to stand where she liked to stand, close to the fire, and I'd study my face as I'd seen her studying hers.

'Ten days to go,' I would say to myself. 'Ten days, and you will be rich!'

But I'd say it, and across the words might come the chiming of the great house bell; 87

and then I would shudder to think of our plot being so much as a single hour nearer its end, the jaws of our trap that little bit closer and tighter about her and harder to prise apart.

Of course, she felt the passing hours, too. It made her cling to her old habits— made her walk, eat, lie in her bed, do everything, more stiffly, more neatly, more like a little clockwork doll, than ever. I think she did it, for safety's sake; or else, to keep the time from running on too fast. I'd watch her take her tea— pick up her cup, sip from it, put it down, pick it up and sip again, like a machine would; or I'd see her sew, with crooked stitches, nervous and quick; and I'd have to turn my gaze. I'd think of the time I had put back the rug and danced a polka with her. I'd think of the day I had smoothed her pointed tooth. I remembered holding her jaw, and the damp of her tongue. It had seemed ordinary, then; but I could not imagine, now, putting a finger to her mouth and it being ordinary . . .

She began to dream again. She began to wake, bewildered, in the night. Once or twice she rose from her bed: I opened my eyes and found her moving queerly about the room. Are you there?' she said, when she heard me stirring; and she came back to my side and lay and shook. Sometimes she would reach for me. When her hands came against me, though, she'd draw them away. Sometimes she would weep. Or, she would ask queer questions. Am I real? Do you see me? Am I real?'

'Go back to sleep,' I said, one night. It was a night close to the end.

I'm afraid to,' she said. 'Oh, Sue, I'm afraid . . .'

Her voice, this time, was not at all thick, but soft and clear, and so unhappy it woke me properly and I looked for her face. I could not see it. The little rush- light that she always kept lit must have fallen against its shade, or burned itself out. The curtains were down, as they always were. I think it was three or four o'clock. The bed was dark, like a box. Her breath came out of the darkness. It struck my mouth.

"What is it?' I said.

She said, 'I dreamed— I dreamed I was married

I turned my head. Then her breath came against my ear. Too loud, it seemed, in the silence. I moved my head again. I said,

'Well, you shall be married, soon, for real.'

'Shall I?'

'You know you shall. Now, go back to sleep.'

But, she would not. I felt her lying, still but very stiff. I felt the beating of her heart. At last she said again, in a whisper: 'Sue— '

'What is it, miss?'

She wet her mouth. 'Do you think me good?' she said.

She said it, as a child might. The words unnerved me rather. I turned again, and peered into the darkness, to try and make out her face.

'Good, miss?' I said, as I squinted.

'You do,' she said unhappily.

'Of course!'

'I wish you wouldn't. I wish I wasn't. I wish— I wish I was wise.'

'I wish you were sleeping,' I thought. But I did not say it. What I said was, 'Wise?

88

Aren't you wise? A girl like you, that has read all those books of your uncle's?'

She did not answer. She only lay, stiff as before. But her heart beat harder— I felt it lurch. I felt her draw in her breath. She held it. Then she spoke.

'Sue,' she said, 'I wish you would tell me— '

Tell me the truth, I thought she was about to say; and my own heart beat like hers, I began to sweat. I thought, 'She knows. She has guessed!'— I almost thought, Thank God!

But it wasn't that. It wasn't that, at all. She drew in her breath again, and again I felt her, nerving herself to ask some awful thing. I should have known what it was; for she had been nerving herself to ask it, I think, for a month. At last, the words burst from her.

'I wish you would tell me,' she said, 'what it is a wife must do, on her wedding- night!'

I heard her, and blushed. Perhaps she did, too. It was too dark to see.

I said, 'Don't you know?'

'I know there is— something.'

'But you don't know what?'

'How should I?'

'But truly, miss: you mean, you don't know?'

'How should I?' she cried, rising up from her pillow. 'Don't you see, don't you see? I am too ignorant even to know what it is I am ignorant of!' She shook. Then I felt her make herself steady. 'I think,' she said, in a flat, unnatural voice, 'I think he will kiss me. Will he do that?'

Again, I felt her breath on my face. I felt the word, kiss. Again, I blushed.

' W i l l h e ? ' s h e s a i d . '

'Yes, miss.'

I felt her nod. 'On my cheek?' she said. 'My mouth?'

'On your mouth, I should say.'

'On my mouth. Of course . . .' She lifted her hands to her face: I saw at last, through the darkness, the whiteness of her gloves, heard the brushing of her fingers across her lips. The sound seemed greater than it ought to have done. The bed seemed closer and blacker than ever. I wished the rush- light had not burned out. I wished— I think it was the only time I ever did— that the clock would chime. There was only the silence, with her breath in it. Only the darkness, and her pale hands. The world might have shrunk, or fallen away.

'What else,' she asked, 'will he want me to do?'

I thought, 'Say it quick. Quick will be best. Quick and plain.' But it was hard to be plain, with her.

'He will want,' I said, after a moment, 'to embrace you.'

Her hand grew still. I think she blinked. I think I heard it. She said,

'You mean, to stand with me in his arms?'

S h e s a i d i t , a n d I p i c t u r e d h e r , a l l a t o n c e , i n G e n t l e m a n ' s g r i p . I s a w t h e m standing— as you do see men and girls, sometimes, at night, in the Borough, in doorways or up against walls. You turn your eyes. I tried to turn my eyes, now— but, of course, could not, for there was nothing to turn them to, there was only the 89

darkness. My mind flung figures on it, bright as lantern slides.

I grew aware of her, waiting. I said, in a fretful way,

'He won't want to stand. It's rough, when you stand. You only stand when you haven't a place to lie in or must be quick. A gentleman would embrace his wife on a couch, or a bed. A bed would be best.'

A bed,' she said, 'like this?'

'Perhaps like this.— Though the feathers, I think, would be devils to shake back into shape, when you've finished!'

I laughed; but the laugh came out too loud. Maud flinched. Then she seemed to frown.

'Finished . . .' she murmured, as if puzzling over the word. Then, 'Finished what?' she said. 'The embrace?'

'Finished it,' I said.

'But do you mean, the embrace?'

' F i n i s h e d i t . ' I t u r n e d , t h e n t u r n e d a g a i n . ' H o w d a r k i t i s ! W h e r e i s t h e light?— Finished it. Can I be plainer?'

'I think you could be, Sue. You talk instead of beds, of feathers. What are they to me?

You talk of it. What's it?'

'It is what follows,' I said, 'from kissing, from embracing on a bed. It is the actual thing. The kissing only starts you off. Then it comes over you, like— like wanting to dance, to a time, to music. Have you never— ?'

'Never what?'

'Never mind,' I said. I still moved, restlessly. 'You must not mind. It will be easy. Like dancing is.'

'But dancing is not easy,' she said, pressing on. 'One must be taught to dance. You taught me.'

'This is different.'

'Why is it?'

'There are lots of ways to dance. You can only do this, one way. The way will come to you, when once you have begun.'

I felt her shake her head. 'I don't think,' she said miserably, 'it will come to me. I don't think that kisses can start me off. Mr Rivers's kisses never have. Perhaps— perhaps my mouth lacks a certain necessary muscle or nerve— ?'

I said, 'For God's sake, miss. Are you a girl, or a surgeon? Of course your mouth will work. Look here.' She had fired me up. She had wound me tight, like a spring. I rose from my pillow. 'Where are your lips?' I said.

'My lips?' she answered, in a tone of surprise. 'They are here.'

I found them, and kissed her.

I knew how to do it all right, for Dainty had shown me, once. Kissing Maud, however, was not like kissing her. It was like kissing the darkness. As if the darkness had life, had a shape, had taste, was warm and glib. Her mouth was still, at first. Then it moved against mine. Then it opened. I felt her tongue. I felt her swallow. I felt—

I had done it, only to show her. But I lay with my mouth on hers and felt, starting up in me, everything I had said would start in her, when Gentleman kissed her. It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I 90

drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My mouth was wet, from hers. I said, in a whisper,

'Do you feel it?'

The words sounded queer; as if the kiss had done something to my tongue. She did not answer. She did not move. She breathed, but lay so still I thought suddenly, 'What if I've put her in a trance? Say she never comes out? What ever will I tell her uncle— ?'

Then she shifted a little. And then she spoke.

'I feel it,' she said. Her voice was as strange as mine. 'You have made me feel it. It's such a curious, wanting thing. I never— '

'It wants Mr Rivers,' I said.

'Does it?'

'I think it must.'

'I don't know. I don't know.'

She spoke, unhappily. But she shifted again, and the shift brought her nearer to me.

Her mouth came closer to mine. It was like she hardly knew what she was doing; or knew, but could not help it. She said again, 'I'm afraid.'

'Don't be frightened,' I said at once. For I knew that she mustn't be that. Say she got so frightened she cried off marrying him?

That's what I thought. I thought I must show her how to do it, or her fear would spoil our plot. So, I kissed her again. Then I touched her. I touched her face. I began at the meeting of our mouths— at the soft wet corners of our lips— then found her jaw, her cheek, her brow— I had touched her before, to wash and dress her; but never like this.

So smooth she was! So warm! It was like I was calling the heat and shape of her out of the darkness— as if the darkness was turning solid and growing quick, under my hand.

She began to shake. I supposed she was still afraid. Then I began to shake, too. I forgot to think of Gentleman, after that. I thought only of her. When her face grew wet with tears, I kissed them away.

'You pearl,' I said. So white she was! 'You pearl, you pearl, you pearl.'

It was easy to say, in the darkness. It was easy to do. But next morning I woke, saw the strips of grey light between the curtains of the bed, remembered what I had done, and thought, My God. Maud lay, still sleeping, her brows drawn together in a frown.

Her mouth was open. Her lip had grown dry. My lip was dry, too, and I brought up my hand, to touch it. Then I took the hand away. It smelt of her. The smell made me shiver, inside. The shiver was a ghost of the shiver that had seized me— seized us both— as I'd moved against her, in the night. Being fetched, the girls of the Borough call it. Did he fetch you— ? They will tell you it comes on you like a sneeze; but a sneeze is nothing to it, nothing at all—

I shivered again, remembering. I put the tip of one finger to my tongue. It tasted sharp— like vinegar, like blood.

Like money.

I grew afraid. Maud made some movement. I got up, not looking

at her. I went to my room. I began to feel ill. Perhaps I had been drunk. Perhaps the 91

beer I had had with my supper had been brewed bad. Perhaps I had a fever. I washed my hands and my face. The water was so cold it seemed to sting. I washed between my legs. Then I dressed. Then I waited. I heard Maud wake, and move; and went slowly in to her. I saw her, through the space between her curtains. She had raised herself up from her pillow. She was trying to fasten the strings of her nightdress. I had untied them in the night.

I saw that, and my insides shivered again. But when she lifted her eyes to mine, I looked away.

I looked away! And she didn't call me to her side. She didn't speak. She watched me move about the room, but she said nothing. Margaret came, with coals and water: I stood pulling clothes from the press while she knelt at the hearth, my face blushing scarlet. Maud kept to her bed. Then Margaret left. I put out a gown, and petticoats and shoes. I put out water.

'Will you come,' I said, 'so I may dress you?'

She did. She stood, and slowly raised her arms, and I lifted up her gown. Her thighs had a flush upon them. The curls of hair between her legs were dark. Upon her breast there was a crimson bruise, from where I had kissed too hard.

I covered it up. She might have stopped me. She might have put her hands upon mine.

She was the mistress, after all! But, she did nothing. I made her go with me to the silvery looking- glass above her fire, and she stood with her eyes cast down while I combed and pinned her hair. If she felt the trembling of my fingers against her face, she didn't say. Only when I had almost finished did she lift her head and catch my gaze. And then she blinked, and seemed to search for words. She said,

'What a thick sleep I had. Didn't I?'

'You did,' I said. My voice was shaking. 'No dreams.'

'No dreams,' she said, 'save one. But that was a sweet one. I think— I think you were in it, Sue

She kept her eyes on mine, as if waiting. I saw the blood beat in her throat. Mine beat to match it, my very heart turned in my

breast; and I think, that if I had drawn her to me then, she'd have kissed me. If I had said, 1 love you, she would have said it back; and everything would have changed. I might have saved her. I might have found a way— I don't know what— to keep her from her fate. We might have cheated Gentleman. I might have run with her, to Lant Street—

But if I did that, she'd find me out for the villain I was. I thought of telling her the truth; and trembled harder. I couldn't do it. She was too simple. She was too good. If there had only been some stain upon her, some speck of badness in her heart— ! But there was nothing. Only that crimson bruise. A single kiss had made it. How would she do, in the Borough?

And then, how would / do, back in the Borough with her at my side?

I heard, again, John's laugh. I thought of Mrs Sucksby. Maud watched my face. I put the last pin to her hair, and then her net of velvet. I swallowed, and said,

'In your dream? I don't think so, miss. Not me. I should say— I should say, Mr Rivers.' I stepped to the window. 'Look, there he is! His cigarette almost smoked 92

already. You will miss him, if you wait!'

We were awkward with each other, all that day. We walked, but we walked apart. She reached to take my arm, and I drew away. And when, that night, I had put her into her bed and stood letting down her curtains, I looked at the empty place beside her and said,

'The nights are grown so warm now, miss. Don't you think you will sleep better on your own . . .?'

I went back to my narrow bed, with its sheets like pieces of pastry. I heard her turning, and sighing, all through the night; and I turned, and sighed, myself. I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart— so hard, it hurt me. A hundred times I almost rose, almost went in to her; a hundred times I thought, Go to her! Why are you waiting? Go back to her side! But every time, I thought of what would happen if I did. I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't

have felt her breath come upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.

So, I did nothing. I did nothing the next night, too, and the night after that; and soon, there were no more nights: the time, that had always gone so slow, ran suddenly fast, the end of April came. And by then, it was too late to change anything.

C h a p t e r S i x

Gentleman went first. Mr Lilly and Maud stood at the door to

see him leave, and I watched from her window. She shook his

O' hand and he made her a bow. Then the trap took him off, to the station at Marlow. He sat with folded arms, his hat put back, his face our way, his eyes now on hers, now on mine.

There goes the Devil, I thought.

He made no sort of sign. He did not need to. He had gone over his plans with us and we had them by heart. He was to travel three miles by the train, then wait. We were to keep to Maud's parlour till midnight, then go. He was to meet us at the river when the clock struck the half.

That day passed just like all the old ones. Maud went to her uncle, as she had used to do, and I went slowly about her rooms, looking over her things— only this time, of course, I was looking out for what we ought to take. We sat at lunch. We walked in the park, to the ice- house, the graves, and the river. It was the final time we would do it, yet things looked the same as they always had. It was us who had changed. We walked, not speaking. Now and then our skirts came together— and once, our hands— and we started apart, as if stung; but if, like me, she coloured, I don't know, for I didn't look at her. Back in her room she stood still, like a statue. Only now and then I heard her sigh. I sat at her table with her box full of brooches and rings and 93

a saucer of vinegar, shining up the stones. I would rather do that, I thought, than nothing. Once she came to look. Then she moved away, wiping her eyes. She said the vinegar made them sting. It made mine sting, too.

Then came the evening. She went to her dinner, and I went to mine. Downstairs in the kitchen, everyone was gloomy.

'Don't seem the same, now Mr Rivers has gone,' they said.

Mrs Cakebread's face was dark as thunder. When Margaret let a spoon drop, she hit her with a ladle and made her scream. And then, no sooner had we started our dinners than Charles burst out crying at the table, and had to run from the kitchen wiping snot from his chin.

'He've took it very hard,' said one of the parlourmaids. 'Had his heart set on going to London as Mr Rivers's man.'

'You get back here!' called Mr Way, standing up, his powder flying. 'Boy your age, fellow like him, I'd be ashamed!'

But Charles would not come back, not for Mr Way nor anyone. He had been taking Gentleman his breakfasts, polishing his boots, brushing his fancy coats. Now he should be stuck sharpening knives and shining glasses in the quietest house in England.

He sat on the stairs and wept, and hit his head against the banisters. Mr Way went and gave him a beating. We heard the slap of his belt against Charles's backside, and yelps.

That put rather a dampener on the meal. We ate it in silence, and when we had finished and Mr Way had come back, his face quite purple and his wig at a tilt, I did not go with him and Mrs Stiles to the pantry to take my pudding. I said I had a head-ache. I almost did. Mrs Stiles looked me over, then looked away.

'How poorly you keep, Miss Smith,' she said. 'I should say you must have left your health in London.'

But it was nothing to me, what she thought. I should not see her— or Mr Way, or Margaret, or Mrs Cakebread— ever again.

I said Good-night, and went upstairs. Maud, of course, was still with her uncle. Until she came I did what we had planned, and got together all the gowns and shoes and bits and pieces we had agreed ought to be taken. It was all of it hers. My brown stuff dress I left behind me. I hadn't worn it in more than a month. I put it at the bottom of my trunk. I left that, too. We could only take bags. Maud had found out two old things of her mother's. Their leather was damp, with a bloom of white. They were marked, in brass, with letters so bold even I could read them: an M and an L— for her mother's name, which was like hers.

I lined them with paper, and packed them tight. In one— the heaviest one, which I would carry— I put the jewels I'd shined. I wrapped them in linen, to save them from tumbling about and growing dull. I put in one of her gloves with them— a white kid glove, with buttons of pearl. She had worn it once and supposed it lost. I meant to keep it, to remind me of her.

I thought my heart was breaking in two.

Then she came up from her uncle. She came twisting her hands. 'Oh!' she said. 'How 94

my head aches! I thought he would keep me forever, tonight!'

I had guessed she would come like this; and had got her some wine from Mr Way, as a nerver. I made her sit and take a little, then I wet a handkerchief with it and rubbed at the hollows of her brow. The wine made the handkerchief pink as a rose, and her head, where I chafed it, grew crimson. Her face was cool under my hand. Her eyelids fluttered. When they lifted, I stepped from her.

'Thank you,' she said quietly, her gaze very soft.

She drank more of the wine. It was quality stuff. What she left, I finished, and it went through me like a flame.

'Now,' I said, 'you must change.' She was dressed for her supper. I had set out her walking- gown. 'But we must leave off the cage.'

For there was no room for a crinoline. Without it, her short dress at last became a long one, and she seemed slenderer than ever. She

had grown thin. I gave her stout boots to wear. Then I showed her the bags. She touched them, and shook her head.

'You've done everything,' she said. 'I should never have thought of it all. I should never have done any of it, without you.'

She held my gaze, looking grateful and sad. God knows how my face seemed. I turned away. The house was creaking, settling down as the maids went up. Then came the clock again, chiming half-past nine. She said,

'Three hours, until he comes.'

She said it in the same slow, flinching way that I had heard her say, once, 'Three weeks.'

We put the lamp out in her parlour, and stood at her window. We could not see the river, but we gazed at the wall of the park and thought of the water lying beyond it, cool and ready, waiting like us. We stood for an hour, saying almost nothing.

Sometimes she shivered. 'Are you cold?' I'd say then. But she was not cold. At last the waiting began to tell even on me, and I began to fidget. I thought I might not have packed her bags as I should have. I thought I might have left out her linen, or her jewels, or that white glove. I had put the glove in, I knew it; but I was become like her, restless as a flea. I went to her bedroom and opened the bags, leaving her at the window. I took out all the gowns and linen, and packed them again. Then, as I tightened a strap on a buckle, it broke. The leather was so old it was almost perished. I got a needle, and sewed the strap tight, in great, wild stitches. I put my mouth to the thread to bite it, and tasted salt.

Then I heard the opening of Maud's door.

My heart gave a jump. I put the bags out of sight, in the shadow of the bed, and stood and listened. No sound at all. I went to the door to the parlour, and looked inside. The window-curtains were open and let the moonlight in; but the room was empty, Maud was gone.

She had left the door ajar. I tiptoed to it and squinted into the passage. I thought there c a m e a n o t h e r n o i s e t h e n , a b o v e t h e o r d i n a r y c r e a k i n g s a n d t i c k i n g s o f t h e house— perhaps, the opening

and shutting of another door, far-off. But I couldn't be sure. I called once, in a whisper, 95

'Miss Maud!'— but even a whisper sounded loud, at Briar, and I fell silent, straining my ears, looking hard at the darkness, then walking a few steps into the passage and listening again. I put my hands together and pressed them tight, more nervous now than I can say; but I was also, to be honest, rather peeved— for wasn't it like her, to go wandering off at this late hour, without a reason or a word?

When the clock struck half-past eleven I called again, and took another couple of steps along the passage. But then my foot caught the edge of a rug, and I almost tripped. She could go this way without a candle, she knew it so well; but it was all strange to me. I didn't dare wander after her. Suppose I took a wrong turning in the dark? I might never make my way out again.

So I only waited, counting the minutes. I went back to the bedroom and brought out the bags. Then I stood at the window. The moon was full, the night was bright. The lawn lay stretched before the house, the wall at the end of it, the river beyond.

Somewhere on the water was Gentleman, coming closer as I watched. How long would he wait?

At last, when I had sweated myself into a lather, the clock struck twelve. I stood and trembled at each beating of the bell. The last one sounded, and left an echo. I thought,

'That's it.'— And, as I thought it, I heard the soft thud of her boots— she was at the door, her face pale in the darkness, her breaths coming quick as a cat's.

'Forgive me, Sue!' she said. 'I went to my uncle's library. I wanted to see it, a final time. But I couldn't go until I knew he was asleep.'

She shivered. I pictured her, pale and slight and silent, alone among those dark books.

'Never mind,' I said. 'But, we must be quick. Come here, come on.'

I gave her her cloak, and fastened up mine. She looked about her, at all she was leaving. Her teeth began to chatter. I gave her the lightest bag. Then I stood before her and put a finger to her mouth.

'Now, be steady,' I said.

All my nervousness had left me, and I was suddenly calm. I thought of my mother, and all the dark and sleeping houses she

must have stolen her way through, before they caught her. The bad blood rose in me, just like wine.

We went by the servants' stairs. I had been carefully up and down them the day before, looking for the steps that particularly creaked; now I led her over them, holding her hand, and watching where she placed her feet. At the start of the corridor where there were the doors to the kitchen and to Mrs Stiles's pantry, I made her stop and wait and listen. She kept her hand in mine. A mouse ran, quick, along the wainscot; but there was no other movement, and no sounds from anywhere. The floor had drugget on it, that softened our shoes. Only our skirts went rustle and swish.

The door to the yard was locked with a key, but the key was left in it: I drew it out before I turned it, and put a little beef fat to the bit; and then I put more fat to the bolts that fastened the door closed at the bottom and the top. I had got the fat from Mrs Cakebread's cupboard. That was sixpence less she should have from the butcher's boy!

Maud watched me laying it about the locks, with an astounded sort of look. I said softly,

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'This is easy. If we was coming the other way, that would be hard.'

Then I gave her a wink. It was the satisfaction of the job. I really wished, just then, it had been harder. I licked my fingers clean of the fat, then put my shoulder to the door and pressed it tight into its frame: after that, the key turned smoothly and the bolts slid in their cradles, gentle as babies.

The air, outside, was cold and clear. The moon cast great black shadows. We were grateful for them. We kept to the walls of the house that were darkest, going quickly and softly from one to another and then running fast across a corner of lawn to the hedges and trees beyond. She held my hand again, and I showed her where to run.

Only once I felt her hesitate, and then I turned and found her gazing at the house, with a queer expression that seemed half- fearful and yet was almost a smile. There were no lights in the windows. No-one watched. The house looked flat, like a house in a play. I let her stand for almost a minute, then pulled her hand.

'Now you must come,' I said.

She turned her head and did not look again. We walked quickly to the wall of the park, and then we followed it, along a damp and tangled path. The bushes caught at the wool of our cloaks, and creatures leapt in the grass, or slithered before us; and there were cobwebs, fine and shining like wires of glass, that we must trample through and break. The noise seemed awful. Our breaths came harder. We walked so long, I thought we had missed the gate to the river; but then the path grew clearer, and the arch sprang up, lit bright by the moon. Maud moved past me and took out her key, and let us through it, then made the gate fast at our backs.

Now we were out of the park I breathed a little freer. We set down the bags and stood still in the darkness, in the shadow of the wall. The moon struck the rushes of the further bank, and made spears of them, with wicked points. The surface of the river seemed almost white. The only sound now was the flowing of the water, the calling of some bird; then came the splash of a fish. There was no sign of Gentleman. We had come quicker than we planned for. I listened, and heard nothing. I looked at the sky, at all the stars that were in it. More stars than seemed natural. Then I looked at Maud.

She was holding her cloak about her face, but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine.

In the sky, a star moved, and we both turned to watch it.

'That's luck,' I said.

Then the Briar bell struck. Half-past twelve— the chime came clear across the park, I suppose the bright air made it sharper. For a second, the echo of it hung about the ear; and then above it rose another, gentler sound— we heard it, and stepped apart— it was the careful creak of oars, the slither of water against wood. About the bend of the silvery river came the dark shape of a boat. I saw the oars dip and rise, and scatter coins of moonlight; then they were drawn high, and left a silence. The boat glided towards the rushes, then rocked and creaked again as Gentleman half- rose from his seat. He could not see us, where we waited in the shadow of the wall. He could not see us; but it was not me who stepped forward

first, it was her. She went stiffly to the water's edge, then took the coil of rope he 97

threw and braced herself against the tugging of the boat, until the boat was steady.

I don't remember if Gentleman spoke. I don't believe he looked at me, except, once he had helped Maud across the ancient landing-place, to give me his hand and guide me as he had guided her, over the rotten planks. I think we did it all in silence. I know the boat was narrow, and our skirts bulged as we sat— for, when Gentleman took up the oars to turn us, we rocked again, and I grew suddenly frightened of the boat capsizing, imagining the water filling all those folds and frills and sucking us under. But Maud sat steady. I saw Gentleman looking her over. Still no-one spoke, however. We had done it all in a moment, and the boat moved quick. The stream was with us. For a minute, the river followed the wall of the park; we passed the place where I had seen him kiss her hand; then the wall snaked off. There came a line of dark trees instead.

Maud sat with her eyes on her lap, not looking.

We went very carefully. The night was so still. Gentleman kept the boat as close as he could to the shadows of the bank: only now and then, when the trees were thinner, did we move in moonlight. But there was no-one about, to watch us. Where there were houses built near to the river, they were shut up and dark. Once, when the river became broad, and there were islands, with barges moored at them, and grazing horses, he stopped the oars and let us glide in silence; but still no-one heard us pass or came to look. Then the river grew narrow again, and we moved on; and after that, there were no more houses and no more boats. There was only the darkness, the b r o k e n m o o n l i g h t , t h e c r e a k i n g o f t h e s c u l l s , t h e d i p p i n g a n d t h e r i s i n g o f Gentleman's hands and the white of his cheek above his whisker.

We did not keep upon the river for long. At a spot upon the bank, two miles from Briar, he pulled up the boat and moored it. This was where he had started from. He had left a horse there, with a lady's saddle on it. He helped us from the water, sat Maud upon the horse's back, and strapped her bags beside her. He said,

'We must go another mile or so. Maud?' She did not answer. You must be brave. We are very close now.'

Then he looked at me and nodded. We started off— him leading the horse by the bridle, Maud hunched and stiff upon it, me walking behind. Still we met no-one. Again I looked at the stars. You never saw stars so bright at home, the sky was never so dark and so clear.

The horse was shoeless. Its hooves sounded dull on the dirt of the road.

We went rather slowly— for Maud's sake, I suppose, so she should not be shaken about and made sick. She looked sick, anyway; and when we came at last to the place he had found— it was two or three leaning cottages, and a great dark church— she looked sicker than ever. A dog came up and started barking. Gentleman kicked it and made it yelp. He led us to the cottage that was nearest the church, and the door was opened, a man came out, and then a woman, holding a lantern. They had been waiting.

The woman was the one who had kept the rooms for us: she was yawning, but stretching her neck as she yawned, to get a good look at Maud. She made Gentleman a curtsey. The man was the parson, the vicar— whatever you call him. He made a bow.

He wore a gown of dirty white, and wanted shaving. He said,

'Good-night to you. Good-night to you, miss. And what a fair night, for an escapade!'

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Gentleman said only, 'Is everything made ready?' He put his arms up to Maud, to help her from the horse: she kept her hands upon the saddle, and slid down awkwardly, and stepped away from him. She did not come to me, but stood alone. The woman still studied her. She was studying her pale, set, handsome face, her look of sickness, and I knew she was thinking— as anyone would think, I suppose— that she was in the family way, and marrying out of fear. Perhaps Gentleman had even made her think it, when he spoke to her before. For it would be all to his advantage, if it came to a challenge by Mr Lilly, for it to seem that he had had Maud in her uncle's own house; and we could say the baby got miscarried, later.

I would say it, I thought, for five hundred more.

I thought that, even as I stood watching the woman looking at

Maud and hating her for doing it; even as I hated myself, for thinking it. The parson came forward and made another bow.

'All's ready indeed, sir,' he said. 'There's only the little matter of— In light of the special circumstances— '

'Yes, yes,' said Gentleman. He took the parson aside and drew out his pocket-book.

The horse tossed its head, but from one of the other cottages a boy had come over to lead it away. He also looked at Maud; but then he looked from her to me, and it was me he touched his cap to. Of course, he had not seen her in the saddle, and I was dressed in one of her old gowns and must have seemed quite a lady; and she stood in such a mean and shrinking kind of way, that she seemed the maid.

She did not see it. She had her eyes upon the ground. The parson put his money away in some close pocket under his robe, then he rubbed his hands together. 'Well and good,' he said. And should the lady like to change her costume? Should she like to visit her room? Or shall we do the joining at once?'

'We'll do it at once,' said Gentleman, before anyone else could answer. He took off his hat and smoothed his hair, fussing a little with the curls about his ears. Maud stood very stiff. I went to her, and put her hood up nicely, and settled the cloak in neater folds; and then I passed my hands across her hair and cheeks. She would not look at me. Her face was cold. The hem of her skirt was dark, as if dipped in a dye for mourning. Her cloak had mud on it. I said, 'Give me your mittens, miss.'— For I knew that, beneath them, she had her white kid gloves. I said, 'You had much better go to your wedding in white gloves, than buff mittens.'

She let me draw them from her, then she stood and crossed her hands. The woman said to me, 'No flower, for the lady?' I looked at Gentleman. He shrugged.

'Should you like a flower, Maud?' he said carelessly. She didn't answer. He said, 'Well, I think we shall not mind the absence of a flower. Now, sir, if you will— '

I said, 'You might at least get her a flower! Just one flower, for her to carry into church!'

I had not thought of it until the woman said it; but now— oh! the cruelty of taking her, without a bloom, to be his wife, seemed all at once a frightful thing, I could not bear it. My voice came out sounding almost wild, and Gentleman gazed at me and frowned, and the parson looked curious, the woman sorry; and then Maud turned her eyes to me and said slowly,

99

'I should like a flower, Richard. I should like a flower. And Sue must have a flower, too.'

With every saying of the one word, flower, it seemed to grow a little stranger.

Gentleman let out his breath and began to look about him in a peevish sort of way.

The parson also looked. It was half-past one or so, and very dark out of the moonlight.

We stood in a muddy kind of green, with hedges of brambles. The hedges were black.

If there were flowers in there, we should never have found them. I said to the woman,

'Haven't you nothing we might take? Haven't you a flower in a pot?' She thought a minute, then stepped nimbly back into her cottage; and what she came out with at last was, a sprig of dry leaves, round as shillings, white as paper, quivering on a few thin stalks that looked ready to snap.

It was honesty. We stood and gazed at it, and no-one would name it. Then Maud took the stalks and divided them up, giving some to me, but keeping the most for herself.

In her hands the leaves quivered harder than ever. Gentleman lit up a cigarette and took two puffs of it, then threw it away. It stayed glowing in the darkness. He nodded to the parson, and the parson took up the lantern, and led us through the church gate and along a path between a line of tilting gravestones that the moon gave deep, sharp shadows. Maud walked with Gentleman, and he held her arm in his. I walked with the woman. We were to be witnesses. Her name was Mrs Cream.

'Come far?' she said.

I did not answer.

The church was of flint and, even with the moon on it, looked quite black. Inside it was whitewashed, but the white had turned to yellow. There were a few candles lit, about the altar and the pews, and a few moths about the candles, some dead in the wax. We did not try to sit, but went straight to the altar, and the parson stood before us with his Bible. He blinked at the page. He read, and muddled his words. Mrs Cream breathed hard, like a horse. I stood and held my poor, bent twig of honesty, and watched Maud standing at Gentleman's side, holding tight on to hers. I had kissed her.

I had lain upon her. I had touched her with a sliding hand. I had called her a pearl. She had been kinder to me than anyone save Mrs Sucksby; and she had made me love her, when I meant only to ruin her.

She was about to be married, and was frightened to death. And soon no-one would love her, ever again.

I saw Gentleman look at her. The parson coughed over his book. He had got to the part of the service that asked if anybody there knew any reason as to why the man and woman before him should not be married; and he looked up through his eyebrows, and for a second the church was still.

I held my breath, and said nothing.

So then he went on, looking at Maud and at Gentleman, asking the same thing of them, saying that, on the Day of Judgement they should have to give up all the awful secrets of their hearts; and had much better give them up now, and be done with it.

Again there was a silence.

So then he turned to Gentleman. 'Will you,' he said, and all the rest of it— 'Will you have her and honour her, for as long as you live?'

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'I will,' said Gentleman.

The parson nodded. Then he faced Maud, and asked the same thing of her; and she hesitated, then spoke.

'I will,' she said.

Then Gentleman stood a little easier. The parson stretched his throat from his collar and scratched it.

'Who gives this woman to be married?' he said.

I kept quite still, till Gentleman turned to me; and then he gestured with his head, and I went and stood at Maud's side, and they showed me how I must take her hand and pass it to the parson, for him to put it into Gentleman's. I would rather Mrs Cream had done it, than almost anything. Her fingers, without

her glove, were stiff and cold as fingers made of wax. Gentleman held them, and spoke the words the parson read to him; and then Maud took his hand, and said the same words over. Her voice was so thin, it seemed to rise like smoke into the darkness, and then to vanish.

Then Gentleman brought a ring out, and he took her hand again and put the ring over her finger, all the time repeating the parson's words, that he would worship her, and give her all his goods. The ring looked queer upon her. It seemed gold in the candle- light, but— I saw it later— it was bad.

It was all bad, and couldn't have been worse. The parson read another prayer, then raised his hands and closed his eyes.

'These two that God has joined together,' he said, 'let no man put in sunder.'

And that was it.

They were married.

Gentleman kissed her and she stood and swayed, as if dazed. Mrs Cream said in a murmur,

'She don't know what've hit her, look at her. She'll know it later— plum feller like him.

Heh heh.'

I did not turn to her. If I had, I should have punched her. The parson shut his Bible and led us from the altar to the room where they kept the register. Here Gentleman wrote his name and Maud— who was now to be Mrs Rivers— wrote hers; and Mrs Cream and I put ours beneath them. Gentleman had already shown me how to write Smith; but still, I wrote it clumsily and was ashamed.— Ashamed, of that! The room was dark and smelled of damp. In the beams, things fluttered— perhaps birds, perhaps bats.

I saw Maud gazing at the shadows, as if afraid the things should swoop.

Gentleman took her arm and held it, and then he led her from the church. There had come clouds before the moon, and the night was darker. The parson shook hands with us, then made Maud a bow; then he went off. He went fast, and as he walked he took his robe off, and his clothes were black beneath it— he seemed to snuff himself out like a light. Mrs Cream took us to her

cottage. She carried the lantern, and we walked behind her, stumbling on her path: her doorway was low, and knocked Gentleman's hat off. She took us up a set of tilting stairs too narrow for our skirts, and then to a landing, about as big as a cupboard, where we all jostled about for a moment and the cuff of Maud's cloak got laid upon 101

the chimney of the lantern and was singed.

There were two shut doors there, leading to the two little bedrooms of the house. The first had a narrow straw mattress on a pallet on the floor, and was for me. The second had a bigger bed, an arm-chair and a press, and was for Gentleman and Maud. She went into it, and stood with her eyes on the floor, looking at nothing. There was a single candle lit. Her bags lay beside the bed. I went to them and took her things out, one by one, and put them in the press. Mrs Cream said, 'What handsome linen!'— -She was watching from the door. Gentleman stood with her, looking strange. It was him that had taught me the handling of a petticoat but now, seeing me take out Maud's shimmies and stockings, he seemed almost afraid. He said,

'Well, I shall smoke a final cigarette downstairs. Sue, you'll make things comfortable up here?'

I did not answer. He and Mrs Cream went down, their boots sounding loud as thunder and the door and the boards and the crooked staircase trembling. I heard him outside then, striking a match.

I looked at Maud. She was still holding the stalks of honesty. She took a step towards me and said quickly,

'If I should call out to you later, will you come?'

I took the flowers from her, and then the cloak. I said, 'Don't think of it; It will be over in a minute.'

She caught hold of my wrist with her right hand, that still had the glove upon it. She said, 'Listen to me, I mean it. Never mind what he does. If I call out to you, say you'll come. I'll give you money for it.'

Her voice was strange. Her fingers shook, yet gripped me hard. The thought of her giving me so much as a farthing was awful. I said,

'Where are your drops? Look, there's water here, you might take your drops and they will make you sleep.'

'Sleep?' she said. She laughed and caught her breath. 'Do you think I want to sleep, on my wedding- night?'

She pushed my hand away. I stood at her back and began to undress her. When I had taken her gown and her corset I turned and said, quietly,

'You had better use the pot. You had better wash your legs, before he comes.'

I think she shuddered. I did not watch her, but heard the splash of water. Then I combed her hair. There was no glass for her to stand at, and when she got into the bed she looked to her side and there was no table, no box, no portrait, no light— I saw her put out her hand as if blind.

Then the house-door closed, and she fell back and seized the blankets and pulled them high about her breast. Against the white of the pillow her face seemed dark; yet I knew that it was pale. We heard Gentleman and Mrs Cream, talking together in the room below. Their voices came clearly. There were gaps between the boards, and a faint light showed.

I looked at Maud. She met my gaze. Her eyes were black, but gleamed like glass.

'Will you look away, still?' she said, in a whisper, when she saw me turn my head.

Then I turned back. I could not help it, though her face was awful, it was terrible to 102

see. Gentleman talked on. Some breeze got into the room and made the candle- flame dip. I shivered. Still she held my gaze with hers. Then she spoke again.

'Come here,' she said.

I shook my head. She said it again. I shook my head again— but then went to her, anyway— went softly to her across the creaking boards, and she lifted her arms and drew my face to hers, and kissed me. She kissed me, with her sweet mouth, made salt with her tears; and I could not help but kiss her back— felt my heart, now like ice in my breast, and now like water, running, from the heat of her lips.

But then she did this. She kept her fingers upon my head and pushed my mouth too hard against hers; and she seized my hand

and took it, first to her bosom, then to where the blankets dipped, between her legs.

There she rubbed with my fingers until they burned.

The quick, sweet feeling her kiss had called up in me turned to something like horror, or fear. I pulled from her, and drew my hand away. 'Won't you do it?' she said softly, reaching after me. 'Didn't you do it before, for the sake of this night? Can't you leave me to him now, with your kisses on my mouth, your touch upon me, there, to help me bear his the better?— Don't go!' She seized me again. 'You went, before. You said I dreamed you. I'm not dreaming now. I wish I were! God knows, God knows, I wish I were dreaming, and might wake up and be at Briar again!'

Her fingers slipped from my arm and she fell back and sagged against her pillow; and I stood, clasping and unclasping my hands, afraid of her look, of her words, of her rising voice; afraid she might shriek, or swoon— afraid, God damn me! that she might cry out, loud enough for Gentleman or Mrs Cream to hear, that I had kissed her.

'Hush! Hush!' I said. 'You are married to him now. You must be different. You are a wife. You must— '

I fell silent. She lifted her head. Below, the light had been taken up and moved.

Gentleman's boots came loud again upon the narrow stairs. I heard him slow his step, then hesitate at the door. Perhaps he was wondering if he should knock, as he had used to knock at Briar. At last he slowly put his thumb to the latch, and came in.

'Are you ready?' he said.

He brought the chill of the night in with him. I did not say another word, to him or to her. I did not look at her face. I went to my own room and lay upon my bed. I lay, in the darkness, in my cloak and my gown, my head between the pillow and the mattress; and all I heard, each time I woke in the night, was the creeping, creeping of little creatures through the straw beneath my cheek.

In the morning, Gentleman came to my room. He came in his shirtsleeves.

'She wants you, to dress her,' he said.

He took his breakfast downstairs. Maud had been brought up a tray, with a plate upon it. The plate held eggs and a kidney; she had not touched them. She sat very still, in the arm-chair beside the window; and I saw at once how it would be with her, now.

Her face was smooth, but dark about the eyes. Her hands were bare. The yellow ring glittered. She looked at me, as she looked at everything— the plate of eggs, the view beyond the window, the gown I held up to place over her head— with a soft, odd, distant kind of gaze; and when I spoke to her, to ask her some trifling thing, she 103

list e n e d , a n d w a i t e d , t h e n a n s w e r e d a n d b l i n k e d , a s i f t h e q u e s t i o n , a n d t h e answer— even the movement of her own throat making the words— were all perfectly surprising and strange.

I dressed her, and she sat again beside the window. She kept her hands bent at the wrist, the fingers slightly lifted, as if even to let them rest against the soft stuff of her wide skirt might be to hurt them.

She held her head at a tilt. I thought she might be listening for the chiming of the house-bell at Briar. But she never mentioned her uncle, or her old life, at all.

I took her pot and emptied it, in the privy behind the house. At the foot of the stairs Mrs Cream came to me. She had a sheet over her arm. She said,

'Mr Rivers says the linen on the bed needs changing.'

She looked as if she would like to wink. I would not gaze at her long enough to let her.

I had forgotten about this part. I went slowly up the stairs and she came behind me, breathing harder than ever. She made Maud a kind of curtsey, then went to the bed and drew back the blankets. There were a few spots of dark blood there, that had been rolled upon and smeared. She stood and looked at them, and then she caught my eye— as much as to say, 'Well, I shouldn't have believed it. Quite a little love- match, after all!' Maud sat gazing out of the window. From the room downstairs came the squeak of Gentleman's knife on his plate. Mrs Cream raised the sheet, to see if the blood had marked the mattress underneath; it hadn't, and that pleased her.

I helped her change it, then saw her to the door. She had made another curtsey, and seen Maud's queer, soft gaze.

'Took it hard, have she?' she whispered. 'Maybe missing her ma?'

I said nothing at first. Then I remembered our plot, and what was to happen. Better, I thought drearily, to make it happen soon. I stood on the little landing with her and closed the door. I said quietly,

'Hard ain't the word for it. There's trouble, up here. Mr Rivers dotes on her and won't bear gossip— he has brought her to this quiet place, hoping the country air will calm her.'

'Calm her?' she said then. 'You mean— ? Bless me! She ain't likely to break out— turn the pigs loose— set the place afire?'

'No, no,' I said. 'She is only— only too much in her head.'

'Poor lady,' said Mrs Cream. But I could see her thinking. She hadn't bargained on having a mad girl in the house. And whenever she brought a tray up then, she looked sideways at Maud and set it down very quick, as if afraid she might get bitten.

'She doesn't like me,' said Maud, after she saw her do that two or three times; and I swallowed and said, 'Not like you? What an idea! Why should she not like you?'

'I can't say,' she answered quietly, looking down at her hands.

Later Gentleman heard her say it, too; and then he got me on my own. 'That's good,'

he said. 'Keep Mrs Cream in fear of her, and her in fear of Mrs Cream, while seeming not to— very good. That will help us, when it comes time to call in the doctor.'

He gave it a week before he sent for him. I thought it the worst week of my life. He had told Maud they should stay a day; but on the second morning he looked at her and said,

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'How pale you are, Maud! I think you aren't quite well. I think we ought to stay a little longer, until your strength comes back to you.'

'Stay longer?' she said. Her voice was dull. 'But can't we go, to your house in London?'

'I really think you are not well enough.'

'Not well? But, I am quite well— you must only ask Sue. Sue, won't you tell Mr Rivers how well I am?'

She sat and shook. I said nothing. 'Just a day or two more,' said Gentleman. 'Until you are rested. Until you are calm. Perhaps, if you were to keep more to the bed— ?'

She began to weep. He went to her side, and that made her shudder and weep harder.

He said, 'Oh, Maud, it tears at my heart to see you like this! If I thought it would be a comfort to you, of course I should take you to London at once— I should carry you, in my own arms— do you think I would not? But do you look at yourself now, and still tell me you are well?'

'I don't know,' she said then. 'It is so strange here. I'm afraid, Richard— '

'And won't it be stranger, in London? And shouldn't you be frightened there, where it's so loud and crowded and dark? Oh, no, this is the place to keep you. Here you have Mrs Cream, to make you comfortable— '

'Mrs Cream hates me.'

'Hates you? Oh, Maud. Now you are growing foolish; and I should be sorry to think you that; and Sue should also be sorry— shouldn't you, Sue?' I would not answer. 'Of course she would,' he said, with his hard blue eyes on mine. Maud looked at me, too, then looked away. Gentleman took her head in his hands and kissed her brow.

'There now,' he said. 'Let us have no more argument. We'll stay another day— only a day, until that paleness is driven from your cheek, and your eyes are bright again!'

He said the same thing then, the next day. On the fourth day he was stern with her— said she seemed to mean to disappoint him, to make him wait, when he longed only to carry her back to Chelsea as his bride; then on the fifth day, he took her in his arms and almost wept, and said he loved her.

After that, she did not ask how long they were to stay there. Her cheek never grew rosy. Her eye stayed dull. Gentleman told Mrs Cream to make her every kind of nourishing dish, and what she

brought were more eggs, more kidneys, livers, greasy bacons and puddings of blood.

The meat made the room smell sour. Maud could eat none of it. I ate it instead— since somebody must. I ate it, and she only sat beside the window gazing out, turning the ring upon her finger, stretching her hands, or drawing a strand of hair across her mouth.

Her hair was dull as her eyes. She would not let me wash it— she would hardly let me brush it, she said she couldn't bear the scraping of the comb upon her head. She kept in the gown she had travelled from Briar in, that had mud about the hem. Her best gown

a silk one— she gave to me. She said,

'Why should I wear it, here? I had much rather see you in it. You had much better wear it, than let it lie in the press.'

Our fingers touched beneath the silk, and we flinched and stepped apart. She had 105

never tried to kiss me, after that first night.

I took the dress. It helped to pass the awful hours, sitting letting out the waist; and she seemed to like to watch me sew it. When I had finished it, and put it on and stood before her, her expression was strange. 'How well you look!' she said, her blood rising.

'The colour sets off your eyes and hair. I knew it would. Now you are quite the beauty— aren't you? And I am plain— don't you think?'

I had got her a little looking- glass from Mrs Cream. She caught it up in her trembling hand and came and held it before our faces. I remembered the time she had dressed me up, in her old room, and called us sisters; and how gay she had seemed then, and how plump and careless. She had liked to stand before her glass and make herself look fair, for Gentleman. Now— I saw it! I saw it, in the desperate slyness of her gaze!— now she was glad to see herself grown plain. She thought it meant he would not want her.

I could have told her once that he would want her anyway.

Now, I don't know what he did with her. I never spoke to him more than I had to. I did everything that was needed, but I did it all in a thick, miserable kind of trance, shrinking from thought and feeling— I was as low, almost, as she was. And Gentleman, to do him justice, seemed troubled on his own account. He only came to kiss or bully her, a little while each day; the rest of the time he sat in Mrs Cream's parlour, lighting cigarettes— the smoke came rising through the floor, to mix with the smell of the meat, the chamberpot, the sheets on the bed. Once or twice he went riding.

He went for news of Mr Lilly— but heard only that the word was, there was some queer stir at Briar, no-one knew quite what. In the evenings he would stand at a fence at the back of the house, looking over the black- faced pigs; or he would walk a little, in the lane or about the churchyard. He would walk, however, as if he knew we watched him— not in the old, show-off way he had used to stretch and smoke his cigarettes, but with a twitch to his step, as if he could not bear the feel of our gazes on his back.

Then at night I would undress her, and he would come, and I would leave them, and lie alone, with my head between my pillow and my rustling mattress.

I should have said he needed to do it to her only the once. I should have thought he might have been frightened he should get her with child. But there were other things I thought he might like her to do, now he had learned how smooth her hands were, how soft her bosom was, how warm and glib her mouth.

And every morning, when I went in to her, she seemed paler and thinner and in more of a daze than she had seemed the night before; and he caught my eye less, and plucked at his whiskers, his swagger all gone.

He at least knew what a dreadful business he was about, the bloody villain.

At last he sent for the doctor to come.

I heard him writing the letter in Mrs Cream's parlour. The doctor was one he knew. I believe he had been crooked once, perhaps in the ladies' medicine line, and had taken to the madhouse business as being more safe. But the crookedness, for us, was only a security. He wasn't in on Gentleman's plot. Gentleman wouldn't have cared to cut the cash with him.

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Besides, the story was too sound. And there was Mrs Cream to back it. Maud was young, she was fey, and had been kept from the

world. She had seemed to love Gentleman, and he loved her; but they hadn't been married an hour before she started to turn queer.

I think any doctor would have done what that one did, hearing Gentleman's story, and seeing Maud, and me, as we were then.

He came with another man— another doctor, his assistant. You need two doctors'

w o r d s t o p u t a l a d y a w a y . T h e i r h o u s e w a s n e a r R e a d i n g . T h e i r c o a c h w a s odd-looking, with blinds like louvred shutters and, on its back, spikes. They came not to take Maud, though— not that time; only to study her. The taking came later.

Gentleman told her they were two of his painter friends. She seemed not to care. She let me wash her and make her dull hair a little neater, and tidy her gown; but then she kept to her chair, saying nothing. Only when she saw their coach pull up did she stare, and begin to breathe a little quicker— and I wondered if she had noticed the blinds and the spikes, as I had. The doctors got down. Gentleman went quickly out to talk with them, and they shook hands and put their heads together, and looked slyly up at our window.

Then Gentleman came back, and left them waiting. He came upstairs. He was rubbing his hands together and smiling. He said,

'Well, what do you think! Here are my friends Graves and Christie, come down to visit from London. You remember, Maud, I spoke to you of them? I don't believe they thought me really married! They have come to see the phenomenon for themselves.'

Still he smiled. Maud would not look at him.

'Shall you mind it, dear,' he said, 'if I bring them to you? I have left them now with Mrs Cream.'

I could hear them, then, in the parlour, talking in low, serious voices. I knew what questions they were asking, and what answers Mrs Cream would make. Gentleman waited for Maud to speak and, when she said nothing, looked at me. He said,

'Sue, will you come with me a moment?'

He made a gesture with his eyes. Maud gazed after us, blinking. I went with him to the crooked landing, and he closed the door at my back.

'I think you should leave her with me,' he said quietly, 'when they go to her. I shall watch her, then; perhaps make her nervous. It keeps her too calm, having you always about her.'

I said, 'Don't let them hurt her.'

'Hurt her?' He almost laughed. 'These men are scoundrels. They like to keep their lunatics safe. They'd have them in fire-proof vaults if they could, like bullion; and so live off the income. They won't hurt her. But they know their business, too, and a scandal would ruin them. My word is good, but they shall need to look at her and talk to her; and they shall also need to talk to you. You'll know how to answer, of course.'

I made a face. 'Will I?' I said.

He narrowed his eyes. 'Don't make game of me, Sue. Not now we are so close. You'll know what to say?'

I shrugged, still sulky. 'I think so.'

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'Good girl. I shall bring them first to you.'

He made to put his hand upon me. I dodged it and stepped away. I went to my little room, and waited. The doctors came after a moment. Gentleman came with them, then closed the door and stood before it, his eyes on my face.

They were tall men, like him, and one of them was stout. They were dressed in black jackets and elastic boots. When they moved, the floor, the walls and the window gave a shudder. Only one of them— the thinner one— spoke; the other just watched. They made me a bow, and I curtseyed.

'Ah,' said the speaking doctor quietly, when I did that. His name was Dr Christie.

'Now, you know who we are, I think? You won't mind, if we ask you what might seem impertinent questions? We are friends of Mr Rivers's, and very curious to hear about his marriage, and his new wife.'

'Yes,' I said. 'You mean, my mistress.'

'Ah,' he said again. 'Your mistress. Now, refresh my memory. Who is she?'

'Mrs Rivers,' I said. 'That was Miss Lilly.'

'Mrs Rivers, that was Miss Lilly. Ah.'

He nodded. The silent doctor— Dr Graves— took out a pencil and a book. The first one went on:

'Your mistress. And you are— ?'

'Her maid, sir.'

'Of course. And what is your name?'

Dr Graves held his pencil, ready to write. Gentleman caught my eye, and nodded.

'Susan Smith, sir,' I said.

Dr Christie looked at me harder. 'You seemed to hesitate,' he said. 'That is your name, you are quite sure?'

'I should say I know my own name!' I said.

'Of course.'

He smiled. My heart still beat hard. Perhaps he saw it. He seemed to grow kind. He said,

'Well, Miss Smith, can you tell us now, how long you have known your mistress . . .?'

It was like the time, at Lant Street, when I had stood before Gentleman and he had put me through my character. I told them about Lady Alice of Mayfair, and Gentleman's old nurse, and my dead mother; and then about Maud. I said she had seemed to like Mr Rivers but now, a week after her wedding- night, she was grown very sad and careless of herself, and made me afraid.

Dr Graves wrote it all down. Dr Christie said,

Afraid. Do you mean, for your own sake?'

I said, 'Not for mine, sir. For hers. I think she might harm herself, she is so miserable.'

'I see,' he said. Then: 'You are fond of your mistress. You have spoken very kindly of her. Now, will you tell me this. What care do you think your mistress ought to have, that would make her better?'

I said, 'I think— '

'Yes?'

'I wish— '

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He nodded. 'Go on.'

'I wish you would keep her, sir, and watch her,' I said in a rush. I wish you would keep her some place where no-one could touch her, or hurt her— '

My heart seemed all at once high in my throat, and my voice was spoiled with tears.

Gentleman still had his eyes upon me. The

doctor took my hand and held it, close about the wrist, in a familiar way.

'There, there,' he said. 'You must not be so distressed. Your mistress shall have everything you wish for her. She has been lucky, indeed, to have had so good and faithful a servant, as you!'

He patted and smoothed my hand, then let it go. He looked at his watch. He caught Gentleman's eye, and nodded. 'Very good,' he said. 'Very good. Now, if you might just show us— ?'

'Of course,' said Gentleman quickly. 'Of course. This way' He opened the door, and they turned their black backs to me and all moved off. I watched them do it, and was gripped suddenly by a feeling— I could not say if it was misery, or fear. I took a step and called out after them.

'She don't like eggs, sir!' I called. Dr Christie half turned. I had lifted my hand. Now I let it fall. 'She don't like eggs,' I said more feebly, 'in any kind of dish.'

It was all I could think of. He smiled, and bowed; but in a humouring kind of way. Dr Graves wrote— or pretended to write— in his book, Don't care for eggs. Gentleman led them both across to Maud's room. Then he came back to me.

'You'll keep here, until they've seen her?' he said.

I did not answer. He shut my door. But those walls were like paper: I heard them move about, caught the rumble of the doctor's questions; then, after a minute or so, came the thin rising and falling of her tears.

They did not stay with her long. I suppose they had all they needed, from me and Mrs Cream. When they had gone I went to her, and Gentleman was standing behind her chair, holding her pale head between his hands. He had been leaning to gaze at her, perhaps to whisper and tease. When he saw me come he straightened and said,

'Look, Sue, at your mistress. Don't you think her eyes a little brighter?'

They were bright, with the last of her tears still in them; and they were red at the rims.

'Are you well, miss?' I said.

'She is well,' said Gentleman. 'I think the company of friends has cheered her. I think those dear good fellows, Christie and Graves, were quite delighted with her; and you tell me, Sue, when did a lady ever not begin to flourish, under a gentleman's delight?'

She turned her head and raised her hand, and plucked a little weakly at his pressing fingers. He stood holding her face a moment longer, then stepped away.

'What a fool I've been,' he said to me. 'I've asked Mrs Rivers to grow strong, in this quiet place, thinking the quietness would help her. Now I see that what she needs is the bustle of the city. Graves and Christie saw it, too. They are so eager to have us join them at Chelsea— why, Christie is giving us the use of his own coach and driver! We are to leave tomorrow. Maud, what do you say to that?'

She had turned her gaze to the window. Now she lifted her head to him, and a little blood struggled into her white cheeks.

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'Tomorrow?' she said. 'So soon as that?'

He nodded. 'Tomorrow we'll go. To a great house, with fine, quiet rooms, and good servants in it, that waits there just for you.'

Next day she put her breakfast of eggs and meat aside, as usual; but even I could not eat it. I dressed her without looking at her. I knew every part of her. She wore the old gown still, that was stained with mud, and I wore the handsome silk one. She would not let me change out of it, even for travelling, though I knew it would crease.

I thought of wearing it back in the Borough. I could not believe that I would be at home again, with Mrs Sucksby, before it was dark.

I packed her bags. I did it slowly, hardly feeling the things I touched. Into one bag went her linen, her slippers, her sleeping-drops, a bonnet, a brush— that was for her to take to the madhouse. Into the other went everything else. That was for me. Only that white glove I think I have mentioned, did I keep to one side; and when the bags were filled I put it, neatly, inside the bodice of my gown, over my heart.

The coach came, and we were ready. Mrs Cream saw us to the door. Maud wore a veil.

I helped her down the tilting staircase, and

she gripped my arm. When we stepped out of the cottage she gripped it tighter. She had kept to her room for more than a week. She flinched from the sight of the sky and the black church, and seemed to feel the soft air hard upon her cheek, even through her veil, like a hand that slapped her.

I put my fingers over hers.

'God bless you, ma'am!' cried Mrs Cream, when Gentleman had paid her. She stood and watched us. The boy who had taken our horse, that first night, now appeared again, to see us leaving; and one or two other boys also came to stare, and to stand at the side of the coach, pickingat the doors, where an old gold crest had been painted out black. The driver flicked his whip at them. He fastened our bags upon the roof, then let the steps down. Gentleman handed Maud in, drawing her fingers from mine.

He caught my eye.

'Now, now,' he said, in a warning sort of way. 'No time for sentiment.'

She sat and leaned her head back, and he sat beside her. I sat opposite. There were no handles to the doors, only a key, like the key to a safe: when the driver closed them Gentleman made them fast, then put the key in his pocket.

'How long will we travel?' asked Maud.

He said, 'An hour.'

It seemed longer than an hour. It seemed like a life. The day was a warm one. Where the sun struck the glass it made the carriage very hot, but the windows had been fixed not to open— I suppose, so a lunatic should not have the chance to leap out. At last Gentleman pulled a cord to make the blinds close, and we sat jolting in the heat and the darkness, not speaking. In time I began to grow sick. I saw Maud's head rolling against the padding of the seat, but could not see if her eyes were open or closed. She kept her hands before her, clasped.

Gentleman fidgeted, however, loosening his collar, looking at his watch, plucking at his cuffs. Two or three times he took out his handkerchief and wiped off his brow.

Every time the coach slowed, he leaned close to the window to peer through the 110

louvres. Then it

slowed so hard it came almost to a stop, and began to turn: he looked again, sat straight and tightened his neck-tie.

'We are almost there,' he said.

Maud turned her head to him. The coach slowed again. I pulled the cord that moved the blinds. We were at the start of a green lane, with a stone arch across it and, beneath that, iron gates. A man was drawing them back. The coach gave a jerk, and we drove along the lane until we reached the house at the end. It was just like at Briar, though this house was smaller, and neater. Its windows had bars on them. I watched Maud, to see what she would do. She had put back her veil and was gazing from the window in her old dull way; but behind the dullness I thought I saw a rising kind of knowledge or dread.

'Don't be afraid,' said Gentleman.

That was all he said. I don't know if he said it to her, or to me. The coach made another turn, and stopped. Dr Graves and Dr Christie were there, waiting for us, with beside them a great stout woman, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows and her gown covered over with an apron of canvas, like a butcher's. Dr Christie came forward. He had a key like Gentleman's, and let up the lock from his side. Maud flinched at the sound. Gentleman put his hand upon her. Dr Christie made a bow.

'Good day,' he said. 'Mr Rivers. Miss Smith. Mrs Rivers, you remember me of course?'

He held out his hand.

He held it to me.

There was a second, I think, of perfect stillness. I looked at him, and he nodded. 'Mrs Rivers?' he said again. Then Gentleman leaned and caught hold of my arm. I thought at first he meant to keep me in my seat; then I understood that he was trying to press me from it. The doctor took my other arm. They got me to my feet. My shoes caught upon the steps. I said,

'Wait! What are you doing? What— ?'

'Don't struggle, Mrs Rivers,' said the doctor. 'We are here to care for you.'

He waved his hand, and Dr Graves and the woman came forward. I said,

'It's not me you want! What are you doing? Mrs Rivers? I'm Susan Smith! Gentleman!

Gentleman, tell them!'

Dr Christie shook his head.

'Still keeping up the old, sad fiction?' he said to Gentleman.

Gentleman nodded and said nothing, as if he were too unhappy to speak. I hope he was! He turned and took down one of the bags— one of Maud's mother's bags. Dr Christie held me tighter. 'Now,' he said, 'how can you be Susan Smith, late of Whelk Street, Mayfair? Don't you know there's no such place? Come, you do know it. And we shall have you admitting it, though it take us a year. Now, don't twist so, Mrs Rivers! You are spoiling your handsome dress.'

I had struggled against his grip. At his words, I grew slack. I gazed at my sleeve of silk, and at my own arm, that had got plump and smooth with careful feeding; and then at the bag at my feet, with its letters of brass— the M, and the L.

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It was in that second that I guessed, at last, the filthy trick that Gentleman had played on me.

I howled.

'You bloody swine!' I cried, twisting again, and pulling towards him. 'You fuckster!

Oh!'

He stood in the doorway of the coach, making it tilt. The doctor gripped me harder and his face grew stern.

'There's no place for words like those in my house, Mrs Rivers,' he said.

'You sod,' I said to him. 'Can't you see what he's done? Can't you see the dodge of it?

It ain't me you want, it's— '

I still pulled, and he still held me; but now I looked past him, to the swaying coach.

Gentleman had moved back, his hand before his face. Beyond him, the light in bars upon her from the louvred blinds, sat Maud. Her face was thin, her hair was dull. Her dress was worn with use, like a servant's dress. Her eyes were wild, with tears starting in them; but beyond the tears, her gaze was hard. Hard as marble, hard as brass.

Hard as a pearl, and the grit that lies inside it.

Dr Christie saw me looking.

'Now, why do you stare?' he said. 'You know your own maid, I think?'

I could not speak. She could, however. She said, in a trembling voice, not her own:

'My own poor mistress. Oh! My heart is breaking!'

You thought her a pigeon. Pigeon, my arse. That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start.

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Part II

C h a p t e r S e v e n

The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.

I imagine a table, slick with blood. The blood is my mother's. There is too much of it.

There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beneath, the women have set down china bowls; and so the silences between my mother's cries are filled— drip drop! drip drop!— with what might be the staggered beating of clocks.

Beyond the beat come other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; another strap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood— drip drop! drip, drop!— the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mother's bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.

I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.

I pass my first ten years a daughter to the nurses of the house. I believe they love me.

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There is a tabby cat upon the wards, and I think they keep me, rather as they keep that cat, a thing to pet and dress with ribbons. I wear a slate- grey gown cut like their own, an apron and a cap; they give me a belt with a ring of miniature keys upon it, and call me 'little nurse'. I sleep with each of them in turn, in their own beds, and follow them in their duties upon the madhouse wards. The house is a large one— seems larger to me, I suppose— and divided in two: one side for female lunatics, one side for male. I see only the female. I never mind them. Some of them kiss and pet me, as the nurses do. Some of them touch my hair and weep. I remind them of their daughters. Others are troublesome, and these I am encouraged to stand before and strike with a wooden wand, cut to my hand, until the nurses laugh and say they never saw anything so droll.

Thus I learn the rudiments of discipline and order; and incidentally apprehend the attitudes of insanity. This will all prove useful, later.

When I am old enough to reason I am given a gold ring said to be my father's, the portrait of a lady called my mother, and understand I am an orphan; but, never having known a parent's love— or rather, having known the favours of a score of mothers— I am not greatly troubled by the news. I think the nurses clothe and feed me, for my own sake. I am a plain- faced child but, in that childless world, pass for a beauty. I have a sweet singing voice and an eye for letters. I I suppose I shall live out all my days a nurse, contentedly teasing lunatics until I die.

So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoned to the nurses' parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she

greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her— a gentleman, she says— but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time.

'Step closer,' the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a cane with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by a pair of coloured glasses. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one.

I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.

'She's undersize,' he says; 'but makes enough noise with her feet, for all that. How's her voice?'

His own voice is low, tremulous, complaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.

'Say a word to the gentleman,' says the matron quietly. 'Say how you are.'

'I am very well,' I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.

'That will do,' he says, raising his hand. Then: 'I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?'

I nod. 'Oh yes.'

'I hope you can be silent?'

'I can.'

'Be silent, then.— That's better.' He turns to the matron. 'I see she wears her mother's likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother's fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don't care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad 114

promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan't want a thick- legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?'

The matron colours. 'It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house.'

'Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?'

He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, 'How well does she read?

How fair is her hand? Come, give her a piece of text and let her demonstrate.'

The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. 'Softly!' he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.

'A girl's hand,' he says, when I have finished, 'and burdened with serifs.' But he sounds pleased, nonetheless.

I am also pleased. I understand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blotted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stick and tilts his head so low I can see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.

'Well, miss,' he says, 'how should you like to come and live in my house? Don't push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to come to me, and learn neat ways and plain letters?'

He might have struck me. 'I should like it not at all,' I say at once.

The matron says, 'For shame, Maud!'

The gentleman snorts. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'she has her mother's unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall forget to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that— hmm?'

He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instruction to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.

'I will not go!' I cry. 'He shall not make me!'

The matron draws me to her. I have seen her take a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.

Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother's brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to

take me home and make me ready for the roast. All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff— a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my complaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it comes time for her to take me, they kiss me and 115

hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their own, and pluck and grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls— their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek.

My uncle's servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.

'What a place to raise a girl in!' she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.

I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath come quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle— at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, complacently. 'Got a temper, have you?' she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it. The third egg she places on my lap. I will not eat it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. 'Tut tut,' she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage.

The horse goes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees.

Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.

I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grimness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncle's house that bewilders and frightens me, that first day. The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle

into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within and seem to tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat. 'That's Mr Way, your uncle's steward,' says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease— for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkness that seems to lap at my buff gown. When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silence, that my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and flowering creepers.

The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall.

'Come up, child,' says the woman when I do that; and now when she puts her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightened, the higher we go. For the house seems awful to me— the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half- hidden— like expectant grubs, in the cells of a hive— there stand servants, come to see me make my progress through the house.

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I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurses.

I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.

'Why do they watch?' I say to the woman.

'Why, to see your face,' she answers. 'To see if you turned out handsome as your mother.'

'I have twenty mothers,' I say at that; 'and am handsomer than any of them.'

The woman has stopped before a door. 'Handsome is as hand-

some does,' she says. 'I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours.'

She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it.

The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire— I am too small to see my face in the glass above— and stand and shiver.

'Should have kept your mittens,' says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands.

'Mr Inker's daughter shall have those.' She takes my cloak from me, then draws the ribbons from my hair and brushes it with a broken comb. 'Tug all you like,' she says as I pull away. 'It shall only hurt you, it shan't harm me. Why, what a business those women made of your head! Anyone would have supposed them savages. How I'm to see you neat, after their work, I can't say. Now, look here.' She reaches beneath the bed. 'Let's see you use your chamber-pot. Come along, no foolish modesty. Do you think I never saw a little girl lift up her skirts and piddle?'

She folds her arms and watches me, and then she wets a cloth with water and washes my face and hands.

'I saw them do this for your mother, when I was parlourmaid here,' she says, pulling me about. 'She was a deal gratefuller than you are. Didn't they teach you manners, in that house of yours?'

I long for my little wooden wand: I would show her all I'd learned of manners, then!

But I have observed lunatics, too, and know how to struggle while only seeming to stand limp. At length she steps from me and wipes her hands.

'Lord, what a child! I hope your uncle knows his business, bringing you here. He seems to think he'll make a lady of you.'

'I don't want to be a lady!' I say. 'My uncle cannot make me.'

'I should say he can do what he likes, in his own house,' she answers. 'There now!

How late you've made us.'

There has come the stifled ringing of a bell, three times. It is a clock; I understand it, however, as a signal to the house, for I have been raised to the sound of similar bells, that told the lunatics to rise, to dress, to say their prayers, to take their dinners. I think, Now I shall see them!, but when we go from the room the house is still and quiet as before. Even the watchful servants have retired. Again my boots catch on the carpets.

'Walk softly!' says the woman in a whisper, pinching my arm. 'Here's your uncle's room, look.'

She knocks, then takes me in. He has had paint put on the windows years before, and the winter sun striking the glass, the room is lit strangely. The walls are dark with the spines of books. I think them a kind of frieze or carving. I know only two books, and 117

one is black and creased about the spine— that is the Bible. The other is a book of hymns thought suitable for the demented; and that is pink. I suppose all printed words to be true ones.

The woman sets me very near the door and stands at my back, her hands like claws upon my shoulders. The man they have called my uncle rises from behind his desk; its surface is hidden by a mess of papers. Upon his head is a velvet cap with a swinging tassel on a fraying thread. Before his eyes is another, paler, pair of coloured glasses.

'So, miss,' he says, stepping towards me, moving his jaw. The woman makes a curtsey.

'How is her temper, Mrs Stiles?' he asks her.

'Rather ill, sir.'

'I can see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?'

'Threw them aside, sir. Wouldn't have them.'

My uncle comes close. 'An unhappy beginning. Give me your hand, Maud.'

I will not give it. The woman catches my arm about the wrist and lifts it. My hand is small, and plump at the knuckles. I am used to washing with madhouse soap, which is not kind. My nails are dark, with madhouse dirt. My uncle holds my finger-ends. His own hand has a smear or two of ink upon it. He shakes his head.

'Now, did I want a set of coarse fingers upon my books,' he says, 'I should have had Mrs Stiles bring me a nurse. I should not have given her a pair of gloves, to make those coarse hands softer. Your hands I shall have soft, however. See here, how we make children's hands soft, that are kept out of their gloves.' He puts his own hand to the pocket of his coat, and uncoils from it— one of those things, that bookmen use— a line of metal beads, bound tight with silk, for keeping down springing pages. He makes a loop of it, seeming to weigh it; then he brings it smartly down upon my dimpling knuckles. Then, with Mrs Stiles's assistance, he takes my other hand and does the same to that.

The beads sting like a whip; but the silk keeps the flesh from breaking. At the first blow I yelp, like a dog— in pain, in rage and sheer astonishment. Then, Mrs Stiles releasing my wrists, I put my fingers to my mouth and begin to weep.

My uncle winces at the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.

'Keep silence, girl!' he says. I shake and cannot. Mrs Stiles pinches the flesh of my shoulder, and that makes me cry harder. Then my uncle draws forth the beads again; and at last I grow still.

'Well,' he says quietly. 'You shan't forget the gloves in future, hmm?'

I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. 'You'll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I can't have storms and tantrums, here. Very well.' He waves his hand. 'Now, leave her with me. Don't stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild.'

Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and— under cover of plucking my trembling shoulder as if to keep it from falling into a slouch— gives me another pinch. The yellow window grows bright, then dim, then bright again, as the wind sends clouds across the sun.

'Now,' says my uncle, when the housekeeper has gone. 'You know, do you not, why I have brought you here.'

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I put my crimson fingers to my face, to wipe my nose.

'To make a lady of me.'

He gives a quick, dry laugh.

'To make a secretary of you. What do you see here, all about these walls?'

'Wood, sir.'

'Books, girl,' he says. He goes and draws one from its place and turns it. The cover is black, by which I recognise it as a Bible. The others, I deduce, hold hymns. I suppose that hymn-books, after all,

might be bound in different hues, perhaps as suiting different qualities of madness. I feel this, as a great advance in thought.

My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.

'Do you see this title, girl?— Don't take a step! I asked you to read, not to prance.'

But the book is too far from me. I shake my head, and feel my tears return.

'Ha!' cries my uncle, seeing my distress. 'I should say you can't! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after consultation with an oculist— an eye-doctor. These are uncommon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same— I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready.

You understand me, hmm?'

I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book back in its place, lingering a moment over the-aligning of the spine upon the shelf.

The spine is a fine one, and— I will know it well, in time— a favourite of his. The title is—

But now I run ahead of my own innocence; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.

After my uncle has spoken he seems to forget me. I stand for another quarter- hour before he lifts his head and catches sight of me, and waves me from the room. I struggle a moment with the iron handle of his door, making him wince against the grinding of the lever; and when I close it, Mrs Stiles darts from the gloom to lead me back upstairs. 'I suppose you're hungry,' she says, as we walk. 'Little girls always are. I should say you'd be grateful for a white egg now.'

I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings for a girl to come, and the girl brings a biscuit and a glass of sweet red wine. She sets them down before me, and smiles; and the smile is harder to

bear, somehow, than a slap would have been. I am afraid I will weep again. But I swallow my tears with my dry biscuit, and the girl and Mrs Stiles stand together, whispering and watching. Then they leave me quite alone. The room grows dark. I lie upon the sofa with my head upon a cushion, and pull my own little cloak over myself, with my own little whipped, red hands. The wine makes me sleep. When I wake again, I wake to shifting shadows, and to Mrs Stiles at the door, bringing a lamp. I wake with a terrible fear, and a sense of many hours having passed. I think the bell has recently 119

tolled. I believe it is seven or eight o'clock.

I say, 'I should like, if you please, to be taken home now.'

Mrs Stiles laughs. 'Do you mean to that house, with those rough women? What a plaqe to call your home!'

'I should think they miss me.'

'I should say they are glad to be rid of you— the nasty, pale- faced little thing that you are. Come here. It's your bed-time.' She has pulled me from the sofa, and begins to unlace my gown. I tug away from her, and strike her. She catches my arm and gives it a twist.

I say, 'You've no right to hurt me! You're nothing to me! I want my mothers, that love me!'

'Here's your mother,' she says, plucking at the portrait at my throat. 'That's all the mother you'll have here. Be grateful you have that, to know her face by. Now, stand and be steady. You must wear this, to give you the figure of a lady.'

She has taken the stiff buff dress from me, and all the linen beneath. Now she laces me tight in a girlish corset that grips me harder than the gown. Over this she puts a nightdress. On to my hands she pulls a pair of white skin gloves, which she stitches at the wrists. Only my feet remain bare. I fall upon the sofa and kick them. She catches me up and shakes me, then holds me still.

'See here,' she says, her face crimson and white, her breath coming hard upon my cheek. 'I had a little daughter once, that died. She had a fine black head of curling hair and a temper like a lamb's. Why dark-haired, gentle-tempered children should be made to die, and peevish pale girls like you to thrive, I cannot say. Why your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash and perished, while I must live to keep your fingers smooth and see you grow into a lady, is a puzzle. Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.'

She catches me up and takes me to the dressing- room, makes me climb into the great, high, dusty bed, then lets down the curtains. There is a door beside the chimney-breast: she tells me it leads to another chamber, and a bad-tempered girl sleeps there. The girl will listen in the night, and if I am anything but still and good and quiet, she will hear; and her hand is very hard.

'Say your prayers,' she says, 'and ask Our Father to forgive you.'

Then she takes up the lamp and leaves, and I am plunged in an awful darkness.

I think it a terrible thing to do to a child; I think it terrible, even now. I lie, in an agony of misery and fear, straining my ears against the silence— wide awake, sick, hungry, cold, alone, in a dark so deep the shifting black of my own eye- lids seems the brighter.

My corset holds me like a fist. My knuckles, tugged into their stiff skin gloves, are starting out in bruises. Now and then the great clock shifts its gears, and chimes; and I draw what comfort I can from my idea that somewhere in the house walk lunatics, and with them watchful nurses. Then I begin to wonder over the habits of the place.

Perhaps here they give their lunatics licence to wander; perhaps a madwoman will come to my room, mistaking it for another? Perhaps the wicked-tempered girl that sleeps next door is herself demented, and will come and throttle me with her hard hand! Indeed, no sooner has this idea risen in me, than I begin to hear the smothered 120

sounds of movement, close by— unnaturally close, they seem to me to be: I imagine a thousand skulking figures with their faces at the curtain, a thousand searching hands. I begin to cry. The corset I wear makes the tears come strangely. I long to lie still, so the lurking women shall not guess that I am there; but the stiller I try to be, the more wretched I grow. Presently, a spider or a moth brushing my cheek, I imagine the throttling hand has come at last, and jerk in a convulsion and, I suppose, shriek.

There comes the sound of an opening door, a light between the

seams of the curtain. A face appears, close to my own— a kind face, not the face of a lunatic, but that of the girl who earlier brought my little tea of biscuits and sweet wine.

She is dressed in her nightgown, and her hair is let down.

'Now, then,' she says softly. Her hand is not hard. She puts it to my head and strokes my face, and I grow calmer. My tears flow naturally I say I have been afraid of lunatics, and she laughs.

'There are no lunatics here,' she says. 'You are thinking of that other place. Now, aren't you glad, to have left there?' I shake my head. She says, 'Well, it is only strange for you here. You will soon grow used to it.'

She takes up her light. I see her do it, and begin at once again to cry.— 'Why, you shall be asleep in a moment!' she says.

I say I do not like the darkness. I say I am frightened to lie alone. She hesitates, thinking perhaps of Mrs Stiles. But I dare say my bed is softer than hers; and besides, it is winter, and fearfully cold. She says at last that she will lie with me until I sleep.

She snuffs her candle, I smell the smoke upon the darkness.

She tells me her name is Barbara. She lets me rest my head against her. She says,

'Now, isn't this nice as your old home? And shan't you like it here?'

I say I think I shall like it a little, if she will lie with me every night; and at that she laughs again, then settles herself more comfortably upon the feather mattress.

She sleeps at once, and heavily, as housemaids do. She smells of a violet face-cream.

Her gown has ribbons upon it, at the breast, and I find them out with my gloved hands and hold them while I wait for sleep to come— as if I am tumbling into the perfect darkness and they are the ropes that will save me.

I am telling you this so that you might appreciate the forces that work upon me, making me what I am.

Next day, I am kept to my two bleak rooms and made to sew. I forget my terrors of the darkness of the night, then. My gloves make me clumsy, the needle pricks my fingers.

'I shan't do it!' I cry,

tearing the cloth. Then Mrs Stiles beats me. My gown and corset being so stiff, she hurts her palm in the striking of my back. I take what little consolation I might, from that.

I am beaten often, I believe, in my first days there. How could it be otherwise? I have known lively habits, the clamour of the wards, the dotings of twenty women; now the hush and regularity of my uncle's house drives me to fits and foaming tempers. I am an amiable child, I think, made wilful by restraint. I dash cups and saucers from the table to the floor. I lie and kick my legs until the boots fly from my heels. I scream until my throat bleeds. My passions are met with punishments, each fiercer than the 121

last. I am bound about the wrists and mouth. I am shut into lonely rooms, or into cupboards. One time— having overturned a candle and let the flame lap at the fringes of a chair until they smoke— I am taken by Mr Way into the park and carried, along a lonely path, to the ice- house. I don't remember, now, the chill of the place; I remember the blocks of grey ice— I should have supposed them clear, like crystal— that tick in the wintry silence, like so many clocks. They tick for three hours. When Mrs Stiles comes to release me I have made myself a kind of nest and cannot be uncurled, and am as weak as if they had drugged me.

I think that frightens her. She carries me back quietly, by the servants' stairs, and she and Barbara bathe me, then rub my arms with spirits.

'If she loses the use of her hands, my God, he'll have our characters for ever!'

It is something, to see her made afraid. I complain of pains in my fingers, and weakness, for a day or two after that, and watch her flutter; then I forget myself, and pinch her— and by that, she knows my grip is a strong one, and soon punishes me again.

This makes a period of, perhaps a month; though to my childish mind it seems longer.

My uncle waits, all that time, as he might wait for the breaking of a horse. Now and then he has Mrs Stiles conduct me to his library, and questions her as to my progress.

'How do we do, Mrs Stiles?'

'Still badly, sir.'

'Still fierce?'

'Fierce, and snappish.'

'You've tried your hand?'

She nods. He sends us away. Then come more shows of temper, more rages and tears.

At night, Barbara shakes her head.

'What a dot of a girl, to be so naughty! Mrs Stiles says she never saw such a little Tartar as you. Why can't you be good?'

I was good, in my last home— and see how I was rewarded! Next morning I upturn my chamber-pot and tread the mess into the carpet. Mrs Stiles throws up her hands and screams; then strikes my face. Then, half-clad and dazed as I am, she drags me from my dressing- room to my uncle's door.

He flinches from the sight of us. 'Good God, what is it?'

'Oh, a frightful thing, sir!'

'Not more of her violence? And do you bring her here, where she might break out, among the books?'

But he lets her speak, looking all the time at me. I stand very stiff, with a hand at my hot face, my pale hair loose about my shoulders.

At length he takes off his spectacles and closes his eyes. His eyes appear naked to me, and very soft at the lids. He raises his thumb and smudged forefinger to the bridge of his nose, and pinches.

'Well, Maud,' he says as he does it, 'this is sorry news. Here is Mrs Stiles, and here am I, and here are all my staff, all waiting on your good manners. I had hoped the nurses had raised you better than this. I had hoped to find you biddable.' He comes towards me, blinking, and puts his hand upon my face. 'Don't shrink so, girl! I want only to 122

examine your cheek. It is hot, I think. Well, Mrs Stiles's hand is a large one.' He looks about him. 'Come, what have we that is cool, hmm?'

He has a slim brass knife, blunt-edged, for cutting pages. He stoops and puts the blade of it against my face. His manner is mild, and frightens me. His voice is soft as a girl's.

He says, 'I am sorry to see you hurt, Maud. Indeed I am. Do you suppose I want you harmed? Why should I want that? It is you who must want it, since you provoke it so.

I think you must like to be struck.— That is cooler, is it not?' He has turned the blade. I shiver. My bare arms

creep with cold. He moves his mouth. 'All waiting,' he repeats, 'on your good manners.

Well, we are good at that, at Briar. We can wait, and wait, and wait again. Mrs Stiles and my staff are paid to do it; I am a scholar, and inclined to it by nature. Look about you here, at my collection. Do you suppose this the work of an impatient man? My books come to me slowly, from obscure sources. I have contentedly passed many tedious weeks in expectation of poorer volumes than you!' He laughs, a dry laugh that might once have been moist; moves the point of the knife to a spot beneath my chin; tilts up my face and looks it over. Then he lets the knife fall, and moves away. He tucks the wires of his spectacles behind his ears.

'I advise you to whip her, Mrs Stiles,' he says, 'if she prove troublesome again.'

Perhaps children are like horses after all, and may be broken. My uncle returns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely back to my sewing. It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patience. There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks— conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich— instead of women— then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs.— I cannot say.

And of course, these are thoughts that come to me later, when I know the full measure of my uncle's particular mania. That day, in my childish way, I glimpse only its surface. But I see that it is dark, and know that it is silent— indeed, its substance is the substance of the darkness and the silence which fills my uncle's house like water or like wax.

Should I struggle, it will draw me deep into itself, and I will drown.

I do not wish, then, to do that.

I cease struggling at all, and surrender myself to its viscid, circular currents.

That is the first day, perhaps, of my education. But next day, at eight, begin my lessons proper. I never have a governess: my uncle tutors me himself, having Mr Way set a desk and a stool for me close to the pointing finger on his library floor. The stool is high: my legs swing from it and the weight of my shoes makes them tingle and finally grow numb. Should I fidget, however— should I cough, or sneeze— t h e n m y u n c l e w i l l c o m e a n d s n a p a t m y f i n g e r s w i t h t h e r o p e o f silk-covered beads. His patience has curious lapses, after all; and though he claims to be free of a desire to harm me, he harms me pretty often.

Still, the library is kept warmer than my own room, to ward off mould from the books; and I find I prefer to write, than to sew. He gives me a pencil with a soft lead that 123

moves silently upon paper, and a green-shaded reading- lamp, to save my eyes.

The lamp smells, as it heats, of smouldering dust: a curious smell— I shall grow to hate it!— the smell of the parching of my own youth.

My work itself is of the most tedious kind, and consists chiefly of copying pages of text, from antique volumes, into a leather-bound book. The book is a slim one, and when it is filled my job is to render it blank again with a piece of india-rubber. I remember this task, more than I remember the pieces of matter I am made to copy: for the pages, from endless friction, grow smudged and fragile and liable to tear; and the sight of a smudge on a leaf of text, or the sound of tearing paper, is more than my uncle, in his delicacy, can bear. They say children, as a rule, fear the ghosts of the dead; what I fear most as a child are the spectres of past lessons, imperfectly erased.

I call them lessons; but I am not taught as other girls are. I learn to recite, softly and clearly; I am never taught to sing. I never learn the names of flowers and birds, but am schooled instead in the hides with which books are bound— as say, morocco, russia, calf, chagrin; and their papers— Dutch, China, motley, silk. I learn inks; the cutting of pens; the uses of pounce; the styles and sizes of founts: sans-serif, antique, Egyptian, pica, brevier, emerald, ruby, Pearl. . . They are named for jewels. It is a cheat. For they are hard and dull as cinders in a grate.

But I learn quickly. The season turns. I am made small rewards: new gloves, soft-soled slippers, a gown— stiff as the first, but of velvet. I am allowed to take my supper in the dining- room, at one end of a great oak table, set with silver. My uncle sits at the other end. He keeps a reading- easel beside his place, and speaks very seldom; but if I should be so unlucky as to let fall a fork, or to jar my knife against my plate, then he will raise his face and fix me with a damp and terrible eye. 'Have you some weakness about the hands, Maud, that obliges you to grind your silver in that way?'

'The knife is too large and too heavy, Uncle,' I answer him fretfully once.

Then he has my knife taken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, and hearts, and calves' feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson— as if reverting to the substance they were made from. My appetite leaves me. I care most for the wine. I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial.

They are to keep me mindful, not of my name, but of that of my mother; which was Marianne.

She is buried in the loneliest spot of all that lonely park— hers a solitary grey stone among so many white. I am taken to see it, and made to keep the tomb neat.

'Be grateful that you may,' says Mrs Stiles, watching me trim the springing cemetery grass, her arms folded across her bosom. 'Who shall tend my grave? I shall be all but forgotten.'

Her husband is dead. Her son is a sailor. She has taken all her little daughter's curling black hair to make ornaments with. She brushes my own hair as if the locks are thorns and might cut her; I wish they were. I think she is sorry not to whip me. She still bruises my arms with pinches. My obedience enrages her more than ever my passions 124

did; and seeing that, I grow meeker, with a hard, artful meekness that, receiving the edge of her sorrow, keeps it sharp. That provokes her to the pinches— they are profitless enough— and to scolds, which pay more, as being revealing of her griefs. I take her often to the graves, and make certain to sigh, to the full strength of my lungs, over my mother's stone. In time— so cunning

am I!— I find out the name of her dead daughter; then, the kitchen cat giving birth to a litter of kittens, I take one for a pet, and name it for her. I make sure to call it loudest when Mrs Stiles is near: 'Come, Polly! Oh, Polly! What a pretty child you are! How fine your black fur is! Come, kiss your mama.'

Do you see, what circumstances make of me?

Mrs Stiles trembles and winks at the words.

'Take the filthy creature arid have Mr Inker drown it!' she says to Barbara, when she can bear it no more.

I run and hide my face. I think of my lost home, and the nurses that loved me, and the thought brings the hot tears coolly to my eyes.

'Oh, Barbara!' I cry. 'Say you shan't! Say you wouldn't!'

Barbara says she never could. Mrs Stiles sends her away.

'You're a sly, hateful child,' she says. 'Don't think Barbara don't know it. Don't think she can't see through you and your designing ways.'