Fingersmith

But it is she who cries then, in great hard sobs; and my own eyes soon dry in the studying of hers. For what is she, to me? What is anyone now? I had thought my m o t h e r s , t h e n u r s e s , m i g h t s e n d t o s a v e m e ; s i x m o n t h s g o b y — another six, another— and they send nothing. I am assured they have forgotten me. 'Think of you?'

says Mrs Stiles, with a laugh. 'Why, I dare say your place at the madhouse has been filled by a new little girl with a happier temper. I am sure, they were glad to be rid of you.' In time, I believe her. I begin to forget. My old life grows shadowy in proportion t o t h e n e w — o r , s o m e t i m e s e m e r g e s t o d a r k e n o r t r o u b l e i t , i n d r e a m s a n d half- memories, just as those smudged strokes of forgotten lessons now and then start out upon the pages of my copy-book.

My proper mother I hate. Didn't she forsake me, before anyone? I keep her portrait in a little wooden box beside my bed; but her sweet white face has nothing of me in it, and I grow to loathe it. 'Let me kiss mama good-night,' I say one time, unlocking my box. But I do it only to torment Mrs Stiles. I raise the picture to my lips and, while she looks on, thinking me sorry— 'I hate you,' I whisper, my breath tarnishing the gold. I do it that night, and the night which

follows, and the night which follows that; at last, as a clock must tick to a regular beat, I find I must do it or lie fretful in my bed. And then, the portrait must be set down gently, with its ribbon quite uncreased. If the frame strikes the velvet lining of the wooden box too hard, I will take it out and set it down carefully again.

Mrs Stiles watches me do it, with a curious expression. I never lie quite still until Barbara comes.

Meanwhile my uncle observes my work and finds my letters, my hand, my voice, greatly improved. He is used occasionally to entertaining gentlemen at Briar: now he has me stand for them and read. I read from foreign texts, not understanding the 125

matter I am made to recite; and the gentlemen— like Mrs Stiles— watch me strangely.

I grow used to that. When I have finished, at my uncle's instruction I curtsey. I curtsey well. The gentlemen clap, then come to shake or stroke my hand. They tell me, often, how rare I am. I believe myself a kind of prodigy, and pink under their gazes.

So white blooms blush, before they curl and tumble. One day I arrive at my uncle's room to find my little desk removed, and a place made ready for me among his books.

He sees my look, and beckons me to him.

'Take off your gloves,' he says. I do, and shudder to touch the surfaces of common things. It is a cold, still, sunless day. I have been at Briar, then, two years. My cheek is round as a child's, and my voice is high. I have not yet begun to bleed as women do.

'Well, Maud,' says my uncle. 'At last you cross the finger of brass, and come to my books. You are about to learn the proper quality of your vocation. Are you afraid?'

'A little, sir.'

'You do well to be. For here is fearful matter. You think me a scholar, hmm?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, I am more than that. I am a curator of poisons. These books— look, mark them!

mark them well!— they are the poisons I mean. And this— ' Here he reverently puts his hand upon the great pile of ink-stained papers that litter his desk— 'this is their Index.

This will guide others in their collection and proper study. There is no work on the subject so perfect as this will be, when it is complete. I have devoted many years to its construction and revision; and shall devote many more, as the work requires it. I have laboured so long among poisons I am immune to them, and my aim has been to make you immune, that you might assist me. My eyes— do you look at my eyes, Maud.' He takes off his spectacles and brings his face to mine; and I flinch, as once before, from the sight of his soft and naked face— yet see now, too, what the coloured lenses hide: a certain film, or milkiness, upon the surface of his eye. 'My eyes grow weak,' he says, replacing his glasses. 'Your sight shall save my own. Your hand shall be my hand. For you come here with naked fingers, while in the ordinary world— the commonplace world, outside this chamber— the men who handle vitriol and arsenic must do so with their flesh guarded. You are not like them. This is your proper sphere. I have made it so. I have fed you poison, by scruple and grain. Now comes the larger dose.'

He turns and takes a book from his shelves, then hands it to me, pressing my fingers hard about it.

'Keep this from others. Remember the rareness of our work. It will seem queer, to the eyes and ears of the untutored. They will think you tainted, should you tell. You understand me? I have touched your lip with poison, Maud. Remember.'

The book is called The Curtain Drawn Up, or the Education of Laura. I sit alone, and turn the cover; and understand at last the matter I have read, that has provoked applause from gentlemen.

The world calls it pleasure. My uncle collects it— keeps it neat, keeps it ordered, on guarded shelves; but keeps it strangely— not for its own sake, no, never for that; rather, as it provides fuel for the satisfying of a curious lust.

I mean, the lust of the bookman.

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'See here, Maud,' he will say to me softly, drawing back the glass doors of his presses, passing his fingers across the covers of the texts he has exposed. 'Do you note the marbling upon these papers, the morocco of this spine, the gilt edge? Observe this tooling, look.' He

tilts the book to me but, jealously, will not let me take it. 'Not yet not yet! Ah, see this one, also. Black-letter; the titles, look, picked out in red. The capitals flowered, the margin as broad as the text. What extravagance! And this! Plain board; but see here, the frontispiece'— the picture is of a lady reclined on a couch, a gentleman beside her, his member bare and crimson at the tip— 'done after Borel, most rare. I had this as a young man from a stall at Liverpool, for a shilling. I should not part with it now, for fifty pounds.— Come, come!' He has seen me blush. 'No schoolgirl modesty here! Did I bring you to my house, and teach you the ways of my collection, to see you colour?

Well, no more of that. Here is work, not leisure. You will soon forget the substance, in the scrutiny of the form.'

So he says to me, many times. I do not believe him. I am thirteen. The books fill me, at first, with a kind of horror: for it seems a frightful thing, that children, in becoming women and men, should do as they describe— get lusts, grow secret limbs and cavities, be prone to fevers, to crises, seek nothing but the endless joining together of smarting flesh. I imagine my mouth, stopped up with kisses. I imagine the parting of my legs. I imagine myself fingered and pierced ... I am thirteen, as I have said. The fear gives way to restlessness: I begin to lie each night at Barbara's side, wakeful while she sleeps on; one time I put back the blanket to study the curve of her breast. Then I take to watching her as she bathes and dresses. Her legs— that I know from my uncle's books should be smooth— are dark with hair; the place between them— which I know should be neat, and fair— darkest of all. That troubles me. Then at last, one day, she catches me gazing. 'What are you looking at?' she says. 'Your cunt,' I answer. 'Why is it so black?' She starts away from me as if in horror, lets her skirt fall, puts her hands before her breast. Her cheek flares crimson. 'Oh!' she cries. 'I never did! Where did you learn such words?' 'From my uncle,' I say.

'Oh, you liar! Your uncle's a gentleman. I'll tell Mrs Stiles!' She does. I think Mrs Stiles will hit me; instead, like Barbara, she starts back. But then, she takes up a block of soap and, while

Barbara holds me, she presses the soap into my mouth— presses it hard, then passes it back and forth across my lips and tongue.

'Speak like a devil, will you?' she says as she does it. 'Like a slut and a filthy beast?

Like your own trash mother? Will you? Will

you?'

Then she lets me fall, and stands and wipes her hands convulsively upon her apron.

She has Barbara keep to her own bed, from that night on; and she makes her keep the door between our rooms ajar, and put out a light.

'Thank God she wears gloves, at least,' I hear her say. 'That may keep her from further mischief ..."

I wash my mouth, until my tongue grows cracked, and bleeds; I weep and weep; but still taste lavender. I think my lip must have poison in it, after all.

127

But soon, I do not care. My cunt grows dark as Barbara's, I understand my uncle's books to be filled with falsehoods, and I despise myself for having supposed them truths. My hot cheek cools, my colour dies, the heat quite fades from my limbs. The restlessness turns all to scorn. I become what I was bred to be. I become a librarian.

'The Lustful Turk,' my uncle might say, looking up from his papers. 'Where do we have it?'

'We have it here, Uncle,' I will answer.— For within a year I know the place of every b o o k u p o n h i s s h e l v e s . I k n o w t h e p l a n o f h i s g r e a t i n d e x — his Universal Bibliography of Priapus and Venus. For to Priapus and Venus he has devoted me, as other girls are apprenticed to the needle or the loom.

I know his friends— those gentlemen who visit, and still hear me recite. I know them now for publishers, collectors, auctioneers— enthusiasts of his work. They send him books— more books each week— and letters:

' " M r L i l l y : o n t h e C l e l a n d . G r i v e t o f P a r i s c l a i m s n o k n o w l e d g e o f t h e l o s t , sodomitical matter. Shall I pursue?'"

My uncle hears me read, his eyes creased hard behind their lenses.

'What think you, Maud?' he says. '— Well, never mind it now. We must leave the Cleland to languish, and hope for more in the spring. So, so. Let me see . . .' He divides the slips of paper upon his desk. 'Now, The Festival of the Passions. Have we still the second volume, on loan from Hawtrey? You must copy it, Maud ..."

'I will,' I say.

You think me meek. How else should I answer? Once, early on, I forget myself, and yawn. My uncle studies me. He has taken his pen from his page, and slowly rolls its nib.

'It appears you find your occupation dull,' he says at last. 'Perhaps you would like to return to your room.' I say nothing. 'Should you like it?'

'Perhaps, sir,' I say, after a moment.

'Perhaps. Very good. Put back your book then, and go. But, Maud— ' This last, as I cross to the door. 'Do you instruct Mrs Stiles to keep the fuel from your fire. You don't suppose I shall pay, to keep you warm in idleness, hmm?'

I hesitate, then go. This is, again, in winter— it seems always winter there! I sit wrapped in my coat until made to dress for dinner. But at the table, when Mr Way brings the food to my plate, my uncle stops him. 'No meat,' he says, laying a napkin across his lap, 'for idle girls. Not in this house.'

Then Mr Way takes the platter away. Charles, his boy, looks sorry. I should like to strike him. Instead I must sit, twisting my hands into the fabric of my skirt, biting down my rage as I once swallowed tears, hearing the sliding of the meat upon my uncle's ink-stained tongue, until I am dismissed.

Next day at eight o'clock, I return to my work; and am careful never to yawn again.

I grow taller, in the months that follow. I become slender and more pale. I become handsome. I outgrow my skirts and gloves and slippers.— My uncle notes it, vaguely, and instructs Mrs Stiles to cut me new gowns to the pattern of the old. She does, and makes me sew them. I believe she must take a sort of malicious pleasure from the dressing of me to suit his fancy; then again, perhaps in her grief for 128

her daughter she has forgotten that little girls are meant to turn out women. Anyway, I have been too long at Briar, and draw a comfort, now, from regularity. I have grown used to my gloves and my hard-boned gowns, and flinch at the first unloosening of the strings. Undressed, I seem to feel myself as naked and unsafe as one of my uncle's lenseless eyes.

Asleep, I am sometimes oppressed by dreams. Once I fall into a fever, and a surgeon sees me. He is a friend of my uncle's and has heard me read. He fingers the soft flesh beneath my jaw, puts his thumbs to my cheeks, draws down my eye- lids. 'Are you troubled,' he says, 'with uncommon thoughts? Well, we must expect that. You are an uncommon girl.' He strokes my hand and prescribes me a medicine— a single drop to be taken in a cup of water— 'for restlessness'. Barbara puts out the mixture, while Mrs Stiles looks on.

Then Barbara leaves me, to be married, and I am given another maid. Her name is Agnes. She is small, and slight as a bird— one of those little, little birds that men bring down with nets. She has red hair and white skin marked with freckles, like paper foxed with damp. She is fifteen, innocent as butter. She thinks my uncle kind. She thinks me kind, at first. She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it.

When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behind her tears, keeps still its look of mine.

I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.

So my life passes. You might suppose I would not know enough of ordinary things, to know it queer. But I read other books besides my uncle's; and overhear the talk of servants, and catch their looks, and so, by that— by the curious and pitying glances of parlourmaids and grooms!— I see well enough the oddity I have become.

I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fiction; but have never, since I first came to my uncle's house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing. You must remember this, in what follows. You must remember what I cannot do, what I have not seen. I cannot, for example, sit a horse, or dance. I have never held a coin in order to spend it. I have never seen a play, a railway, a mountain, or a sea.

I have never seen London; and yet, I think I know it, too. I know it, from my uncle's books. I know it lies upon a river— which is the same river, grown very much broader, that runs beyond his park. I like to walk beside the water, thinking of this. There is an ancient, overturned punt there, half rotted away— the holes in its hull a perpetual mockery, it seems to me, of my confinement; but I like to sit upon it, gazing at the rushes at the water's edge. I remember the Bible story, of the child that was placed in a basket and was found by the daughter of a king. I should like to find a child. I should like it, not to keep it!— but to take its place in the basket and leave it at Briar to grow up to be me. I think often of the life I would have, in London; and of who might claim me.

That is when I am still young, and given to fancies. When I am older I do not walk by the river so much as stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow 129

paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncle's library I one day, with my finger- nail, make a small and perfect crescent, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye— like a curious wife at the keyhole of a cabinet of secrets.

But I am inside the cabinet, and long to get out. . .

I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.

C h a p t e r Eight

I have said it was my uncle's custom, occasionally to invite interested gentlemen to the house, to take a supper with us and, later, hear me read. He does so now.

'Make yourself neat tonight, Maud,' he says to me, as I stand in his library buttoning up my gloves. 'We shall have guests. Hawtrey, Huss, and another fellow, a stranger. I hope to employ him with the mounting of our pictures.'

Our pictures. There are cabinets, in a separate study, filled with drawers of lewd engravings, that my uncle has collected in a desultory sort of manner, along with his books. He has often spoken of taking on some man to trim and mount them, but has never found a man to match the task. One needs a quite particular character, for work of that sort.

He catches my eye, thrusts out his lips. 'Hawtrey claims to have a gift for us, besides.

An edition of a text we have not catalogued.'

'That is great news, sir.'

Perhaps I speak drily; but my uncle, though a dry man himself, does not mark it. He only puts his hand to the slips of paper before him and divides the heap into two uneven piles. 'So, so. Let me see . . .'

'May I leave you, Uncle?'

He looks up. 'Has the hour struck?'

'It has, I believe.'

He draws out from his pocket his chiming watch and holds it to his ear. The key to his library door— sewn about, at the stem, with faded velvet— swings noiselessly beside it.

He says, 'Go on then, go on. Leave an old man to his books. Go and play, but— gently, Maud.'

'Yes, Uncle.'

Now and then I wonder how he supposes I spend my hours, when not engaged by him.

I think he is too used to the particular world of his books, where time passes strangely, or not at all, and imagines me an ageless child. Sometimes that is how I imagine myself— as if my short, tight gowns and velvet sashes keep me bound, like a Chinese slipper, to a form I should otherwise outleap. My uncle himself— who is at this time, I suppose, not quite above fifty— I have always considered to have been perfectly and permanently aged; as flies remain aged, yet fixed and unchanging, in cloudy chips of amber.

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I leave him squinting at a page of text. I walk very quietly, in soft-soled shoes. I go to my rooms, where Agnes is.

I find her at work at a piece of sewing. She sees me come, and flinches. Do you know how provoking such a flinch will seem, to a temperament like mine? I stand and watch her sew. She feels my gaze, and begins to shake. Her stitches grow long and crooked. At last I take the needle from her hand and gently put the point of it against her flesh; then draw it off; then put it back; then do this, six or seven times more, until her knuckles are marked between the freckles with a rash of needle-pricks.

'There are to be gentlemen here tonight,' I say, as I do it. 'One a stranger. Do you suppose he will be young, and handsome?'

I say it— idly enough— as a way of teasing. It is nothing to me. But she hears me, and colours.

'I can't say, miss,' she answers, blinking and turning her head; not drawing her hand away, however. 'Perhaps.'

'You think so?'

'Who knows? He might be.'

I study her harder, struck with a new idea.

'Should you like it if he was?'

'Like it, miss?'

'Like it, Agnes. It seems to me now, that you would. Shall I tell him the way to your room? I shan't listen at the door. I shall turn the key, you will be quite private.'

'Oh, miss, what nonsense!'

'Is it? Here, turn your hand.' She does, and I jab the needle harder. 'Now, say you don't like it, having a prick upon your palm!'

She takes her hand away and sucks it, and begins to cry. The sight of her tears— and of her mouth, working on the bit of tender flesh that I have stabbed— first stirs, then troubles me; then makes me weary. I leave her weeping, and stand at my rattling window, my eyes upon the lawn that dips to the wall, the rushes, the Thames.

'Will you be quiet?' I say, when her breath still catches. 'Look at you! Tears, for a gentleman! Don't you know that he won't be handsome, or even young? Don't you know, they never are?'

But of course, he is both.

'Mr Richard Rivers,' my uncle says. The name seems auspicious to me. Later I will discover it to be false— as false as his rings, his smile, his manner; but now, as I stand in the drawing- room and he rises to make me his bow, why should I think to doubt him? He has fine features, even teeth, and is taller than my uncle by almost a foot. His hair is brushed and has oil upon it, but is long: a curl springs from its place and tumbles across his brow. He puts a hand to it, repeatedly. His hands are slender, smooth and— but for a single finger, stained yellow by smoke— quite white.

'Miss Lilly,' he says, as he bends towards me. The lock of hair falls forward, the stained hand lifts to brush it back. His voice is very low, I suppose for my uncle's sake.

He must have been cautioned in advance, by Mr Hawtrey.

Mr Hawtrey is a London bookseller and publisher, and has been

many times to Briar. He takes my hand and kisses it. Behind him comes Mr Huss. He 131

is a gentleman collector, a friend from my uncle's youth. He also takes my hand, but takes it to draw me closer to him, then kisses my cheek. 'Dear child,' he says.

I have been several times surprised by Mr Huss upon the stairs. He likes to stand and watch me climb them.

'How do you do, Mr Huss?' I say now, making him a curtsey.

But it is Mr Rivers I watch. And once or twice, when I turn my face his way, I find his own eyes fixed on me, his gaze a thoughtful one. He is weighing me up. Perhaps he has not supposed I would be so handsome. Perhaps I am not so handsome as rumour has had him think. I cannot tell. But, when the dinner-bell sounds and I move to my uncle's side to be walked to the table, I see him hesitate; then he chooses the place next to mine. I wish he had not. I think he will continue to watch me, and I don't like to be watched, while eating. Mr Way and Charles move softly about us, filling our glasses— mine, that crystal cup, cut with an M. The food is set upon our plates, then the servants leave: they never stay when we have company, but return between courses. At Briar we eat, as we do everything, by the chiming of the clock. A supper of gentlemen lasts one hour and a half.

We are served hare soup, this night; then goose, crisp at the skin, pink at the bones, and with its innards devilled and passed about the table. Mr Hawtrey takes a dainty kidney, Mr Rivers has the heart. I shake my head at the plate he offers.

'I'm afraid you're not hungry,' he says quietly, watching my face.

'Don't you care for goose, Miss Lilly?' asks Mr Hawtrey. 'Nor does my eldest daughter.

She thinks of goslings, and grows tearful.'

'I hope you catch her tears and keep them,' says Mr Huss. 'I often think I should like to see the tears of a girl made into an ink.'

A n i n k ? D o n ' t m e n t i o n i t t o m y d a u g h t e r s , I b e g y o u . T h a t I m u s t h e a r t h e i r complaints, is one thing. Should they once catch the idea of impressing them also upon paper, and making me read them, I assure you, my life would not be worth the living.'

'Tears, for ink?' says my uncle, a beat behind the others. 'What rubbish is this?'

'Girls' tears,' says Mr Huss.

'Quite colourless.'

'I think not. Truly, sir, I think not. I fancy them delicately tinged— perhaps pink, perhaps violet.'

'Perhaps,' says Mr Hawtrey, 'as depending on the emotion that has provoked them?'

'Exactly. You have hit it, Hawtrey, there. Violet tears, for a melancholy book; pink, for a gay. It might be sewn up, too, with hair from a girl's head ..." He glances at me and his look changes. He puts his napkin to his mouth.

'Now,' says Mr Hawtrey, 'I really wonder that that has never been attempted. Mr Lilly?

One hears barbarous stories of course, of hides and bindings

They discuss this for a time. Mr Rivers listens but says nothing. Of course, his attention is all with me. Perhaps he will speak, I think, under cover of their talk. I hope he will. I hope he won't. I sip my wine and am suddenly weary. I have sat at suppers like this, hearing my uncle's friends chase tedious points in small, tight circles, too many times. Unexpectedly, I think of Agnes. I think of Agnes's mouth teasing a 132

bead of blood from her pricked palm. My uncle clears his throat, and I blink.

'So, Rivers,' he says, 'Hawtrey tells me he has you translating, French matter into English. Poor stuff, I suppose, if his press is involved in it.'

'Poor stuff indeed,' answers Mr Rivers; 'or I should not attempt it. It is hardly my line.

One learns, in Paris, the necessary terms; but it was as a student of the fine arts that I was lately there. I hope to find a better application for my talents, sir, than the conjuring of bad English from worse French.'

'Well, well. We shall see.' My uncle smiles. 'You would like to view my pictures.'

'Very much indeed.'

'Well, another day will do for that. They are handsome enough, I think you'll find. I c a r e l e s s f o r t h e m t h a n f o r m y b o o k s , h o w e v e r . Y o u ' v e h e a r d , p e r h a p s ' — he pauses— 'of my Index?'

Mr Rivers inclines his head. 'It sounds a marvellous thing.'

'Pretty marvellous— eh, Maud? But, are we modest? Do we blush?'

I know my own cheek is cool; and his is pale as candle-wax. Mr Rivers turns, searches my face with his thoughtful gaze.

'How goes the great work?' asks Mr Hawtrey lightly.

'We are close,' answers my uncle. 'We are very close. I am in consultation with finishers.'

'And the length?'

'A thousand pages.'

Mr Hawtrey raises his brow. If my uncle's temper would permit it, he might whistle.

He reaches for another slice of goose.

'Two hundred more then,' he says, as he does it, 'since I spoke to you last.'

'For the first volume, of course. The second shall be greater. What think you of that, Rivers?'

'Astonishing, sir.'

'Has there ever been its like? An universal bibliography, and on such a theme? They say the science is a dead one amongst Englishmen.'

'Then you have raised it to life. A fantastic achievement.'

'Fantastic, indeed— more so, when one knows the degrees of obscurity in which my subject is shrouded. Consider this: that the authors of the texts I collect must cloak their identity in deception and anonymity. That the texts themselves are stamped with every kind of false and misleading detail as to place and date of publication and impress. Hmm? That they are burdened with obscure titles. That they must pass darkly, via secret channels, or on the wings of rumour and supposition. Consider those checks to the bibliographer's progress. Then speak to me, sir, of fantastic labour!' He trembles in a mirthless laughter.

'I cannot conceive it,' says Mr Rivers. 'And the Index is organised . . .?'

'By title, by name, by date when we have it; and, mark this, sir: by species of pleasure.

We have them tabled, most precisely'

'The books?'

'The pleasures! Where are we presently, Maud?'

The gentlemen turn to me. I sip my wine. 'At the Lust,' I say, 'of Men for Beasts.'

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My uncle nods. 'So, so,' he says. 'Do you see, Rivers, the assistance our bibliography will provide, to the student of the field? It will be a veritable Bible.'

'The flesh made word,' says Mr Hawtrey, smiling, enjoying the phrase. He catches my eye, and winks. Mr Rivers, however, is still looking earnestly at my uncle.

'A great ambition,' he says now.

A great labour,' says Mr Huss.

'Indeed,' says Mr Hawtrey, turning again to me. 'I am afraid, Miss Lilly, your uncle continues to work you very mercilessly.'

I shrug. 'I was bred to the task,' I say, 'as servants are.'

'Servants and young ladies,' says Mr Huss, 'are different sorts of creatures. Have I not said so, many times? Girls' eyes should not be worn out with reading, nor their small hands made hard through the gripping of pens.'

'So my uncle believes,' I say, showing my gloves; though it is his books he is anxious to save, of course, not my fingers.

And what,' he says now, 'if she labour five hours a day? I labour ten! What should we work for, if not books? Hmm? Think of Smart, and de Bury. Or think of Tinius, so dedicated a collector he killed two men for the sake of his library.'

'Think of Frere Vincente, who, for the sake of his, killed twelve!' Mr Hawtrey shakes his head. 'No, no, Mr Lilly. Work your niece if you must. But drive her to violence for literature's sake, and we shall never forgive you.'

The gentlemen laugh.

'Well, well,' says my uncle.

I study my hand, saying nothing. My fingers show red as ruby through the glass of dark wine, my mother's initial quite invisible until I turn the crystal; then the cuts leap out.

There are two more courses before I might be excused, and then two more soundings o f t h e c l o c k t o b e s a t t h r o u g h , a l o n e , b e f o r e t h e g e n t l e m e n j o i n m e i n t h e drawing- room. I hear the murmur of their

voices and wonder what, in my absence, they discuss. When they come at last they are all a little pinker in the face, and their breaths are soured with smoke. Mr Hawtrey produces a package, bound in paper and string. He hands it to my uncle, who fumbles with the wrappings.

'So, so,' he says; and then, with the book uncovered and held close to his eyes: 'Aha!'

He works his lips. 'Look here, Maud, look, at what the little grubbian has brought us.'

He shows me the volume. 'Now, what do you say?'

It is a common novel in a tawdry binding, but with an unfamiliar frontispiece that renders it rare. I look and, despite myself, feel the stirrings of a dry excitement. The sensation makes me queasy. I say, 'A very fine thing for us, Uncle, without a doubt.'

'See here, the fleuron? You see it?' 'I see it.'

'I don't believe we have considered the possibility of such a thing. I am sure we have not. We must go back. And we thought that entry complete? We shall return to it, tomorrow.' He stretches his neck. He likes the anticipation of pleasure. 'For now— well, take your gloves off, girl. Do you suppose Hawtrey brings us books to have you press gravy into the binding? That's better. Let's hear a little of it. Do you sit, 134

and read to us. Huss, you must sit also. Rivers, mark my niece's voice, how soft and clear she reads. I coached her myself. Well, well.— You crease the spine, Maud!'

'Indeed, Mr Lilly, she does not,' says Mr Huss, gazing at my uncovered hands.

I place the book upon a stand and carefully weight its pages. I turn a lamp so that its light falls bright upon the print. 'How long shall I read for, Uncle?'

He puts his watch against his ear. He says, 'Until the next o'clock. Now, note this, Rivers, and tell me if you suppose its like may be encountered in any other English drawing- room!'

The book is filled, as I have said, with common enough obscenities; but my uncle is right, I have been trained too well, my voice is clear and true and makes the words seem almost sweet. When I

have finished, Mr Hawtrey claps, and Mr Huss's pink face is pinker, his look rather troubled. My uncle sits with his spectacles removed, his head at an angle, his eyes screwed tight.

'Poor words enough,' he says. 'But I have a home for you, upon my shelves. A home, and brothers, too. Tomorrow we shall see you placed there. The fleuron: I am certain we have not thought of that.— Maud, the covers are closed, and quite unbent?'

'Yes, sir.'

He draws on his eye- glasses, working the wires about his ears. Mr Huss pours brandy.

I button up my gloves, smooth creases from my skirt. I turn the lamp, and dim it. But I am conscious of myself. I am conscious of Mr Rivers. He has heard me read, apparently without excitement, his eyes upon the floor; but his hands are clasped and one thumb beats a little nervously upon the other. Presently he rises. He says the fire is hot and scorches him. He walks a minute about the room, leaning rigidly to gaze into my uncle's book-presses— now his hands are behind his back; his thumb still twitches, however. I think he knows I watch. In time he comes close, catches my eye, makes a careful bow. He says, 'It is rather chill, so far from the fire. Shouldn't you like, Miss Lilly, to sit closer to the flames?'

I answer: 'Thank you, Mr Rivers, I prefer this spot.'

'You like to be cool,' he says.

'I like the shadows.'

When I smile again he takes it as a kind of invitation, lifts his coat, twitches at his trousers and sits beside me, not too close, still with his eyes upon my uncle's shelves, as if distracted by the books. But when he speaks, he speaks in a murmur. He says,

'You see, I also like the shadows.'

Mr Huss glances once our way. Mr Hawtrey stands at the fire and lifts a glass. My uncle has settled into his chair and its wings obscure his eyes; I see only his dry mouth, puckered at the lip. 'The greatest phase of eros?' he is saying. 'We have missed it, sir, by seventy years! The cynical, improbable fictions which pass for voluptuous literature nowadays I should be ashamed to show to the man that shoes my horse . . .'

I stifle a yawn, and Mr Rivers turns to me. I say, 'Forgive me Vf Rivers.'

He bows his head. 'Perhaps, you don't care for your uncle's sub ject.'

He still speaks in a murmur; and I am obliged to make my own voice rather low, by way of answer. 'I am my uncle's secretary,' I say 'The appeal of the subject is nothing 135

to me.'

Again he bows. 'Well, perhaps,' he says, while my uncle talks on 'It is only curious, to see a lady left cool and unmoved, by that which is designed to provoke heat, and motion.'

'But there are many ladies, I think, unmoved by that you speak of; and aren't those who know the matter best, moved least?' I catch his eye. 'I speak not from experience of the world, of course, but from my reading merely. But I should have said that— oh, even a priest would note a palling in his passion for the mysteries of his church, if put too often to the scrutiny of wafer and wine.'

He does not blink. At last he almost laughs.

'You are very uncommon, Miss Lilly'

I look away. 'So I understand.'

'Ah. Now your tone is a bitter one. Perhaps you think your education a sort of misfortune.'

'On the contrary. How could it be a misfortune, to be wise? I can never be deceived, for instance, in the matter of a gentleman's attentions. I am a connoisseur of all the varieties of methods by which a , gentleman might seek to compliment a lady'

He puts his white hand to his breast. 'Then I should be daunted indeed,' he says, 'did I want only to compliment you.'

'I was not aware that gentlemen had any other wants, than that one.'

'Perhaps not in the books that you are used to. But in life— a great many; and one that is chief.'

'I supposed,' I say, 'that that was the one the books were written for.'

'Oh, no.' He smiles. His voice dips even lower. 'They are read for that, but written for something keener. I mean, of course, the want of— money. Every gentleman minds that. And those of us who are

not quite so gentlemanly as we would like, mind it most of all.— I am sorry to embarrass you.'

I have coloured, or flinched. Now, recovering, I say, 'You forget, I have been bred to be quite beyond embarrassment. I am only surprised.'

'Then I must take a satisfaction from the knowledge that I have surprised you.' He lifts his hand to his beard. 'It is something to me,' he goes on, 'to have made a small impression upon the evenness and regularity of yourdays.'

He speaks so insinuatingly my cheek grows warmer still.

'What do you know,' I say, 'of those?'

'Why, only what I surmise, from my observation of the house . . .'

Now his voice and his face are grown bland again. I see Mr Huss tilt his head and observe him Then he calls, pointedly: 'What do you think, Rivers, of this?'

'Of what, sir?'

'Of Hawtrey's champioting, now, of photography.'

'Photography?'

'Rivers,' says Mr Hawtrey. 'You are a young man. I appeal to you. Can there be any more perfect record of the amatory act— '

'Record!' says my uncle, peevishly. 'Documentary! The curses of the age!'

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'— of the amatory act, than a photograph? Mr Lilly will have it that the science of photography runs counter to the spirit of the Paphian life. I say it is an image of life, and has this advantage over it: that it endures, where life— the Paphian life, the Paphian moment, in especial— must finish and fade.'

'Doth not a book endure?' asks my uncle, plucking at the arm of his chair.

'It endureth, so long as words do. But, in a photograph you have a thing beyond words, and beyond the mouths that speak them. A photograph will provoke heat in an Englishman, a Frenchman, a savage. It will outlast us all, and I provoke heat in our grandsons. It is a thing apart from history.1

'It is gripped by history!' answers my uncle. 'It is corrupted by it! Its history hangs about it like so much smoke!— you may see it, in

the fitting of a slipper, a gown, the dressing of a head. Give photographs to your grandson: he will study them and think them quaint. He will laugh at the wax tips of your moustaches! But words Hawtrey, words— hmm? They seduce us in darkness, and the mind clothes and fleshes them to fashions of its own. Don't you think so Rivers?'

'I do, sir.'

'You know I won't allow daguerreotypes and nonsense like that into my collection?'

'I think you are right not to, sir.'

Mr Hawtrey shakes his head. He says, to my uncle: 'You still believe photography a fashion, that will pass? You must come to Holywell Street, and spend an hour in my shop. We have albums made up, now, for men to choose from. It is all our buyers come for.'

'Your buyers are brutes. What business have I with them? Rivers, you have seen them.

What is your opinion as to the quality of Hawtrey's trade . . .?'

The debate will go on, he cannot escape. He answers, then catches my eye as if in apology , r i s e s , g o e s t o m y u n c l e ' s s i d e . T h e y t a l k u n t i l t h e s t r i k i n g o f t e n o'clock— which is when I leave them.

That is the Thursday night. Mr Rivers is due to remain at Briar until Sunday. Next day I am kept from the library while the men look over the books; at supper he watches me, and afterwards hears me read, but then is obliged to sit again with my uncle and cannot come to my side. Saturday I walk in the park with Agnes, and do not see him; Saturday night, however, my uncle has me read from an antique book, one of his finest— and then, when I have finished, Mr Rivers comes and sits beside me, to study its singular covers.

'You like it, Rivers?' asks my uncle as he does so. 'You know it is very rare?'

'I should say it must be, sir.'

'And you think I mean by that, that there are few other copies?'

'I had supposed that, yes.'

'So you might. But we collectors, we gauge rarity by other means. You think a unique item rare, if no-one wants it? We call that a dead

book. But, say a score of identical copies are sought by a thousand men: each of those single books is rarer than the unique one. You understand me?'

Mr Rivers nods. 'I do. The rareness of the article is relative to the desire of the heart 137

which seeks it.' He glances at me. 'That is very quaint. And how many men seek this book, that we have just heard?'

My uncle grows coy. 'How many indeed, sir? I'll answer you like this: put it up for auction, and see! Ha?'

Mr Rivers laughs. 'To be sure, yes . . .'

But beyond the film of his politeness, he looks thoughtful. He bites his lip)— his teeth showing yellow, wolfish, against the dark of his beard, but his mouth a soft and surprising pink. He says nothing while my uncle sips at his drink and Mr Hawtrey fusses with the fire. Then he speaks again.

'And what of a pair of books, Mr Lilly,' he says, 'sought by a single buyer? How are they to be valued?'

A pair?' My uncle puts down his glass. 'A set, of two volumes?'

'A pair of complementary titles. A man has one, and seeks to secure the other. The second will greatly add to the value of the first?'

'Of course, sir!'

'I thought it.'

'Men pay absurdly for such things,' says Mr Huss.

'They do,' says my uncle. 'They do. You will find a reference to such matters, of course, in my Index ..."

'The Index,' says Mr Rivers softly; and the others talk on. We sit and listen— or pretend to— and soon he turns and studies my face. 'May I ask you something, Miss Lilly?' he says. And then, when I nod: 'What do you see, for yourself, after the completion of your uncle's work?— Now, why do you do that?'

I have given him what I suppose must be a bitter sort of smile. I say, 'Your question means nothing, I can hardly answer it. My uncle's work will never be finished. There are too many new books written that must be added to the old; too many lost books to be rediscovered; too much uncertainty. He and Mr Hawtrey will

debate it for ever. Look at them now. Should he publish the Index as he intends, he will only at once begin its supplements.'

'You mean to keep beside him, then, for all that time?'— I will not answer.— 'You are as dedicated as he?'

'I have no choice,' I say at last. 'My skills are few and, as you have already noted, quite uncommon.'

'You are a lady,' he says softly, 'and young, and handsome.— I don't speak from gallantry now, you know that. I say only what is true. You might do anything.'

'You are a man,' I answer. 'Men's truths are different from ladies'. I may do nothing, I assure you.'

He hesitates— perhaps, catches his breath. Then: 'You might— marry,' he says. 'That is something.'

He says it, with his eyes upon the book that I have read from; and I hear him, and laugh aloud. My uncle, supposing I have laughed at some parched joke of his, looks over and nods. 'You think so, Maud? You see, Huss, even my niece believes it so . . .'

I wait until his face is turned from me again, his attention captured. Then I reach for the book on its stand and gently lift its cover. 'Look here, Mr Rivers,' I say. 'This is my 138

uncle's plate, that is attached to all his books. Do you see the device of it?'

The plate bears his emblem, a clever thing of his own design— a lily, drawn strangely, to resemble a phallus; and wound about with a stem of briar at the root. Mr Rivers tilts his head to study it, and nods. I let the cover close.

'Sometimes,' I say, not looking up, 'I suppose such a plate must be pasted upon my own flesh— that I have been ticketed, and noted and shelved— so nearly do I resemble one of my uncle's books.' I raise my eyes to his. My face is warm, but I am speaking coolly, still. 'You said, two nights ago, that you have studied the ways of this house.

Surely, then, you have understood. We are not meant for common usage, my fellow books and I. My uncle keeps us separate from the world. He will call us poisons; he says we will hurt unguarded eyes. Then aga i n , h e n a m e s u s h i s c h i l d r e n , h i s foundlings, that have come to him, from every corner of the world— some rich and handsomely provided for, some shabby, some

injured, some broken about the spine, some gaudy, some gross. For all that he speaks against them, I believe he likes the gross ones best; for they are the ones that other parents— other bookmen and collectors, I mean— cast out. I was like them, and had a home, and lost it— '

Now I do not speak coolly. I have been overtaken by my own words. Mr Rivers watches, then leans to take my uncle's book very gently from its stand.

'Your home,' he murmurs, as his face comes close to mine. 'The madhouse. Do you think very often of your time there? Do you think of your mother, and feel her madness in you?— Mr Lilly, your book.' My uncle has looked over. 'Do you mind my handling it? Won't you show me, sir, the features that mark it as rare . . .?'

He has spoken very swiftly; and has startled me, horribly. I don't like to be startled. I don't like to lose my place. But now, as he rises and returns, with the book, to the fire, a second or two passes that I cannot account for. I discover at last that I have put my hand to my breast. That I am breathing quickly. That the shadows in which I sit are all at once denser than before— so dense, my skirt seems bleeding into the fabric of the sofa and my hand, rising and falling above my heart, is pale as a leaf upon a swelling pool of darkness.

I will not swoon. Only girls in books do that, for the convenience of gentlemen. But I suppose I whiten and look strange, for when Mr Hawtrey gazes my way, smiling, his smile quite falls. 'Miss Lilly!' he says. He comes and takes my hand.

Mr Huss comes also. 'Dear child, what is it?' He holds me close, about the armpit.

Mr Rivers hangs back. My uncle looks peevish. 'Well, well,' he says. 'What now?' He shuts his book, but keeps his finger, carefully, between the pages.

They ring for Agnes. She comes, blinking at the gentlemen, curtseying at my uncle, a look of terror on her face. It is not yet ten o'clock. 'I am perfectly well,' I say. 'You must not trouble. I am only tired, suddenly. I am sorry.'

'Sorry? Pooh!' says Mr Hawtrey. 'It is we who should be sorry. Mr Lilly, you are a tyrant, and overtask your niece most miserably.

I always said it, and here is the proof. Agnes, take your mistress's arm. Go steadily, now.'

'Shall you manage the stairs?' Mr Huss asks anxiously. He stands in the hall as we 139

prepare to mount them. Behind him I see Mr Rivers; but I do not catch his eye.

When the drawing- room door is closed I push Agnes away, and in my own room I look about me for some cool thing to put upon my face. I finally go to the mantel, and lean my cheek against the looking- glass.

'Your skirts, miss!' says Agnes. She draws them from the fire.

I feel queer, dislocated. The house clock has not chimed. When it sounds, I will feel better. I will not think of Mr Rivers— of what he must know of me, how he might know it, what he means by seeking me out. Agnes stands awkwardly, half- crouched, my skirts still gathered in her hands.

The clock strikes. I step back, then let her undress me. My heart beats a little smoother.

She puts me in my bed, unlooses the curtains— now the night might be any night, any at all. I hear her in her own room, unfastening her gown: if I lift my head and look through the gap in my curtains I will see her upon her knees with her eyes hard shut, her hands pressed together like a child's, her lips moving. She prays every night to be taken home; and for safety as she slumbers.

While she does it, I unlock my little wooden box and whisper cruel words to my mother's portrait. I close my eyes. I think, / shall not study your face!— but, once having thought it, I know I must do it or lie sleepless and grow ill. I look hard into her pale eyes. Do you think of your mother, he said, and feel her madness in you?

Do I?

I put the portrait away, and call for Agnes to bring me a tumbler of water. I take a drop of my old medicine— then, unsure that that will calm me, I take another. Then I lie still, my hair put back. My hands, inside their gloves, begin to tingle. Agnes stands and waits. Her own hair is let down— coarse hair, red hair, coarser and redder than ever against the fine white stuff of her nightdress. One slender collar-bone is marked a delicate blue with what is

perhaps only a shadow, but might— I cannot remember— be a bruise.

I feel the drops at last, sour in my stomach.

'That's all,' I say. 'Go on.'

I hear her climb into her bed, draw up her blankets. There is a silence. After a little time there comes a creak, a whisper, the faint groan of machinery: my uncle's clock, shifting its gears. I lie and wait for sleep. It does not come. Instead, my limbs grow restless and begin to twitch. I feel, too hard, my blood— I feel the bafflement of it, at the dead points of my fingers and my toes. I raise my head, call softly: 'Agnes!' She does not hear; or hears, but fears to answer. 'Agnes!'— At last, the sound of my own voice unnerves me. I give it up, lie still. The clock groans again, then strikes. Then come other sounds, far-off. My uncle keeps early hours. Closing doors, lowered voices, shoes upon the stairs: the gentlemen are leaving the drawing- room and going each to their separate chambers.

Perhaps I sleep, then— but if I do, it is only for a moment. For suddenly I give a start, and am wide awake; and I know that what has roused me is not sound, but movement.

Movement, and light. Beyond the bed-curtain the rush- lamp's wick has flared suddenly bright, and the doors and the window-glasses are straining against their frames.

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The house has opened its mouth, and is breathing.

Then I know that, after all, this night is not like any other. As if summoned to it by a calling voice, I rise. I stand at the doorway to Agnes's room until I am sure, from the evenness of her breaths, that she is sleeping; then I take up my lamp and go, on naked feet, to my drawing-room. I go to the window and stand at the glass, cup my hands against their own feeble reflection, peer through the darkness at the sweep of gravel, the edge of lawn, that I know lie below. For a time I see nothing. Then I hear the soft fall of a shoe, and then another, still softer. Then comes the single noiseless flaring of a match between slender fingers; and a face, made hollow-eyed and garish as it tilts towards the flame.

Richard Rivers keeps restless as I; and walks upon the lawns of Briar, perhaps hoping for sleep.

Cold weather for walking. About the tip of his cigarette, his breath shows whiter than the smoke of his tobacco. He gathers his collar about his throat. Then he looks up. He seems to know what he will see. He does not nod, or make any gesture; only holds my gaze. The cigarette fades, glows bright, fades again. His stance grows more deliberate.

He moves his head; and all at once I understand what he is doing. He is surveying the face of the house. He is counting the windows.

He is calculating his way to my room!— and when he is certain of his route he lets his cigarette fall and crushes the glowing point of it beneath his heel. He comes back across the gravel-walk and someone— Mr Way, I suppose— admits him. I cannot see that. I only hear the front door open, feel the movement of the air. Again my lamp flares, and the window-glass bulges. This time, however, the house seems holding its breath.

I step back with my hands before my mouth, my eyes on my own soft face: it has started back into the darkness beyond the glass, and seems to swim, or hang, in space.

I think, He won't do it! He dare not do it! Then I think: He will. I go to the door and put my ear against the wood. I hear a voice, and then a tread. The tread grows soft, another door closes— of course, he will wait for Mr Way to go to his bed. He will wait for that.

I take up my lamp and go quickly, quickly: the shade throws crescents of light upon the walls. I have not time to dress— cannot dress, without Agnes to help me— but know I must not see him in my nightgown. I find stockings, garters, slippers, a cloak.

My hair, that is loose, I try to fasten; but I am clumsy with the pins, and my gloves— and the medicine I have swallowed— make me clumsier. I grow afraid. My heart beats quick again, but now it beats against the drops, it is like a vessel beating hard against the pull of a sluggish river. I put my hand to it, and feel the yielding of my breast— unlaced, it feels; unguarded, unsafe.

But the tug of the drops is greater than the resistance of my fear.

That is the point of them, after all. For restlessness. When at length he comes, tapping at my door with his fingernail, I think I seem calm to him. I say at once, 'You know my maid is very close— asleep, but close. One cry will wake her.' He bows and says nothing.

Do I suppose he will try to kiss me? He does not do that. He only comes very 141

stealthily into the room and gazes about him in the same cool, thoughtful way in which I saw him take his measure of the house. He says, 'Let us keep from the window, the light shows plainly from the lawn.' Then, nodding to the inner door: 'Is that where she lies? She won't hear us? You are sure?'

Do I think he will embrace me? He never once steps close. But I feel the cool of the night, still clinging to his coat. I smell the tobacco on his hair, his whiskers, his mouth.

I do not remember him so tall. I move to one side of the sofa and stand tensely, gripping the back of it. He keeps at the other, leans into the space between us, and speaks in whispers.

He says, 'Forgive me, Miss Lilly. This is not how I would have met you. But I have come to Briar, after so much careful labour; and tomorrow I may be obliged to leave without seeing you. You understand me. I make no judgement on your receiving me like this. If your girl stirs, you are to say that you were wakeful; that I found out your room and came, without invitation. I've been guilty of as much, in other men's houses.— It's as well you know at once, what manner of fellow I am. But here, Miss Lilly, tonight, I mean you no sort of harm. I think you do understand me? I think you did wish me to come?'

I say, 'I understand that you have found out something you think perhaps a secret: that my mother was a lunatic; that my uncle had me from a ward of the place she died in.

But that is no secret, anyone might know it; the very servants here know it. I am forbidden to forget it. I am sorry for you, if you meant to profit by it.'

'I am sorry,' he says, 'to have been obliged to remind you of it again. It means nothing to me, except as it has led to your coming to Briar and being kept by your uncle in s u c h a c u r i o u s w a y . I t i s h e , I t h i n k , w h o h a s p r o f i t e d f r o m y o u r m o t h e r ' s misfortune.— You'll forgive my speaking plainly. I am a sort of villain, and know other

villains best. Your uncle is the worst kind, for he keeps to his own house, where his villainy passes as an old man's quirk. Don't tell me you love him,' he adds quickly, seeing my face, 'for manners' sake. I know you are above them. That is why I have come like this. We make our own manners, you and I; or take the ones that suit us.

But for now, will you sit and let me speak with you, as a gentleman to a lady?'

He gestures and, after a second— as if we might be awaiting the maid and the tea- tray— w e t a k e o u r p l a c e s o n t h e s o f a . M y d a r k c l o a k g a p e s a n d s h o w s m y nightgown. He turns his eyes while I draw close the folds.

'Now, to tell you what I know,' he says.

'I know you gain nothing unless you marry. I first had it from Hawtrey. They speak about you— perhaps you know— in the shady bookshops and publishers' houses of London and Paris. They speak about you, as of some fabulous creature: the handsome girl at Briar, whom Lilly has trained, like a chattering monkey, to recite voluptuous texts for gentlemen— perhaps to do worse. I needn't tell you all they say, I suppose you can guess it. That's nothing to me.' He holds my gaze, then looks away. 'Hawtrey, at least, is a little kinder; and thinks me honest, which is more to our point. He told me, in a pitying sort of way, a little of your life— your unfortunate mother— y o u r expectations, the conditions attached. Well, one hears of such girls, when one is a 142

bachelor; perhaps not one in a hundred is worth the pursuit. . . But Hawtrey was right.

I have made enquiries into your mother's fortune, and you are worth— well, do you know what you are worth, Miss Lilly?'

I hesitate, then shake my head. He names the figure. It is several hundred times the value of the costliest book upon my uncle's shelves; and many thousand times the price of the cheapest. This is the only measure of value I know.

'It is a great sum,' says Mr Rivers, watching my face.

I nod.

'It shall be ours,' he says, 'if we marry'

I say nothing.

'Let me be honest,' he goes on. 'I came to Briar, meaning to get you in the ordinary way— I mean, seduce you from your uncle's house, secure your fortune, perhaps dispose of you after. I saw in ten minutes what your life has made of you, and knew I should never achieve it. More, I understood that to seduce you would be to insult you— to make you only a different kind of captive. I don't wish to do that.

I wish rather to free you.'

'You are very gallant,' I say. 'Suppose I don't care to be freed?'

He answers simply: 'I think you long for it.'

Then I turn my face— afraid that the beating of blood, across my cheek, will betray me to him. My voice I make steady. I say, 'You forget, my longings count for nothing here. As well might my uncle's books long to leap from their presses. He has made me like them— '

'Yes, yes,' he says, in impatience. 'You have said as much to me already. I think perhaps you say it often. But, what can such a phrase mean? You are seventeen. I am twenty-eight, and believed for many years I should be rich now, and idle. Instead I am what you see me: a scoundrel, not too poor in pocket, but nor too easy in it that I shan't be scrambling to line it for a little time to come. Do you think yourself weary?

Think how weary am I! I have done many gross deeds, and thought each one the last.

Believe me: I have some knowledge of the time that may be misspent, clinging to fictions and supposing them truths.'

He has lifted his hand to his head, and now puts back his hair from his brow; and his pallor, and the dark about his eye, seem suddenly to age him. His collar is soft, and creased from the grip of his neck-tie. His beard has a single strand of grey. His throat bulges queerly, as men's throats do: as if inviting the blow that will crush it.

I say, 'This is madness. I think you are mad— to come here, to confess yourself a villain, to suppose me willing to receive you.'

'And yet you have received me. You receive me still. You have not called for your maid.'

'You intrigue me. You have seen for yourself, the evenness of my days here.'

'You seek a distraction from those? Why not give them up, for ever? So you shall— like that, in a moment! gone!— when you marry me.'

I shake my head. 'I think you cannot be serious.'

'I am, however.'

'You know my age. You know my uncle would never permit you to take me.'

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He shrugs, speaks lightly. 'We shall resort, of course, to devious methods.'

'You wish to make a villain of me, too?'

He nods. 'I do. But then, I think you are half a villain already.— Don't look like that.

Don't suppose I am joking. You don't know all.' He has grown serious. 'I am offering you something very great and strange. Not the commonplace subjection of a wife to a husband— that servitude, to lawful ravishment and theft, that the world terms wedlock. I shan't ask you for that, that is not what I mean. I am speaking, rather, of liberty. A liberty of a kind not often granted to the members of your sex.'

'Yet to be achieved'— I almost laugh— 'by a marriage?'

'To be achieved by a ceremony of marriage, performed under certain unusual conditions.' Again he smooths his hair, and swallows; and I see at last that he is nervous— more nervous than I. He leans closer. He says, 'I suppose you're not squeamish, or soft about the heart, as another girl might be? I suppose your maid is really sleeping, and not listening at the door?'

I think of Agnes, of Agnes's bruises; but say nothing, only watch him. He passes his hand across his mouth.

'God help me, Miss Lilly, if I have misjudged you!' he says. 'Now, listen.'

This is his plan. He means to bring a girl to Briar, from London, and install her as my maid. He means to use her, then cheat her. He says he has a girl in mind, a girl of my years and colouring. A sort of thief— not over-scrupulous, not too clever in her ways, he says; he thinks he will secure her with the promise of some slight share in the fortune— 'Say, two or three thousand. I don't believe she'll have the ambition to ask for more. Her set are a small set, as crooks go; though, like crooks everywhere, think themselves grander.' He shrugs. The sum means nothing, after all: for he will agree to whatever she asks for; and she will not see a shilling of it. She will suppose me an innocent, and believe herself assisting in my seduction. She will persuade me, first, into marriage with him, then into a— he hesitates, before admitting the word— a madhouse. But, there she will take my place. She will protest— he hopes she will!— for the more she does, the more the madhouse keepers will read it as a form of lunacy; and so keep her the closer.

'And with her, Miss Lilly,' he says finally, 'they keep close your name, your history as your mother's daughter, your uncle's niece— in short, all that marks you as yourself.

Think of it! They will pluck from your shoulders the weight of your life, as a servant would lift free your cloak; and you shall make your naked, invisible way to any part of the world you choose— to any new life— and there re-clothe yourself to suit your fancy.'

This is the liberty— the rare and sinister liberty— he has come to Briar to offer. For payment he wants my trust, my promise, my future silence; and one half of my fortune.

When he has finished I sit not speaking, my face turned from his, for almost a minute.

What I say at last is:

'We should never achieve it.'

He answers at once: 'I think we will.'

'The girl would suspect us.'

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'She will be distracted by the plot into which I shall draw her. She will be like everyone, putting on the things she sees the constructions she expects to find there.

She will look at you, here, knowing nothing of your uncle— who wouldn't, in her place, believe you innocent?'

'And her people, the thieves: shan't they look for her?'

'They shall look— as a thousand thieves look every day for the friends who have cheated and robbed them; and, finding nothing, they'll suppose her flown, and curse her for a while, and then forget her.'

'Forget her? Are you sure? Has she no— no mother?'

He shrugs. 'A sort of mother. A guardian, an aunt. She loses children all the time. I don't think she will trouble very hard over one child more. Especially if she supposes— as I mean that she

will— that the child has turned out swindler. Do you see? Her own reputation will help to bury her. Crooked girls can't expect to be cared for, like honest ones.' He pauses.

'They will watch her more closely, however, in the place we'll put her.'

I gaze away from him. 'A madhouse . . .'

'I am sorry for that,' he says quickly. 'But your own reputation— your own mother's reputation— will work for us there, just as our crooked girl's will. You must see how it will. You have been held in thrall to it, all these years. Here is your chance to profit by it, once; then be free of it, for ever.'

I still look away. Again, I am afraid he will see how deeply his words have stirred me.

I am almost afraid of how deeply they stir me, myself. I say, 'You speak as though my freedom were something to you. It's the money you care for.'

'I've admitted as much, have I not? But then, your freedom and my money are the same. That will be your safeguard, your insurance, until our fortune is secure. You may trust yourself, till then, not to my honour— for I have none— but, say, to my cupidity; which is anyway a greater thing than honour, in the world outside these walls. You will find that out. I might teach you how to profit from it. We can take some house, in London, as man and wife.— Live separately, of course,' he adds, with a smile, 'when the door of the house is closed .. . Once our money is got, however, your future will be your own; you must only be silent, then, as to the manner in which you got it. You understand me? Being once committed to this thing, we must be true to each other, or founder. I don't speak lightly. I don't wish to mislead you as to the nature of the business I'm proposing. Perhaps your uncle's care has kept you from a knowledge of the law ..."

'My uncle's care,' I say, 'has made me ready to consider any strategy that will relieve me of the burden of it. But— '

He waits and, when I add nothing, says, 'Well, I don't expect to hear you give me your decision now. I t ' s m y a i m t h a t y o u r u n c l e w i l l k e e p m e h e r e , t o w o r k o n h i s pictures— I am to view them tomorrow. If he does not, then we shall anyway be obliged to reconsider. But there are ways about that, as about everything.'

He passes his hand again before his eyes, and again looks older.

The clock has struck the twelve, the fire has died an hour before, and the room is terribly chill. I feel it, all at once. He sees me shiver. I think he reads it as fear, or 145

doubt. He leans, and at last takes my hand in his. He says, 'Miss Lilly, you say your freedom is nothing to me; but how could I see the life that is yours— how could any honest man see you kept down, made a slave to lewdness, leered at and insulted by fellows like Huss— and not wish to free you of it? Think of what I have proposed.

Then think of your choices. You may wait for another suitor: shall you find one, among the gentlemen your uncle's work brings here? And, if you do, shall he be as scrupulous as I, in the handling of your fortune?— of your person? Or, say you wait for your uncle to die, and find a liberty that way; meantime, his eyes have faded, his limbs have a tremor, he has worked you the harder as he has felt his powers fail. By then you are— what age? Say thirty- five, or forty. You have given your youth to the curating of books, of a kind that Hawtrey sells, for a shilling, to drapers' boys and clerks. Your fortune sits untouched in the vault of a bank. Your consolation is to be mistress of Briar— where the clock strikes off the hollow half- hours of all the life that is left to you, one by one.'

As he speaks, I look not at his face; but at my own foot in its slipper. I think again of the vision I have sometimes had— of myself, as a limb bound tight to a form it longs to outgrow. With the drops in me the vision is fiercer, I see the limb made crooked, the flesh sour and grow dense. I sit quite still, then raise my eyes to his. He is watching me, waiting to know if he has won me. He has. Not by what he has told me, about my future at Briar— for he has said nothing that I have not, long ago, already concluded for myself; but by the fact that he is here, telling it at all— that he has plotted, and travelled, forty miles— that he has stolen his way to the heart of the sleeping house, to my dark room, to me.

Of the girl in London— who, in less than a month, he will persuade to her doom by a similar method; and to whom, a little later, with tears on my cheek, I will repeat his own arguments— I think nothing, nothing at all.

I say, 'Tomorrow, when you are shown my uncle's pictures: praise the Romano, though the Caracci is more rare. Praise Morland over Rowlandson. He thinks Rowlandson a hack.'

That is all I say. It is enough, I suppose. He holds my gaze, nods, does not smile— I think he knows I should not like to see him smile, at such a moment. He looses his grip about my fingers and then he stands, straightening his coat. That breaks the spell of our conspiracy: now he is large, dark, out of place. I hope he will leave. Again I shiver and, seeing that, he says, 'I'm afraid I've kept you very late. You must be cold, and tired.'

He watches. Perhaps he is gauging my strength and beginning to grow doubtful. I shiver harder. He says, 'You won't be troubled— too troubled— by all I've said?'

I shake my head. But I am afraid to rise from the sofa, in case I tremble upon my legs and seem to him weak. I say, 'Will you go?'

'You are sure?'

'Quite sure. I shall do better if you leave me.'

'Of course.'

He would like to say more. I turn my face and will not let him, and in time hear his careful tread upon the carpet, the gentle opening and closing of the door. I sit a 146

moment, then lift my feet, tuck the skirts of my cloak about my legs, raise my hood, lie with my head upon the hard and dusty sofa cushion.

This is not my bed, and the hour for bed has sounded and passed, and there are none of the things— my mother's portrait, my box, my maid— about me, that I like to have close while I lie sleeping. But tonight, all things are out of their order, all my patterns have been disturbed. My liberty beckons: gaugeless, fearful, inevitable as death.

I sleep, and dream I am moving, swiftly, in a high-prowed boat, upon a dark and silent water.

C h a p t e r Nine

I suppose that even then— or rather, especially then, when our compact is so new, so unproved, its threads still slender and weak— I suppose that even then I might draw back, unloose myself from the tugging of his ambition. I believe I wake thinking I will; for the room— the room in which, in whispers, at the hush of midnight, he took my hand, unfolded his dangerous plan, like a man putting back the rustling wrappers about a poison— the room reassembles itself in the chill half- hour of dawn into all its rigid familiar lines. I lie and watch it. I know every curve and angle. I know them, too well. I remember weeping, as a girl of eleven, at the strangeness of Briar— at the silence, the stillness, the turning passages and cluttered walls. I supposed then that those things would be strange to me for ever, I felt their strangeness make me strange— make me a thing of points and hooks, a burr, a splinter in the gullet of the house. But Briar crept on me. Briar absorbed me. Now I feel the simple weight of the woollen cloak with which I have covered

myself and think, / shall never escape! I am not meant to escape! Briar will never let me!

But, I am wrong. Richard Rivers has come into Briar like a spore of yeast into dough, changing it utterly. When I go, at eight o'clock, to the library, I am sent away: he is there with my uncle, looking over the prints. They pass three hours together. And when, in the afternoon, I am summoned downstairs to make my farewells to the gentlemen, it is only Mr Hawtrey and Mr Huss that I must give my hand to. I find them in the hall, fastening their greatcoats, drawing on their gloves, while my uncle leans upon his cane and Richard stands, a little way off, his hands in his pockets, looking on. He sees me first. He meets my gaze, but makes no gesture. Then the others hear my step and lift their heads to watch me. Mr Hawtrey smiles.

'Here comes fair Galatea,' he says.

Mr Huss has put on his hat. Now he takes it off. 'The nymph,' he asks, his eyes on my face, 'or the statue?'

'Well, both,' Mr Hawtrey says; 'but I meant the statue. Miss Lilly shows as pale, don't you think?' He takes my hand. 'How my daughters would envy you! They eat clay, 147

you know, to whiten their complexions? Pure clay' He shakes his head. 'I do think the fashion for pallor a most unhealthy one. As for you, Miss Lilly, I am struck again— as I always am, when I must leave you!— by the unfairness of your uncle keeping you here in such a miserable, mushroom- like way.'

'I am quite used to it,' I say quietly. 'Besides, I think the gloom makes me show paler than I am. Does Mr Rivers not go with you?'

'The gloom is the culprit. Really, Mr Lilly, I can barely make out the buttons on my coat. Do you mean never to join civilised society, and bring gas to Briar?'

'Not while I keep books,' says my uncle.

'Say never, then. Rivers, gas poisons books. Did you know?'

'I did not,' says Richard. Then he turns to me, and adds, in a lower voice: 'No, Miss Lilly, I am not to go up to London just yet. Your uncle has been kind enough to offer me a little work among his prints. We share a passion, it seems, for Morland.'

His eye is dark— if a blue eye can be dark. Mr Hawtrey says,

'Now Mr Lilly, how's this for an idea: What say, while the mounting of the prints is in progress, you let your niece make a visit to Holywell Street? Shouldn't you like a holiday, Miss Lilly, in London? There, I see by your look that you should.'

'She should not,' says my uncle.

Mr Huss draws close. His coat is thick and he is sweating. He takes the tips of my fingers. 'Miss Lilly,' he says. 'If I might ever— '

'Come come,' says my uncle. 'Now you grow tedious. Here's my coachman, look.

Maud, do you step back from the door ..."

'Fools,' he says, when the gentlemen have gone. 'Eh, Rivers? But come, I'm impatient to begin. You have your tools?'

'I can fetch them, sir, in a moment.'

He bows, and goes. My uncle makes to follow. Then he turns, to look at me. He looks, in a considering sort of way, then beckons me closer. 'Give me your hand, Maud,' he says. I think he means to have me support him on the stairs. But when I offer him my arm he takes it, holds it, raises my wrist to his face, draws back the sleeve and squints at the strip of skin exposed. He peers at my cheek. 'Pale, do they say? Pale as mushroom? Hmm?' He works his mouth. 'You know what kind of matter mushrooms spring from?

Ho!' He laughs. 'Not pale, now!'

I have coloured and drawn away. Still laughing, he lets fall my hand, turns from me, begins to mount the stairs alone. He wears a pair of soft list slippers, that show his stockinged heels; and I watch him climb, imagining my spite a whip, a stick, with which I could lash at his feet and make him stumble.

I am standing, thinking this, hearing his step fade, when Richard returns to the gallery from the floors above. He does not look for me, does not know that I am there, still there, in the shadow of the fastened front door. He only walks; but he walks briskly, his fingers drumming the gallery rail. I think perhaps he even whistles, or hums. We are not used to such sounds at Briar, and with my passion raised and set smarting by my uncle's words they strike me now as thrilling, perilous, like a shifting of timbers and beams. I think the dust must be rising in a cloud from the antique carpets beneath his

148

shoes; and when I raise my eyes to follow his tread I am sure I can see fine crumbs of paint flake and tumble from the ceiling. The

sight makes me giddy. I imagine the house walls cracking__

gaping— collapsing in the concussion of his presence. I am only afraid they will do so before I have had my chance to escape.

But I am afraid, too, of escaping. I think he knows it. He cannot speak privately with me, once Mr Huss and Mr Hawtrey have gone; and he does not dare to steal his way, a second time, to my own rooms. But he knows he must secure me to his plan. He waits, and watches. He takes his supper with us, still; but sits at my uncle's side, not mine.

One night, however, he breaks their conversation to say this:

'It troubles me, Miss Lilly, to think of how bored you must be, now I have come and taken your uncle's attention from his Index. I imagine you are longing to return to your work among the books.'

'The books?' I say. Then, letting my gaze fall to my plate of broken meat: 'Very much, of course.'

'Then I wish I might do something, to make the burden of your days a little lighter.

Have you no work— no painting or sketching, material of that sort— that I might mount for you, in my own time? I think you must. For I see you have many handsome prospects, from the windows of the house.'

He raises a brow, as a conductor of music might raise a baton. Of course, I am nothing if not obedient. I say, 'I cannot paint, or draw. I have never been taught it.'

'What, never?— Forgive me, Mr Lilly. Your niece strikes one as being so competent a mistress of the general run of the female arts, I should have said— But, you know, we might remedy this, with very little trouble. Miss Lilly could take lessons from me, sir.

Might I not teach her, in my afternoons? I have a little experience in the field: I taught drawing for all of one season at Paris, to the daughters of a Comte.'

My uncle screws up his eyes. 'Drawing?' he says. 'What would my niece want with that? Do you mean to assist us, Maud, in the making up of the albums?'

'I mean drawing for its own sake, sir,' says Richard gently, before I can reply.

'For its own sake?' My uncle blinks at me. 'Maud, what do you

say?'

'I'm afraid I have no skill.'

'No skill? Well, that may be true. Certainly your hand, when I first had you here, was ungainly enough; and tends to slope, even now. Tell me, Rivers: should a course of instruction in drawing help the firmness of my niece's hand?'

'I should say it would, sir, most definitely.'

'Then, Maud, do you let Mr Rivers teach you. I don't care, anyhow, to imagine you idle. Hmm?'

'Yes, sir,' I say.

Richard looks on, a sheen of blandness across his gaze like the filmy lid that guards a cat's eye as it slumbers. My uncle bending to his plate, however, he quickly meets my look: then the film draws back, the eye is bared; and the sudden intimacy of his expression makes me shudder.

Don't misunderstand me. Don't think me more scrupulous than I am. It's true I shudder 149

in fear— fear of his plot— fear of its success, as well as of its failure. But I tremble, too, at the boldness of him— or rather, his boldness sets me quivering, as they say a vibrating string will find out unsuspected sympathies in the fibres of idle bodies. I saw in ten minutes what your life has made of you, he said to me, that first night. And then: I think you are half a villain already. He was right. If I never knew that villainy before— or if, knowing it, I never named it— I know it, name it, now.

I know it, when he comes each day to my room, raises my hand to his mouth, touches his lips to my knuckles, rolls his cold, blue, devilish eyes. If Agnes sees, she does not understand. She thinks it gallantry. It is gallantry!— The gallantry of rogues. She will watch while we put out paper, leads and paints. She will see him take his place at my side, guide my fingers in the making of curves and crooked lines. He will drop his voice. Men's voices do badly in murmurs, as a rule— they break, they jar, they long to rise— but his can

fall, insinuate, and yet, like a musical note, stay clear; and while she sits and sews, half the length of a room away, he will take me, in secret, point by point across his s c h e m e , u n t i l t h e s c h e m e i s p e r f e c t . ' V e r y g o o d , ' h e ' l l s a y — l i k e a p r o p e r drawing- master with an able girl. 'Very good. You learn quickly'

He will smile. He will straighten and put back his hair. He will look at Agnes and find her eyes on his. Her gaze will flutter away. 'Well, Agnes,' he'll say, marking her nervousness like a hunter marks his bird, 'what do you say to your mistress's gifts as an artist?' 'Oh, sir! I couldn't hope to judge.'

He might take up a pencil, go closer to her. 'You see how I have Miss Lilly hold the lead? Her grip is a lady's grip, however, and needs firming. I think your hand, Agnes, would bear a pencil better. Here, won't you try?'

Once he takes her fingers. She colours scarlet at his touch. 'Do you blush?' he says then, in amazement. 'You don't suppose I mean to insult you?' 'No, sir!'

'Well, why do you blush?' -

'I am only a little warm, sir.' 'Warm, in December

?'

And so on. He has a talent for torment, quite as polished as my own; and I ought, in observing this, to grow cautious. I do not. The more he teases, the more bewildered Agnes becomes, the more— like a top, revolving faster at the goading of a whip!— the more I taunt her myself.

Agnes,' I say, while she undresses me or brushes out my hair, 'what are you thinking of? Of Mr Rivers?' I stop her wrist, feel the grinding of the bones inside it. 'Do you think him handsome, Agnes? You do, I see it in your eye! And don't young girls want handsome men?'

'Indeed, miss, I don't know!'

'Do you say that? Then you're a liar.' I pinch her, in some soft part of her flesh— for of course, by now I know them all. 'You're a liar and a flirt. Will you put those crimes upon your list, when you kneel beside your bed and ask your Father to forgive you?

Do you

think He will forgive you, Agnes? I think He must forgive a redheaded girl, for she can't help it that she's wicked, it's in her nature to be so. He would be cruel indeed, to put a passion in her, and then to punish her for feeling it. Don't you think? Don't you 150

feel your passion, when Mr Rivers gazes at you? Don't you listen for the sound of his quick step?'

She says she doesn't. She swears it, against her own mother's life! God knows what she really thinks. She must only say it, or the play will founder. She must say it and be bruised, and keep the habit of her innocence complete; and I must bruise her. I must bruise her, for all the commonplace wanting of him that— were I an ordinary girl, with an ordinary heart— I would surely feel myself.

I never do feel it. Don't imagine I do. Does de Merteuil feel it, for Valmont? I don't want to feel it. I should hate myself, if I did! For I know it, from my uncle's books, for too squalid a thing— an itch, like the itch of inflamed flesh, to be satisfied hecticly, wetly, in closets and behind screens. What he has called up in me, set stirring in my breast— that dark propinquity— is something altogether rarer. I might say, it rises like a shadow in the house, or creeps like a bloom across its walls. But the house is full of shadows and stains, already; and so no-one marks it.

No-one, perhaps, save Mrs Stiles. For I think only she, of anyone there, ever gazes at Richard and wonders if he is all the gentleman he claims to be. I catch her look, sometimes. I believe she sees through him. I believe she thinks he has come to cheat me and do me harm. But, thinking it— and hating me— she keeps the thought to herself; and nurses her hope of my ruin, smiling, as she once nursed her dying child.

These, then, are the metals with which our trap is made, the forces that prime it and sharpen its teeth. And when it is all complete— 'Now,' says Richard, 'our work begins.

'We must get rid of Agnes.'

He says it in a whisper, with his eyes upon her, as she sits at the window bent over her work. He says it so coolly, with so steady a gaze, I am almost afraid of him. I think I draw back. Then he looks at me.

'You know that we must,' he says.

'Of course.'

'And you understand how?'

I have not, until this moment. Now I see his face.

'It's quite the only way,' he goes on, 'with virtuous girls like that. Will stop up a mouth, better even than menaces, or coins . . .' He has picked up a paintbrush, puts the hairs to his lip and begins to run them, idly, back and forth. 'Don't trouble with the details,'

he says smoothly. 'There's not much to it. Not much, at all— ' He smiles. She has looked up from her work, and he has caught her eye. 'How is the day, Agnes?' he calls.

'Still fair?'

'Quite fair, sir.'

'Good. Very good . . .' Then she must I suppose lower her head, for the kindness sinks from his face. He puts the paintbrush to his tongue and sucks the hairs into a point. 'I'll do it tonight,' he says, thoughtfully. 'Shall I? I will. I'll make my way to her room, as I made my way to yours. All you must do is, give me fifteen minutes alone with her'— again he looks at me— 'and not come, if she cries out.'

It has seemed, until this point, a sort of game. Don't gentlemen and young ladies, in country houses, play games— flirt and intrigue? Now comes the first failing, or shrinking back, of my heart. When Agnes undresses me that night, I cannot look at her.

151

I turn my head. 'You may close the door to your room, this once,' I say; and I feel her hesitate— perhaps catch the weakness in my voice, grow puzzled. I do not watch her leave me. I hear the clicking of the latch, the murmur of her prayers; I hear the murmur broken off, when he comes to her door. She does not cry out, after all. Should I really be able to keep from going to her, if she did? I do not know. But, she does not, her voice only lifts high, in surprise, in indignation and then— I suppose— a kind of panic; but then it drops, is stifled or soothed, gives way in a moment to whispers, to the rub of linen or limbs . . . Then the rub becomes silence. And the silence is worst of all: not an absence of sound, but teeming— as they say clear water teems, when viewed through a lens— with kicks and squirming

movements. I imagine her shuddering, weeping, her clothes put back— but her freckled arms closing, despite herself, about his plunging back, her white mouth seeking out his—

I put my hands to my own mouth; and feel the dry chafe of my gloves. Then I stop up my ears. I don't hear it when he leaves her. I don't know what she does when he is gone. I let the door stay closed; take drops, at last, to help me sleep; and then, next day, wake late. I hear her calling, weakly, from her bed. She says she is ill. She parts her lips, to show me the lining of her mouth. It is red and raised and swollen.

'Scarlet fever,' she whispers, not meeting my gaze.

There are fears, then, of infection. Fears, of that! She is moved to an attic, and plates of vinegar burned in her room— the smell makes me sick. I see her again, but only once, the day she comes to make me her good-bye. She seems thin, and dark about the eye; and her hair is cut. I reach for her hand, and she flinches, perhaps expecting a blow; I only kiss her, lightly, on her wrist.

Then she looks at me in scorn.

'You are soft on me now,' she says, drawing back her arm, pulling down her sleeve,

'now you've another to be hard to. Good luck to you trying. I'd like to see you bruise him, before he bruises you.'

Her words shake me a little— but only a little; and when she is gone, it seems to me that I forget her. For Richard is also gone— gone three days before, on my uncle's business, and on ours— and my thoughts are all with him, with him and with London.

London! where I have never been, but which I have imagined so fiercely, so often, I am sure I know. London, where I will find my liberty, cast off my self, live to another pattern— live without patterns, without hides and bindings— without books! I will ban paper from my house!

I lie upon my bed and try to imagine the house that I will take, in London. I cannot do i t . I s e e o n l y a s e r i e s o f v o l u p t u o u s r o o m s — d i m r o o m s , c l o s e r o o m s , rooms-within- rooms— dungeons and cells— the rooms of Priapus and Venus.— The thought unnerves me. I give it up. The house will come clearer in time, I am sure of it.

I rise and walk and think again of Richard, making his passage across the city, picking his way through the night to the dark thieves' den, close to the river. I think of him roughly greeted by crooks, I think of him casting off his coat and hat, warming his hands at a fire, looking about him. I think of him, Macheath- like, counting off a set of vicious faces— Mrs Vixen, Betty Doxy, Jenny Diver, Molly Brazen— until he finds the 152

face he seeks . . .

Suky Tawdry.

Her. I think of her. I think so hard of her I think I know her colour— fair— her figure— plump— her walk, the shade of her eye.— I am sure it is blue. I begin to dream of her. In the dreams she speaks and I hear her voice. She says my name, and laughs.

I think I am dreaming of her when Margaret comes to my room with a letter, from him.

She's ours, he writes.

I read it, then fall back upon my pillow and hold the letter to my mouth. I put my lips to the paper. He might be my lover, after all— or, she might. For I could not want her now, more than I could a lover.

But I could not want a lover, more than I want freedom.

I put his letter upon the fire, then draw up my reply: Send her at once. I am sure I shall love her. She shall be the dearer to me for coming from London, where you are!— we settled on the wording before he left.

That done, I need only wait, one day and then another. The day after that is the day she comes.

She is due at Marlow at three o'clock. I send William Inker for her, in good time. But though I sit and seem to feel her drawing close, the trap comes back without her: the trains are late, there are fogs. I pace, and cannot settle. At five o'clock I send William again— again he comes back. Then I must take supper with my uncle. While Charles pours out my wine I ask him, 'Any news yet, of Miss Smith?'— My uncle hearing me whisper, however, he sends Charles away.

'Do you prefer to talk with servants, Maud, than with me?' he says. He is peevish, since Richard left us.

He chooses a book of little punishments for me to read from, after the meal: the steady recitation of cruelty makes me calmer. But when I go up to my chill and silent rooms, I grow fretful again; and after Margaret has undressed me and put me into my bed, I rise, and walk— stand now at the fire, now at the door, now at the window, looking out for the light of the trap. Then I see it. It shows feebly in the fog— seems to glow, rather than to shine— and to flash, with the motion of the horse and the passage of the trap behind the trees, like a thing of warning. I watch it come, my hand at my heart. It draws close— slows, narrows, fades— I see beyond it, then, the horse, the cart, William, a vaguer figure. They drive to the rear of the house, and I run to Agnes's room— Susan's room, it will be now— and stand at the window there; and finally see her.

She is lifting her head, gazing up at the stables, the clock. William jumps from his seat and helps her to the ground. She holds a hood about her face. She is dressed darkly, and seems small.

But, she is real. The plot is real.— I feel the force of it all at once, and tremble.

It is too late to receive her, now. Instead I must wait further, while she is given a supper and brought to her room; and then I must lie, hearing her step and murmur, my eyes upon the door— an inch or two of desiccated wood!— that lies between her 153

chamber and

mine.

Once I rise and go stealthily to it, and put my ear to the panels; but hear nothing.

Next morning I have Margaret carefully dress me, and while she pulls at my laces I say, 'I believe Miss Smith has come. Did you see her, Margaret?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Do you think she will do?'

'Do, miss?'

'As girl to me.'

She tosses her head. 'Seemed rather low in her manners,' she says. 'Been half a dozen times to France and I don't know where, though. Made sure Mr Inker knew that.'

'Well, we must be kind to her. It will seem dull to her here, perhaps, after London.'

She says nothing. 'Will you have Mrs Stiles bring her to me, so soon as she has taken her breakfast?'

I have lain all night, sometimes sleeping, sometimes waking, oppressed with the nearness and obscurity of her. I must see her now, before I go to my uncle, or I fear I will grow ill. At last, at half-past seven or so, I hear an unfamiliar tread in the passage that leads from the servants' staircase; and then Mrs Stiles's murmur: 'Here we are.'

There comes a knock upon my door. How should I stand? I stand at the fire. Does my voice sound queer, when I call out? Does she mark it? Does she hold her breath? I know I hold mine; then I feel myself colour, and will the blood from my face. The door is opened. Mrs Stiles comes first and, after a moment's hesitation, she is before me: Susan— Susan Smith— Suky Tawdry— the gullible girl, who is to take my life from me and give me freedom.

Sharper than expectation, comes dismay. I have supposed she will resemble me, I have supposed she will be handsome: but she is a small, slight, spotted thing, with hair the colour of dust. Her chin comes almost to a point. Her eyes are brown, darker than mine. Her gaze is now too frank, now sly: she gives me a single, searching look that takes in my gown, my gloves, my slippers, the very clocks upon my stockings.

Then she blinks— remembers her training, I suppose— makes a hasty curtsey. She is pleased with the curtsey, I can tell. She is pleased with me. She thinks me a fool. The idea upsets me, more than it should. I think, You have come to Briar to ruin me. I step to take her hand. Won't you colour, or tremble, or hide your eyes? But she returns my gaze and her fingers— which are bitten, about the nails— are cold and hard and perfectly steady in mine.

We are watched by Mrs Stiles. Her look says plainly: 'Here is the girl you sent for, to London. She is about good enough for you, I think.'

'You need not stay, Mrs Stiles,' I say. And then, as she turns to go: 'But you will have been kind to Miss Smith, I know.' I look again at Susan. 'You've heard, perhaps, that I am an orphan, Susan; like you. I came to Briar as a child— very young, and with no-one at all

to care for me. I cannot tell you all the ways in which Mrs Stiles has made me know what a mother's love is, since that time . . .'

I say this, smiling. The tormenting of my uncle's housekeeper is too routine an 154

occupation, however, to hold me. It is Susan I want; and when Mrs Stiles has twitched and coloured and left us, I draw her to me, to lead her to the fire. She walks. She sits.

She is warm and quick. I touch her arm. It is as slender as Agnes's, but hard. I can smell beer upon her breath. She speaks. Her voice is not at all how I have dreamed it, but light and pert; though she tries to make it sweeter. She tells me of her journey, of the train from London— when she says the word, London, she seems conscious of the sound; I suppose she is not in the habit of naming it, of considering it a place of destination or desire. It is a wonder and a torment to me that a girl so slight, so trifling as she, should have lived her life in London, while mine has been all at Briar; but a consolation, also— for if she can thrive there, then might not I, with all my talents, thrive better?

So I tell myself, while describing her duties. Again I see her eye my gown and slippers and now, recognising the pity in her gaze as well as the scorn, I think I blush.

I say, 'Your last mistress, of course, was quite a fine lady? She would laugh, I suppose, to look at me!'

My voice is not quite steady. But if there is a bitterness to my tone, she does not catch it. Instead, 'Oh, no, miss,' she says. 'She was far too kind a lady. And besides, she always said that grand clothes weren't worth buttons; but that it was the heart inside them that counts.'

She looks so taken with this— so taken in, by her own fiction— so innocent, not sly— I sit a moment and regard her in silence. Then I take her hand again. 'You are a good girl, Susan, I think,' I say. She smiles and looks modest. Her fingers move in mine.

'Lady Alice always said so, miss,' she says.

'Did she?'

'Yes, miss.'

Then she remembers something. She pulls from me, reaches into her pocket, and brings out a letter. It is folded, sealed, directed in an

affected feminine hand; and of course comes from Richard. I hesitate, then take it— rise and walk, unfold it, far from her gaze.

No names! it says;— but I think you know me. Here is the girl who will make us rich— that fresh little finger smith, I've had cause in the past to employ her skills, and can commend her. She is watching as I write this, and oh! her ignorance is perfect. I imagine her now, gazing at you. She is luckier than I, who must pass two filthy weeks before enjoying that pleasure.— Burn this, will you?

I have thought myself as cool as he. I am not, I am not, I feel her watching— -just as he describes!— and grow fearful. I stand with the letter in my hand, then am aware all at once that I have stood too long. If she should have seen— ! I fold the paper, once, twice, thrice— finally it will not fold at all. I do not yet know that she cannot read or write so much as her own name; when I learn it I laugh, in an awful relief. But I don't quite believe her. 'Not read?' I say. 'Not a letter, not a word?'— and I hand her a book.

She does not want to take it; and when she does, she opens its covers, turns a page, gazes hard at a piece of text— but all in a way that is wrong, indefinably anxious and wrong, and too subtle to counterfeit.— At last, she blushes.

Then I take the book back. 'I am sorry,' I say. But I am not sorry, I am only amazed.

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Not to read! It seems to me a kind of fabulous insufficiency— like the absence, in a martyr or a saint, of the capacity for pain.

The eight o'clock sounds, to call me to my uncle. At the door I pause. I must, after all, make some blushing reference to Richard; and I say what I ought and her look, as it should, becomes suddenly crafty and then grows clear. She tells me how kind he is.

She says it— again— as if she believes it. Perhaps she does. Perhaps kindness is measured to a different standard, where she comes from. I feel the points and edges of the folded note he has sent by her hand, in the pocket of my skirt.

What she does while alone in my chambers I cannot say, but I

imagine her fingering the silks of my gowns, trying out my boots, my gloves, my sashes. Does she take an eye-glass to my jewels? Perhaps she is planning already what she will do, when they are hers: this brooch she will keep, from this she will prise the stones to sell them, the ring of gold that was my father's she will pass to her young man . . .

'You are distracted, Maud,' my uncle says. 'Have you another occupation to which you would rather attend?'

'No, sir,' I say.

'Perhaps you begrudge me your little labour. Perhaps you wish that I had left you at the madhouse, all those years ago. Forgive me: I had supposed myself performing you some service, by taking you from there. But perhaps you would rather dwell among lunatics, than among books? Hmm?'

'No, Uncle.'

He pauses. I think he will return to his notes. But he goes on.

'It would be a simple matter enough, to summon Mrs Stiles and have her take you back. You are sure you don't desire me to do that?— send for William Inker and the dog-cart?' As he speaks, he leans to study me, his weak gaze fierce behind the spectacles that guard it. Then he pauses again, and almost smiles. 'What would they make of you upon the wards, I wonder,' he says, in a different voice, 'with all that you know now?'

He says it slowly, then mumbles the question over; as if it is a biscuit that has left crumbs beneath his tongue. I do not answer, but lower my gaze until he has worked his humour out. Presently he twists his neck and looks again at the pages upon his desk.

'So, so. The Whipping Milliners. Read me the second volume, with the punctuation all complete; and mark— the paging is irregular. I'll note the sequence here.'

It is from this that I am reading when she comes to take me back to my drawing- room.

She stands at the door, looking over the walls of books, the painted windows. She hovers at the pointing finger that my uncle keeps to mark the bounds of innocence at Briar, just as I once did; and— again, like me— in her innocence she does not see it, and tries to cross it. I must keep her from that, more even than my uncle must!— and while he jerks and screams I go softly to her, and touch her. She flinches at the feel of my fingers.

I say, 'Don't be frightened, Susan.' I show her the brass hand in the floor.

I have forgotten that, of course, she might look at anything there, anything at all, it 156

would be so much ink upon paper. Remembering, I am filled again with wonder— and then with a spiteful kind of envy. I have to draw back my hand from her arm, for fear I will pinch her.

I ask her, as we walk to my room, What does she think of my uncle?

She believes him composing a dictionary.

We sit at lunch. I have no appetite, and pass my plate to her. I lean back in my chair, and watch as she runs her thumb along the edge of china, admires the weave of the napkin she spreads on her knee. She might be an auctioneer, a house-agent: she holds each item of cutlery as if gauging the worth of the metal from which it is cast. She eats three eggs, spooning them quickly, neatly into her mouth— not shuddering at the yielding of the yolk, not thinking, as she swallows, of the closing of her own throat about the meat. She wipes her lips with her fingers, touches her tongue to some spot upon her knuckle; then swallows again.

You have come to Briar, I think, to swallow up me.

But of course, I want her to do it. I need her to do it. And already I seem to feel myself beginning to give up my life. I give it up easily, as burning wicks give up smoke, to tarnish the glass that guards them; as spiders spin threads of silver, to bind up quivering moths. I imagine it settling, tight, about her. She does not know it. She will not know it until, too late, she will look and see how it has clothed and changed her, made her like me. For now, she is only tired, restless, bored: I take her walking about the park, and she follows, leadenly; we sit and sew, and she yawns and rubs her eyes, gazing at nothing. She chews her fingernails— stops, when she sees me looking; then after a minute draws down a length of hair and bites the tip of that.

'You are thinking of London,' I say.

She lifts her head. 'London, miss?'

I nod. 'What do ladies do there, at this hour in the day?'

'Ladies, miss?'

'Ladies, like me.'

She looks about her. Then, after a second: 'Make visits, miss?'

'Visits?'

'To other ladies?'

Ah.'

She does not know. She is making it up. I am sure she is making it up! Even so, I think over her words and my heart beats suddenly hard. Ladies, I said, like me. There are no ladies like me, however; and for a second I have a clear and frightening picture of myself in London, alone, unvisited—

But I am alone and unvisited, now. And I shall have Richard

there, Richard will guide and advise me. Richard means to take us a house, with rooms, with doors that will fasten—

Are you cold, miss?' she says. Perhaps I have shivered. She rises, to fetch me a shawl. I watch her walk. Diagonally she goes, over the carpet— heedless of the design, the lines and diamonds and squares, beneath her feet.

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I watch and watch her. I cannot look too long, too narrowly at her, in her easy doing of commonplace things. At seven o'clock she makes me ready for supper with my uncle. At ten she puts me into my bed. After that, she stands in her room and I hear her sighing, and I lift my head and see her stretch and droop. Her candle lights her, very plainly; though I lie hidden in the dark. Quietly she passes, back and forth across the doorway— now stooping to pick up a fallen lace; now taking up her cloak and brushing mud from its hem. She does not kneel and pray, as Agnes did. She sits on her bed, out of my sight, but lifts her feet: I see the toe of one shoe put to the heel of the other and work it down. Now she stands, to undo the buttons of her gown; now she lets it fall, steps awkwardly out of her skirt; unlaces her stays, rubs her waist, sighs again. Now she steps away. I lift my head, to follow. She comes back, in her nightgown— shivering. I shiver, in sympathy. She yawns. I also yawn. She stretches— enjoying the stretch— liking the approach of slumber! Now she moves off— puts out her light, climbs into her bed— grows warm I suppose, and sleeps . . .

She sleeps, in a sort of innocence. So did I, once. I wait a moment, then take out my mother's picture and hold it close to my mouth.

That's her, I whisper. That's her. She's your daughter now!

How effortless it seems! But when I have locked my mother's face away I lie, uneasily.

My uncle's clock shudders and strikes. Some animal shrieks, like a child, in the park. I close my eyes and think— what I have not thought so vividly of, in years— of the madhouse, my first home; of the wild-eyed women, the lunatics; and of the nurses. I remember all at once the nurses' rooms, the mattings of coir, a piece of text on the limewashed wall: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me. I remember an attic stair, a walk upon the roof, the softness of lead beneath my fingernail, the frightful drop to the ground—

I must fall into sleep, thinking this. I must plunge to the deepest layers of the night.

But then, I am woken— or, not quite woken, not quite drawn free from the tugging of the dark. For I open my eyes and am bewildered— perfectly bewildered— and filled with dread. I look at my form in the bed and it seems shifting and queer— now large, now small, now broken up with spaces; and I cannot say what age I am. I begin to shake. I call out. I call for Agnes. I have quite forgotten that she has gone. I have forgotten Richard Rivers, and all our plot. I call for Agnes, and it seems to me she comes; but she comes, to take away my lamp. I think she must do it to punish me.

'Don't take the light!' I say; but she takes it, she leaves me in the terrible darkness and I hear the sighing of doors, the passage of feet, beyond the curtain. It seems to me then that much time passes before the light comes back. But when Agnes lifts it and sees my face, she screams.

'Don't look at me!' I cry. And then: 'Don't leave me!' For I have a sense that, if she will only stay, some calamity, some dreadful thing— I d o n o t k n o w i t , c a n n o t n a m e it— will be averted; and I—

or sne— will be saved. I hide my face against her and seize her hand. But her hand is pale where it used to be freckled. I gaze at her, and do not know her.

She says, in a voice that is strange to me: 'It's Sue, miss. Only Sue. You see me? You are dreaming.'

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'Dreaming?'

She touches my cheek. She smooths my hair— not like Agnes, after all, but like—

Like no-one. She says again, 'It's Sue. That Agnes had the scarlatina, and is gone back home. You must lie down now, or the cold will make you ill. You mustn't be ill.'

I swim in black confusion for another moment; then the dream slips from me all at once and I know her, and know myself— my past, my present, my ungaugeable future.

She is a stranger to me, but part of it all.

'Don't leave me, Sue!' I say.

I feel her hesitate. When she draws away, I grip her tighter. But she moves only to climb across me, and she comes beneath the sheet and lies with her arm about me, her mouth against my hair.

She is cold, and makes me cold. I shiver, but soon lie still. 'There,' she says then. She murmurs it. I feel the movement of her breath and, deep in the bone of my cheek, the gentle rumble of her voice. 'There. Now you'll sleep— won't you? Good girl.'

Good girl, she says. How long has it been since anyone at Briar believed me good?

But she believes it. She must believe it, for the working of our plot. I must be good, and kind, and simple. Isn't gold said to be good? I am like gold to her, after all. She has come to ruin me; but, not yet. For now she must guard me, keep me sound and safe as a hoard of coins she means, at last, to squander—

I know it; but cannot feel it as I should. I sleep in her arms, dreamless and still, and wake to the warmth and closeness of her. She moves away as she feels me stir. She rubs her eye. Her hair is loose and touches my own. Her face, in sleep, has lost a little of its sharpness. Her brow is smooth, her lashes powdery, her gaze, when it meets mine, quite clear, untinged with mockery or malice . . . She smiles. She yawns. She rises. The blanket lifts and falls, and

sour heat comes gusting. I lie and remember the night. Some feeling— shame, or panic— flutters about my heart. I put my hand to the place where she has lain, and feel it cool.

She is changed with me. She is surer, kinder. Margaret brings water, and she fills me a bowl. 'Ready, miss?' she says. 'Better use it quick.' She wets a cloth and wrings it and, when I stand and undress, passes it, unasked, across my face and beneath my arms. I have become a child to her. She makes me sit, so she may brush my hair. She tuts:

'What tangles! The trick with tangles is, to start at the bottom ..."

Agnes had used to wash and dress me with quick and nervous fingers, wincing with every catching of the comb. One time I struck her with a slipper— so hard, she bled.

Now I sit for Susan— Sue, she called herself, in the night— now I sit patiently while Sue draws out the knots from my hair, my eyes upon my own face in the glass . . .

Good girl.

Then: 'Thank you, Sue,' I say.

I say it often, in the days and nights that follow. I never said it to Agnes. 'Thank you, Sue.' 'Yes, Sue,' when she bids me sit or stand, lift an arm or foot. 'No, Sue,' when she is afraid my gown must pinch me.

No, I am not cold.— But she likes to look me over as we walk, to be quite sure; will gather my cloak a little higher about my throat, to keep off draughts. No, my boots are 159

not taking in the dew.— But she'll slide a finger between my stockinged ankle and the leather of my shoe, for certainty's sake. I must not catch cold, at any cost. I must not tire. 'Wouldn't you say you had walked enough, miss?' I mustn't grow ill. 'Here is all your breakfast, look, untouched. Won't you take a little more?' I mustn't grow thin. I am a goose that must be plump, to be worth its slaughter.

Of course, though she does not know it, it is she who must be plump— she who will learn, in time, to sleep, to wake, to dress, to walk, to a pattern, to signals and bells.

She thinks she humours me. She thinks she pities me! She learns the ways of the house, not understanding that the habits and the fabrics that bind me will, soon, bind her. Bind her, like morocco or like calf ... I have grown

used to thinking of myself as a sort of book. Now I feel myself a book, as books must seem to her: she looks at me with her unread-ing eyes, sees the shape, but not the meaning of the text. She marks the white flesh— Ain't you pale!' she says— but not the quick, corrupted blood beneath.

I oughtn't to do it. I cannot help it. I am too compelled by her idea— her idea of me as a simple girl, abused by circumstance, prone to nightmare. No nightmares come, while she sleeps at my side; and so, I find ways to bring her to my bed, a second night and a third.— At last she comes, routinely. I think her wary, at first; but it is only the canopy and drapes that trouble her: she stands each time with a lifted candle, peering into the folds of cloth. 'Don't you think,' she says, 'of the moths and spiders that might be up there, miss, and waiting to drop?' She seizes a post, and shakes it; a single beetle falls, in a shower of dust.

Once grown used to that, however, she lies easily enough; and from the neat and comfortable way she holds her limbs, I think that she must be used to sleeping with someone; and wonder who.

'Do you have sisters, Sue?' I ask her once, perhaps a week after she has come. We are walking by the river.

'No, miss.'

'Brothers?'

'Not as I know of,' she says.

'And so you grew up— like me— quite alone?'

'Well, miss, not what you would call, alone . . . Say, with cousins all about.'

'Cousins. You mean, your aunt's children?'

'My aunt?' She looks blank.

'Your aunt, Mr Rivers's nurse.'

'Oh!' She blinks. 'Yes, miss. To be sure . . .'

She turns away, and her look grows vague. She is thinking of her home. I try to imagine it; and cannot. I try to imagine her cousins: rough boys and girls, sharp-faced like her, sharp-tongued, sharp- fingered— Her fingers are blunt, however; though her tongue— for sometimes, when putting the pins to my hair, or frowning over slithering laces, she shows it— her tongue has a point. I watch her sigh.

'Never mind,' I say— like any kindly mistress with an unhappy maid. 'Look, here is a barge. You may send your wishes with it. We shall both send wishes, to London.' To London, I think again, more darkly. Richard is there. I will be there, a month from 160

now. I say, 'The Thames will take them, even if the boat does not.'

She looks, however, not at the barge, but at me.

'The Thames?' she says. *

'The river,' I answer. 'This river, here.'

'This trifling bit of water, the Thames? Oh, no, miss.' She laughs, uncertainly. 'How can that be? The Thames is very wide'— she holds her hands far apart— 'and this is narrow. Do you see?'

I say, after a moment, that I have always supposed that rivers grow wider as they flow.

She shakes her head.

'This trifling bit of water?' she says again. 'Why, the water we have from our taps, at home, has more life to it than this.— There, miss! Look, there.' The barge has passed us. Its stern is marked in six- inch letters, ROTHERHITHE; but she is pointing, not to them, but to the wake of grease spreading out from the spluttering engine. 'See that?'

she says excitedly. 'That's how the Thames looks. That's how the Thames looks, every day of the year. Look at all those colours. A thousand colours ..."

She smiles. Smiling, she is almost handsome. Then the wake of grease grows thin, the water browns, her smile quite falls; and she looks like a thief again.

You must understand, I have determined to despise her. For how, otherwise, will I be able to do what I must do?— how else deceive and harm her? It is only that we are put so long together, in such seclusion. We are obliged to be intimate. And her notion of intimacy is not like Agnes's— not like Barbara's— not like any lady's maid's. She is too frank, too loose, too free. She yawns, she leans. She rubs at spots and grazes. She will sit picking over some old dry cut upon her knuckle, while I sew. Then, 'Got a pin, miss?' she will ask me; and when I give her a needle from my case she will spend ten minutes probing the skin of her hand with that. Then she will give the needle back to me.

But she will give it, taking care to keep the point from my soft fingers. 'Don't hurt yourself,' she will say— so simply, so kindly, I quite forget that she is only keeping me safe for Richard's sake. I think that she forgets it, too.

One day she takes my arm as we are walking. It is nothing to her; but I feel the shock of it, like a slap. Another time, after sitting, I complain that my feet are chilled: she kneels before me, unlaces my slippers, takes my feet in her hands and hold and chafes them— finally dips her head and carelessly breathes upon my toes. She begins to dress me as she pleases; makes little changes to my gowns, my hair, my rooms. She brings flowers: throws away the vases of curling leaves that have always stood on my drawing- room tables, and finds primroses in the hedges of my uncle's park to put in their place. 'Of course, you don't get the flowers that you get in London, in the country,' she says, as she sets them in the glass; 'but these are pretty enough, ain't they?'

She has Margaret bring extra coals for my fires, from Mr Way. Such a simple thing to do!— and yet no-one has thought to do it before, for my sake; even I have not thought to do it; and so I have gone cold, through seven winters. The heat makes the windows cloud. She likes to stand, then, and draw loops and hearts and spirals upon the glass.

One time she brings me back from my uncle's room and I find the luncheon-table 161

spread with playing-cards. My mother's cards, I suppose; for these are my mother's rooms, and filled with her things; and yet for a second it quite disconcerts me, to imagine my mother here— actually here— walking here, sitting here, setting out the coloured cards upon the cloth. My mother, unmarried, still sane— perhaps, idly leaning her cheek upon her knuckles— perhaps, sighing— and waiting, waiting . . .

I take up a card. It slides against my glove. But in Sue's hands, the deck is changed: she gathers and sorts it, shuffles and deals it, neatly and nimbly; and the golds and reds are vivid between her fingers, like so many jewels. She is astonished, of course, to learn I

cannot play; and at once makes me sit, so she may teach me. The games are things of chance and simple speculation, but she plays earnestly, almost greedily— tilting her head, narrowing her eye as she surveys her fan of cards. When I grow tired, she plays alone— or else, will stand the cards upon their ends and tilt their tips together, and from doing this many times will build a rising structure, a kind of pyramid of cards— always keeping back, for the top-most point, a king and a queen.

'Look here,' she says, when she has finished. 'Look here, miss. Do you see?' Then she will ease a card from the pyramid's foundation; and as the structure topples, she will laugh.

She will laugh. The sound is as strange, at Briar, as I imagine it must be in a prison or a church. Sometimes, she will sing. Once we talk of dancing. She rises and lifts her skirt, to show me a step. Then she pulls me to my feet, and turns and turns me; and I feel, where she presses against me, the quickening beat of her heart— I feel it pass from her to me and become mine.

Finally I let her smooth a pointed tooth with a silver thimble.

'Let me look,' she says. She has seen me rubbing my cheek. 'Come to the light.'

I stand at the window, put back my head. Her hand is warm, her breath— with the yeast of beer upon it— warm also. She reaches, and feels about my gum.

'Well, that is sharper,' she says, drawing back her hand, 'than— '

'Than a serpent's tooth, Sue?'

'Than a needle, I was going to say.' She looks about her. 'Do snakes have teeth, miss?'

'I think they must, since they are said to bite.'

'That's true,' she says distractedly. 'Only, I had imagined them gummier ..."

She has gone to my dressing- room. I can see, through the open door, the bed and, pushed well beneath it, the chamber-pot: she has warned me, more than once, of how china pots may break beneath the toes of careless risers and make them lame. She has cautioned me, in a similar spirit, against the stepping on, in naked feet, of hairs (since hairs— like worms, she says— may work their way into the flesh, and f e s t e r ) ; t h e d a r k e n i n g o f e y e - lashes with impure castor-o i l ; a n d t he reckless climbing— for purposes of concealment, or flight— of chimneys. Now, looking through the items on my dressing- table, she says no more. I wait, then call.

'Don't you know anyone who died from a snake-bite, Sue?'

'A snake-bite, miss?' She reappears, still frowning. 'In London? Do you mean, at the Zoo?'

'Well, perhaps at the Zoo.'

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'I can't say as I do.'

'Curious. I was certain, you know, that you would.'

I smile, though she does not. Then she shows me her hand, with the thimble on it; I see for the first time what she means to do, and perhaps look strange. 'It won't hurt you,' she says, watching my changing face.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, miss. If I hurt, you may scream; and then I will stop.'

It does not hurt, I do not scream. But it makes for a queer mix of sensations: the grinding of the metal, the pressure of her hand holding my jaw, the softness of her breath. As she studies the tooth she files, I can look nowhere but at her face; and so I look at her eyes: one is marked, I see now, with a fleck of darker brown, almost black.

I look at the line of her cheek— which is smooth; and her ear— which is neat, its lobe pierced through for the wearing of hoops and pendants. 'Pierced, how?' I asked her once, going close to her, putting my finger-tips to the little dimples in the curving flesh. 'Why, miss, with a needle,' she said, 'and a bit of ice . . .' The thimble rubs on.

She smiles. 'My aunty does this,' she says as she works, 'for babies. I dare say she done it for me.— Almost got it! Ha!' She grinds more slowly, then pauses, to test the tooth. Then she rubs again. 'Tricky thing to do to an infant, of course. For if you happen to let slip the thimble— well. I know several as were lost like that.'

I do not know if she means thimbles, or infants. Her fingers, and my lips, are becoming wet. I swallow, then swallow again. My tongue rises and moves against her hand. Her hand seems, all at once, too big, too strange; and I think of the tarnish on the silver—

I think my breath must have made it wet and set it running, I think I can taste it.

Perhaps, if she were to work a little longer at the tooth, I should fall into a sort of panic; but now the thimble rubs slower again, and soon, she stops. She tests again with her thumb, keeps her hand another second at my jaw, and then draws back.

I emerge from her grip a little unsteadily. She has held me so tight, so long, when she moves away the cold air leaps to my face. I swallow, then run my tongue across my blunted tooth. I wipe my lips. I see her hand: her knuckles marked red and white from the pressure of my mouth; her finger also marked, and with the thimble still upon it.

The silver is bright— not tarnished, not tarnished at all. What I have tasted, or imagine I have tasted, is the taste of her; only that.

May a lady taste the fingers of her maid? She may, in my uncle's books.— The thought makes me colour.

And it is as I am standing, feeling the blood rush awkwardly into my cheek, that a girl comes to my door with a letter, from Richard. I have forgotten to expect it. I have forgotten to think of our plan, our flight, our marriage, the looming asylum gate. I have forgotten to think of him. I must think of him now, however. I take the letter and, trembling, break its seal.

Are you as impatient as I? he writes. I know that you are. Do you have her with you, now? Can she see your face? Look glad. Smile, simper, all of that. Our waiting is over.

My business in London is done, and I am coming!

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C h a p t e r T e n

The letter works upon me like the snap of a mesmerist's fingers: _y I blink, look giddily about me, as if emerging from a trance. I look at Sue: at her hand, at the mark of my mouth upon it. I look at the pillows upon my bed, with the dints of our two heads. I look at the flowers in their vase on the table- top, at the fire in my grate. The room is too warm. The room is too warm and yet I am still trembling, as if cold. She sees it. She catches my eye, and nods to the paper in my hand. 'Good news, miss?' she asks; and it is as if the letter has worked some trick upon her, too: for her voice seems light to me— dreadfully light— and her face seems sharp. She puts away the thimble; but watches, watches. I cannot meet her gaze.

Richard is coming. Does she feel it, as I do? She gives no sign. She walks, she sits, as easily as before. She eats her lunch. She takes out my mother's playing-cards, begins the patient dealing-out of solitary games. I stand at the glass and, in reflection, see her reach to take a card and place it, turn it, set it upon another, raise up the kings, pull out the aces ... I look at my face and think what makes it mine: the certain curve of cheek, the lip too full, too plump, too pink.

At last she gathers the pack together and says that if I will shuffle and hold it, and wish, she will study the fall of the cards and tell me my future. She says it, apparently quite without irony; and despite myself I am drawn to her side, and sit, and clumsily mix the cards, and she takes them and lays them down. 'These show your past,' she says, 'and these your present.' Her eyes grow wide. She seems suddenly young to me: for a moment we bend our heads and whisper as I think other, ordinary girls, in ordinary parlours or schools or sculleries, might whisper: Here is a young man, look, on horseback. Here is a journey. Here is the Queen of Diamonds, for wealth—

I have a brooch that is set with brilliants. I think of it now. I think— as I have, before, though not in many days— of Sue, breathing proprietorially over the stones, gauging their worth . . .

After all, we are not ordinary girls, in an ordinary parlour; and she is interested in my fortune only as she supposes it hers. Her eye grows narrow again. Her voice lifts out of its whisper and is only pert. I move away from her while she sits gathering the deck, turning the cards in her hands and frowning. She has let one fall, and has not seen it: the two of hearts. I place my heel upon it, imagining one of the painted red hearts my own; and I grind it into the carpet.

She finds it, when I have risen, and tries to smooth the crease from it; then plays on at Patience, as doggedly as before.

I look, again, at her hands. They have grown whiter, and are healed about the nails.

They are small, and in gloves will seem smaller; and then will resemble my own.

This must be done. This should have been done, before. Richard is coming, and I am overtaken by a sense of duties unmet: a panicking sense that hours, days— dark, 164

devious fish of time— have slithered by, uncaptured. I pass a fretful night. Then, when we rise and she comes to dress me, I pluck at the frill on the sleeve of her gown.

'Have you no other gown,' I say, 'than this plain brown thing you always wear?'

She says she has not. I take, from my press, a velvet gown, and have her try it. She bares her arms unwillingly, steps out of her skirt and turns, in a kind of modesty, away from my eyes. The gown is narrow. I tug at the hooks. I settle the folds of cloth about her hips, then go to my box for a brooch— that brooch of brilliants— and pin it carefully over her heart.

Then I stand her before the glass.

Margaret comes, and takes her for me.

I have grown used to her, to the life, the warmth, the particularity of her; she has become, not the gullible girl of a villainous plot— not Suky Tawdry— but a girl with a history, with hates and likings. Now all at once I see how near to me in face and figure she'll come, and I understand, as if for the first time, what it is that Richard and I mean to do. I place my face against the post of my bed and watch her, gazing at herself in a rising satisfaction, turning a little to the left, a little to the right, brushing the creases from her skirt, settling her flesh more comfortably into the seams of the gown. 'If my aunty could see me!' she says, growing pink; and I think, then, of who might be waiting for her, in that dark thieves' den in London: the aunt, the mother or grandmother. I think how restless she must be, as she counts off the lengthening days that keep her little fin- gersmith on perilous business, far from home. I imagine her, as she waits, taking out some small thing of Sue's— some sash, some necklace, some bracelet of gaudy charms— and turning it, over and over, in her hands . . .

She will turn it for ever, though she does not know it yet. Nor does Sue suppose that the last time she kissed her aunt's hard cheek was the last of all her life.

I think of that; and I am gripped with what I take to be pity. It is hard, painful, surprising: I feel it, and am afraid. Afraid of what my future may cost me. Afraid of that future itself, and of the unfamiliar, ungovernable emotions with which it might be filled.

She does not know it. He must not know it, either. He comes that afternoon— comes, as he used to come, in the days of Agnes: takes my hand, holds my gaze with his, bends to kiss my knuckles. 'Miss Lilly/ he says, in a tone of caress. He is dressed darkly, neatly; yet carries his daring, his confidence, close and gaudy about him, like swirls of colour or perfume. I feel the heat of his mouth, even through my gloves. Then he turns to Sue, and she makes a curtsey. The stiff-bodiced dress is not made for curtseying in, however: the dip is a jagged one, the fringes upon her skirt tumble together and seem to shake. Her colour rises. I see him smile as he notes it.

But I see, too, that he marks the gown, and perhaps also the whiteness of her fingers.

'I should have supposed her a lady, I'm sure,' he says, to me. He moves to her side.

There, he seems tall, and darker than ever, like a bear; and she seems slight. He takes her hand, his fingers moving about hers: they seem large, also— his thumb extends almost to the bone of her wrist. He says, 'I hope you are proving a good girl for your mistress, Sue.'

She gazes at the floor. 'I hope I am, too, sir.' I take a step. 'She is a very good girl,' I 165

say. 'A very good girl, indeed.'

But the words are hasty, imperfect. He catches my eye, draws back his thumb. 'Of course,' he says smoothly, 'she could not help but be good. No girl could help it, Miss Lilly, with you for her example.'

'You are too kind,' I say.

'No gentleman could but be, I think, with you to be kind to.' He keeps his gaze on mine. He has picked me out, found sympathies in me, means to pluck me from the heart of Briar, unscratched; and I would not be myself, niece to my uncle, if I could meet the look he shows me now without feeling the stir of some excitement, dark and awful, in my own breast. But I feel it too hard, and grow almost queasy. I smile; but the smile stretches tight. Sue tilts her head. Does she suppose me smiling at my own love? The thought makes the smile tighter still, I begin to feel it as an ache about my throat. I avoid her eye, and his. He goes, but makes her step to him and they stand a moment, murmuring at the door. He gives her a coin— I see the yellow gleam of it— he puts it into

her hand, closes her fingers about it with his own. His nail shows brown against the fresh pink of her palm. She falls in another awkward curtsey.

Now my smile is fixed like the grimace on the face of a corpse. When she turns back, I cannot look at her. I go to my dressing- room and close the door, lie face down upon my bed, and am seized and shaken by laughter— a terrible laughter, it courses silently through me, like filthy water— I shudder, and shudder, and finally am still.

'How do you find your new girl, Miss Lilly?' he asks me at dinner, his eyes upon his plate. He is carefully parting meat from the spine of a fish— the bone so pale and so fine it is almost translucent, the meat in a thickening coating of butter and sauce. Our food comes cold to the table in winter. In summer it comes too warm.

I say, 'Very— biddable, Mr Rivers.'

'You think she will suit?'

'I think so, yes.'

'You won't have cause to complain, of my recommendation?'

'No.'

'Well, I am relieved to hear it.'

He will always say too much, for the sport of the thing. My uncle is watching. 'What's this?' he says now.

I wipe my mouth. 'My new maid, Uncle,' I answer. 'Miss Smith, who replaces Miss Fee. You've seen her, often.'

'Heard her, more like, kicking the soles of her boots against my library door. What of her?'

'She came to me on Mr Rivers's word. He found her in London, in need of a place; and was so kind as to remember me.'

My uncle moves his tongue. 'Was he?' he says slowly. He looks from me to Richard, from Richard back to me, his chin a little raised, as if sensing dark currents. 'Miss Smith, you say?'

'Miss Smith,' I repeat steadily, 'who replaces Miss Fee.' I neaten my knife and fork.

'Miss Fee, the papist.'

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'The papist! Ha!' He returns excitedly to his own meat. 'Now, Rivers,' he says as he does it.

'Sir?'

'I defy you— positively defy you, sir!— to name me any institution so nurturing of the atrocious acts of lechery as the Catholic Church of Rome

He does not look at me again until supper is ended. Then has me read for an hour from an antique text, The Nunns' Complaint Against the Fryars.

Richard sits and hears me, perfectly still. But when I have finished and rise to leave, he rises also: 'Let me,' he says. We walk together the little way to the door. My uncle does not lift his head, but keeps his gaze on his own smudged hands. He has a little pearl- handled knife, its ancient blade sharpened almost to a crescent, with which he is paring the skin from an apple— one of the small, dry, bitter apples that grow in the Briar orchard.

Richard checks to see that his gaze is turned, then looks at me frankly. His tone he keeps polite, however. 'I must ask you,' he says, 'if you wish to continue with your drawing- lessons, now that I'm returned? I hope you do.' He waits. I do not answer.

'Shall I come, as usual, tomorrow?' He waits again. He has his hand upon the door and has drawn it back— not far enough, though, to let me step about it; nor does he pull it further when he sees me wishing to pass. Instead, his look grows puzzled. 'You mustn't be modest,' he says. He means, You mustn't be weak. 'You are not, are you?'

I shake my head.

'Good, then. I shall come, at the usual time. You must show me the work you've done while I've been away. I should say a little more labour and— well, who knows? We might be ready to surprise your uncle with the fruits of your instruction. What do you think? Shall we give it another two weeks? Two weeks or, at the most, three?'

Again, I feel the nerve and daring of him, feel my own blood rise to meet it. But there c o m e s , b e n e a t h o r b e y o n d i t , a s i n k i n g , a fluttering— a v a g u e a n d n a m e l e s s movement— a sort of panic. He waits for my reply, and the fluttering grows wilder.

We have plotted so carefully. We have committed, already, one dreadful deed, and set in train another. I know all that must be done now. I know I must seem to love him, let him appear to win me, then confess his winning to Sue. How easy it should be! How I have longed for it! How hard I have gazed at the walls of my uncle's estate, wishing they might part and release me! But now that the day of our escape is close, I hesitate; and am afraid to say why. I gaze again at my uncle's hands, the pearl, the apple giving up its skin to the knife.

'Let us say, three weeks— perhaps longer,' I say finally. 'Perhaps longer, should I feel I need it.'

A look of irritation or anger disturbs the surface of his face; but when he speaks, he makes his voice soft. 'You are modest. Your talent is better than that. Three weeks will do it, I assure you.'

He draws back the door at last and bows me out. And though I do not turn, I know he lingers to watch me mount the stairs— as solicitous for my safety, as any of my uncle's gentlemen friends.

He will grow more solicitous, soon; but for now, at least, the days fall back into 167

something like a familiar pattern. He passes his mornings at work on the prints, then comes to my rooms, to teach me drawing— to keep close to me, that is to say; to look and to murmur, while I daub paint on card; to be grave and ostentatiously gallant.

The days fall back in their pattern— except that, where before they had Agnes in them, now they have Sue.

And Sue is not like Agnes. She knows more. She knows her own worth and purpose.

She knows she must listen and watch, to see that Mr Rivers does not come too close, or speak too confidentially, to her mistress; but she also knows that when he does come near she is to turn her head aside and be deaf to his whispers. She does turn her head, I see her do it; but I see her, too, steal glances at us from the edge of her eye— study our reflections in the chimney- glass and windows— watch our very shadows! The room, in which I have passed so many captive hours I know it as a prisoner knows his cell— the room seems changed to me now. It seems filled with shining surfaces, each one an eye of hers.

When those eyes meet mine, they are veiled and blameless. But when they meet Richard's, I see the leap of knowledge or understanding that passes between them; and I cannot look at her.

For of course, though she knows much, what she has is a counterfeit knowledge, and worthless; and her satisfaction in the keeping of it— in the nursing of what she supposes her secret— is awful to me. She does not know she is the hinge of all our scheme, the point about which our plot turns; she thinks I am that point. She does not suspect that, in seeming to mock me, Richard mocks her: that after he has turned to her in private, perhaps to smile, perhaps to grimace, he turns to me, and smiles and grimaces in earnest.

And where his torturing of Agnes pricked me on to little cruelties of my own, now I a m o n l y u n n e r v e d . M y c o n s c i o u s n e s s o f S u e m a k e s m e t o o c o n s c i o u s o f myself— makes me, now reckless, as Richard is sometimes reckless, in the gross performance of our sham passion; now guarded and watchful, hesitating. I will be bold for an hour— or meek, or coy— and then, in the final minute of his stay, I will tremble. I will be betrayed by the movement of my own limbs, my blood, my breath.— I suppose she reads that as love.

Richard, at least, knows it for weakness. The days creep by: the first week passes, and we begin the second. I sense his bafflement, feel the weight of his expectation: feel it gather, turn, grow sour. He looks at my work, and begins to shake his head.

'I am afraid, Miss Lilly,' he says, more than once, 'that you want discipline, yet. I thought your touch firmer than this. I am sure it was firmer, a month ago. Don't say you've forgotten your lessons, in my short absence. After all our labour! There is one thing an artist must always avoid, in the execution of his work: that is, hesitation. For that leads to weakness; and through weakness, greater designs than this one have foundered. You understand? You do understand me?'

I will not answer. He leaves, and I keep at my place. Sue comes to my side.

'Never mind it, miss,' she says gently, 'if Mr Rivers seems to say hard things about your picture. Why, you got those pears, quite to the life.'

'You think so, Sue?'

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She nods. I look into her face— into her eye, with its single fleck of darker brown.

Then I look at the shapeless daubs of colour I have put upon the card.

'It's a wretched painting, Sue,' I say.

She puts her hand upon mine. 'Well,' she says, 'but ain't you learning?'

I am, but not quickly enough. He suggests, in time, that we go walking in the park.

'We must work from nature now,' he says.

'I should rather not,' I tell him. I have my paths, that I like to walk with Sue beside me.

I think that to walk them with him will spoil them. 'I should rather not,' I say again.

He frowns, then smiles. As your instructor,' he says, 'I must insist.'

I hope it will rain. But though the sky above Briar has been grey all that winter long— has been grey, it seems to me, for seven years!— it lightens now, for him. There is only a quick, soft wind, that comes gusting about my unskirted ankles as Mr Way tugs open the door.— 'Thank you, Mr Way,' says Richard, bending his arm for me to take. He wears a low black hat, a dark wool coat, and lavender gloves. Mr Way observes the gloves, then looks at me in a kind of satisfaction, a kind of scorn.

Fancy yourself a lady, do you? he said to me, the day he carried me, kicking, to the ice- house. Well, we'll see.

I will not walk to the ice- house today, with Richard, but choose another path— a longer, blander path, that circles my uncle's estate, rises and overlooks the rear of the house, the stables, woods, and chapel. I know the view too well to want to gaze at it, and walk with my eyes upon the ground. He keeps my arm in his, and Sue follows behind us— first close, then falling back when he makes our pace grow brisk. We do not speak, but as we walk he slowly draws me to him. My skirt rises, awkwardly.

When I try to pull away, however, he will not let me. I say at last: 'You need not hold me so close.'

He smiles. 'We must seem convincing.'

'You needn't grip me so. Have you anything to whisper, that I don't already know?'

He gazes quickly over his shoulder. 'She would think it queer,' he says, 'were I to let slip these chances to be near you. Anyone would think that queer.'

'She knows you do not love me. You have no need to dote.'

'Shouldn't a gentleman dote, in the springtime, when he has the chance?' He puts back his head. 'Look at this sky, Maud. See how sickeningly blue it shows. So blue'— he has lifted his hand— 'it jars with my gloves. That's nature for you. No sense of fashion.

London skies, at least, are better- mannered: they're like tailors' walls, an eternal drab.'

He smiles again, and draws me closer. 'But of course, you will know this, soon.'

I try to imagine myself in a tailor's shop. I recall scenes from The Whipping Milliners.

I turn and, like him, quickly glance at Sue. She is watching, with a frown of what I take to be satisfaction, the bulging of my skirt about his leg. Again I attempt to pull from him, and again he keeps me close. I say, 'Will you let me go?' And, when he does nothing: 'I must suppose, then, since you know I don't care to be smothered, that you take a delight in tormenting me.'

He catches my eye. 'I am like any man,' he says, 'preoccupied with what I may not have. Hasten the day of our union. I think you'll find my attention will cool pretty rapidly, after that.'

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Then I say nothing. We walk on, and in time he lets me go, in order to cup his hands about a cigarette and light it. I look again at Sue. The ground has risen, the breeze is stronger, and two or three lengths of brown hair have come loose from beneath her bonnet and whip about her face. She carries our bags and baskets, and has no hand free to secure them. Behind her, her cloak billows like a sail.

'Is she all right?' asks Richard, drawing on his cigarette.

I turn and look ahead. 'Quite all right.'

'She is stouter than Agnes, anyway. Poor Agnes! I wonder how she does, hey?' He takes my arm again, and laughs. I do not answer, and his laughter fades. 'Come, Maud,' he says, in a cooler tone, 'don't be so spinsterish. What has happened to you?'

'Nothing has happened to me.'

He studies my profile. 'Then, why do you make us wait? Everything is in place.

Everything is ready. I have taken a house for us, in London. London houses do not come cheaply, Maud

I walk on, in silence, aware of his gaze. He pulls me close again. 'You have not, I suppose,' he says, 'had a change of heart? Have you?'

'No.'

'You are sure?'

'Quite sure.'

'And yet, you still delay. Why is that?' I do not answer. 'Maud, I ask you again.

Something has happened, since I saw you last. What is it?'

'Nothing has happened,' I say.

'Nothing?'

'Nothing, but what we planned for.'

'And you know what must be done now?'

'Of course.'

'Do it then, will you? Act like a lover. Smile, blush, grow foolish.'

'Do I not do those things?'

'You do— then spoil them, with a grimace or a flinch. Look at you now. Lean into my arm, damn you. Will it kill you, to feel my hand upon yours?— I am sorry' I have grown stiff at his words. 'I am sorry, Maud.'

'Let go of my arm,' I say.

We go further, side by side but in silence. Sue plods behind— I hear her breaths, like sighs. Richard throws down the butt of his cigarette, tears up a switch of grass and begins to lash at his boots. 'How filthy red this earth is!' he says. 'But, what a treat for little Charles . . .' He smiles to himself. Then his foot turns up a flint and he almost stumbles. That makes him curse. He rights himself, and looks me over. 'I see you walk more nimbly. You like it, hmm? You may walk in London like this, you know. On the parks and heaths. Did you know? Or else, you may choose not to walk, ever again—

you may rent carriages, chairs, men to drive and carry you about— '

'I know what I may do.'

'Do you? Truly?' He puts the stem of grass to his mouth and grows thoughtful. 'I wonder. You are afraid, I think. Of what? Being alone? Is it that? You need never fear solitude, Maud, while you are rich.'

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'You think I feax solitude?' I say. We are close to the wall of my uncle's park. It is high, grey, dry as powder. 'You think I fear that? I fear nothing, nothing.'

He casts the grass aside, takes up my arm. 'Why, then,' he says, 'do you keep us here, in such dreadful suspense?'

I do not answer. We have slowed our step. Now we hear Sue, still breathing hard behind us, and walk on more quickly. When he speaks again, his tone has changed.

'You spoke, a moment ago, of torment. The truth is, I think you like to torment yourself, by prolonging this time.'

I shrug, as if in carelessness; though I do not feel careless. 'My uncle said something similar to me once,' I say. 'That was before I became like him. It is hardly a torment to me now, to wait. I am used to it.'

'I am not, however,' he replies. 'Nor do I wish to take instruction in the art, from you or anyone. I have lost too much, in the past, through waiting. I am cleverer now, at manipulating events to match my needs. That is what I have learned, while you have learned patience. Do you understand me, Maud?'

I turn my head, half-close my eyes. 'I don't want to understand you,' I say tiredly. 'I wish you would not speak at all.'

'I will speak, until you hear.'

'Hear what?'

'Hear this.' He brings his mouth close to my face. His beard, his lips, his breath, are tainted with smoke, like a devil's. He says: 'Remember our contract. Remember how we made it. Remember that when I came to you first I came, not quite as a gentleman, and with little to lose— unlike you, Miss Lilly, who saw me alone, at midnight, in your own room ..." He draws back. 'I suppose your reputation must count for something, even here; I'm afraid that ladies' always do.— But naturally you knew that, when you received me.'

His tone has some new edge to it, some quality I have not heard before. But we have changed our course: when I gaze at his face the light is all behind him, making his expression hard to read.

I say carefully, 'You call me a lady; but I am hardly that.'

'And yet, I think your uncle must consider you one. Will he like to think you corrupted?'

'He has corrupted me himself!'

'Then, will he like to think the work taken over by another man's hand?— I a m speaking only, of course, of what he will suppose to be the case.'

I move away. 'You misunderstand him, entirely. He considers me a sort of engine, for the reading and copying of texts.'

'All the worse. He shan't like it, when the engine bucks. What say he disposes of it and makes himself another?'

Now I can feel the beat of the blood in my brow. I put my fingers to my eyes. 'Don't be tiresome, Richard. Disposes of it, how?'

'Why, by sending it home . . .'

T he beat seems to stumble, then quickens. I draw back my fingers, but again the light is behind him and I cannot quite make out his face. I say, very quietly, 'I shall be no 171

use to you, in a madhouse.'

'You are no use to me now, while you delay! Be careful I don't grow tired of this scheme. I shan't be kind to you, then.'

And is this kindness?' I say.

We have moved, at last, into shadow, and I see his look: it is honest, amused, amazed.

He says: 'This is dreadful villainy, Maud. When did I ever call it anything else?'

We stop, close as sweethearts. His tone has grown light again, but his eye is hard— quite hard. I feel, for the first time, what it would be to be afraid of him.

He turns and calls to Sue. 'Not far now, Suky! We are almost there, I think.' To me he murmurs: 'I shall need some minutes with her, alone.'

'To secure her,' I say. As you have me.'

'That work is done,' he says complacently; 'and she, at least, sticks better.— What?' I have shuddered, or my look has changed. 'You don't suspect her of qualms? Maud?

You don't suppose her weakening, or playing us false? Is that why you hesitate?' I shake my head. 'Well,' he goes on, 'all the more reason for me to see her, to find out how she thinks we do. Have her come to me, today or tomorrow. Find out some way, will you? Be sly.'

He puts his smoke-stained finger to his mouth. Presently Sue comes, and rests at my side. She is flushed from the weight of the bags. Her cloak still billows, her hair still whips, and I want more than anything to draw her to me, to touch and tidy her. I think I begin to, I think I half-reach for her; then I become conscious of Richard and his shrewd, considering gaze. I cross my arms before me and turn away.

Next morning I have her take him a coal from the fire, to light his cigarette from; and I stand with my brow against my dressing-room window and watch them whisper. She keeps her head turned from me, but when she leaves him he raises his eyes to me and holds my gaze, as he held it once before, in darkness. Remember our contract, he seems again to say. Then he drops his cigarette and stands heavily upon it; then shakes free the clinging red soil from his shoes.

After that, I feel the mounting pressure of our plot as I think men must feel the straining of checked machinery, tethered beasts, the gathering of tropical storms. I wake each day and think: Today I will do it! Today I will draw free the bolt and let the engine race, unleash the beast, puncture the lowering clouds! Today, I will let him claim me— !

But, I do not. I look at Sue, and there comes, always, that shadow, that darkness— a panic, I suppose it, a simple fear— a quaking, a caving— a dropping, as into the sour mouth of madness—

Madness, my mother's malady, perhaps beginning its slow ascent in me! That thought makes me more frightened yet. I take, for a day or two, more of my drops: they calm me, but change me. My uncle marks it.

'You grow clumsy,' he says, one morning. I have mishandled a book. 'You think I have you come, day after day, to my library, to abuse it?'

'No, Uncle.'

'What? Do you mumble?'

'No, sir.'

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He wets and purses his mouth, and studies me harder. When he speaks again, his tone is strange to me.

'What age are you?' he says. I am surprised, and hesitate. He sees it. 'Don't strike coy attitudes with me, miss! What age are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?— You may show astonishment. You think me insensible to the passage of years, because I am a scholar?

Hmm?'

'I am seventeen, Uncle.'

'Seventeen. A troublesome age, if we are to believe our own books.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Yes, Maud. Only remember: your business is not with belief, but with study.

Remember this, also: you are not too great a girl— nor am I too aged a scholar— for me to have Mrs Stiles come and hold you still while I take a whip to you. Hmm?

You'll remember these things? Will you?'

'Yes, sir,' I say.

It seems to me now, however, that I must remember too much. My face, my joints, are set aching with the effort of striking looks and poses. I can no longer say with certainty which of my actions— which of my feelings, even— are true ones, which are sham. Richard still keeps his gaze close upon me. I will not meet it. He is reckless, teasing, threatening: I choose not to understand. Perhaps I am weak, after all. Perhaps, as he and my uncle believe, I draw a pleasure from torment. It is certainly a torment to me now, to sit at a lesson with him, to sit at a dinner-table with him, to read to him, at night, from my uncle's books. It begins to be a torment, too, to pass time with Sue.

Our routines are spoiled. I am too conscious that she waits, as he does: I feel her watching, gauging, willing me on. Worse, she begins to speak in his behalf— to tell me, bluntly, how clever he is, how kind and interesting.

'You think so, Sue?' I ask her, my eyes upon her face; and her gaze might flutter uneasily away, but she will always answer: 'Yes, miss. Oh, yes, miss. Anyone would say it, wouldn't they?'

Then she will make me neat— always neat, handsome and neat— she will take down my hair and dress it, straighten seams, lift lint from the fabric of my gowns. I think she does it as much to calm

herself, as to calm me. 'There,' she will say, when she has finished. 'Now you are better.'— Now she is better, she means. 'Now your brow is smooth. How creased it was, before! It mustn't be creased— '

It mustn't be creased, for Mr Rivers's sake: I hear the unspoken words, my blood surges again; I take her arm in mine and pinch it.

'Oh!'

I do not know who cries it, she or I: I reel away, unnerved. But in the second I have her skin between my fingers, my own flesh leaps in a kind of relief. I shake, horribly, for almost an hour.

'Oh, God!' I say, hiding my face. 'I'm afraid, for my own mind! Do you think me mad?

Do you think me wicked, Sue?'

'Wicked?' she answers, wringing her hands. And I can see her thinking: A simple girl like you?

173

She puts me into my bed and lies with her arm against mine; but soon she sleeps, and then draws away. I think of the house in which I lie. I think of the room beyond the bed— its edges, its surfaces. I think I shall not sleep, unless I touch them. I rise, it is cold, but I go quietly from thing to thing— chimney-piece, dressing- table, carpet, press. Then I come to Sue. I would like to touch her, to be sure that she is there. I dare not. But I cannot leave her. I lift my hands and move and hold them an inch, just an inch, above her— her hip, her breast, her curling hand, her hair on the pillow, her face, as she sleeps.

I do that, perhaps three nights in a row. Then this happens.

Richard begins to make us go to the river. He has Sue sit far from me, against the upturned boat; and he, as always, keeps close at my side, pretending to watch as I paint. I paint the same spot so many times, the card starts to rise and crumble beneath my brush; but I paint on, stubbornly, and he will now and then lean close to whisper, idly but fiercely:

'God damn you, Maud, how can you sit so calm and steady? Hey? Do you hear that bell?' The Briar clock sounds clearly there, beside the water. 'There's another hour gone, that we might have passed in freedom. Instead, you keep us here— '

'Will you move?' I say. 'You are standing in my light.'

'You are standing in mine, Maud. See how easy it is, to remove that shadow? One little step is all that must be made. Do you see? Will you look? She won't. She prefers her painting. That piece of— Oh! Let me find a match, I shall burn it!'

I glance at Sue. 'Be quiet, Richard.'

But the days grow warm, and at last comes a day, so close and airless, the heat overpowers him. He spreads his coat upon the ground and sprawls upon it, tilts his hat to shadow his eyes. For a time, then, the afternoon is still and almost pleasant: there is only the calling of frogs in the rushes, the slapping of water, the cries of birds, the occasional passing of boats. I draw the paint across the card in ever finer, ever slower strokes, and almost fall into slumber.

Then Richard laughs, and my hand gives a jump. I turn to look at him. He puts his finger to his lip. 'See there,' he says softly. And he gestures to Sue.

She still sits before the upturned boat, but her head has fallen back against the rotten wood and her limbs are spread and loose. A blade of hair, dark at the tip where she has been biting at it, curves to the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are closed, her breaths come evenly. She is quite asleep. The sun slants against her face and shows the point of her chin, her lashes, her darkening freckles. Between the edges of her gloves and the cuffs of her coat are two narrow strips of pinking flesh.

I look again at Richard— meet his eye— then turn back to my painting. I say quietly,

'Her cheek will burn. Won't you wake her?'

'Shall I?' He sniffs. 'They are not much used to sunlight, where she comes from.' He speaks almost fondly, but laughs against the words; then adds in a murmur: 'Nor where she's going, I think. Poor bitch— she might sleep. She has been asleep since I first got her and brought her here, and has not known it.'

He says it, not with relish, but as if with interest at the idea. Then he stretches and yawns and gets to his feet, and sneezes. The fine weather troubles him. He puts his 174

knuckles to his nose and violently sniffs. 'I beg your pardon,' he says, drawing out his handkerchief.

Sue does not wake, but frowns and turns her head. Her lower lip slightly falls. The blade of hair swings from her cheek, but keeps its curve and point. I have lifted my brush and touched it once to my crumbling painting; now I hold it, an inch from the card; and I watch, as she sleeps. Only that. Richard sniffs again, softly curses the heat, the season. Then, as before, I suppose he grows still. I suppose he studies me. I suppose the brush in my fingers drops paint— for I find it later, black paint upon my blue gown. I do not mark it as it falls, however; and perhaps it is my not marking it, that betrays me. That, or my look. Sue frowns again. I watch, a little longer. Then I turn, and find Richard's eyes upon me.

'Oh, Maud,' he says.

That is all he says. But in his face I see, at last, how much I want her.

For a moment we do nothing. Then he steps to me and takes my wrist. The paintbrush falls.

'Come quickly,' he says. 'Come quickly, before she wakes.'

He takes me, stumbling, along the line of rushes. We walk as the water flows, about the bend of the river and the wall. When we stop, he puts his hands to my shoulders and holds me fast.

'Oh, Maud,' he says again. 'Here I have been, supposing you gripped by a conscience, or some other weakness like that. But this— !'

I have turned my face from him, but feel him laugh. 'Don't smile,' I say, shuddering.

'Don't laugh.'

'Laugh? You might be glad I don't do worse. You'll know— you'll know, if anyone will!— the sports to which gentlemen's appetites are said to be pricked, by matters like this. Thank heavens I'm not a gentleman so much as a rogue: we go by different codes.

You may love and be damned, for all I care.— Don't wriggle, Maud!' I have tried to twist from his hands. He holds me tighter, then lets me lean from him a little, but grips my waist. 'You may love and be damned,' he says again. 'But keep me from my money— keep us languishing here: put back our plot, our hopes, your own bright future— you shall not, no. Not now I know what trifling thing you have made us stay for. Now, let her wake up.— I promise you, it is as tiresome to me as to you, when you twist so!— Let her wake up

and seek us out. Let her see us like this. You won't come to me? Very good. I shall hold you here, and let her suppose us lovers at last; and so have done with it. Stand steady, now.'

He leans from me and gives a wordless shout. The sound beats against the thick air and makes it billow, then fades to a silence.

'That will bring her,' he says.

I move my arms. 'You are hurting me.'

'Stand like a lover then, and I shall grow gentle as anything.' He smiles again.

'Suppose me her.— Ah!' Now I have tried to strike him. 'Do you mean to make me bruise you?'

He holds me harder, keeping his hands upon me but pinning down my arms with his 175

own. He is tall, he is strong. His fingers meet about my waist— as young men's fingers are meant to do, I believe, on the waists of their sweethearts. For a time I strain against the pressure: we stand braced and sweating as a pair of wrestlers in a ring. But I suppose that, from a distance, we might seem swaying in a kind of love.

But I think this dully; and soon I feel myself begin to tire. The sun is still hot upon us.

The frogs still chant, the water still laps among the reeds. But the day has been punctured or ripped: I can feel it begin to droop and settle, close about me, in suffocating folds.

'I am sorry,' I say weakly.

'You needn't be sorry, now.'

'It is only— '

'You must be strong. I have seen you be strong, before.'

'It is only— '

But, only what? How might I say it? Only that she held my head against her breast, when I woke bewildered. That she warmed my foot with her breath, once. That she ground my pointed tooth with a silver thimble. That she brought me soup— clear soup— instead of an egg, and smiled to see me drink it. That her eye has a darker fleck of brown. That she thinks me good . . .

Richard is watching my face. 'Listen to me, Maud,' he says now. He pulls me tight. I am sagging in his arms. 'Listen! If it were any girl but her. If it were Agnes! Hey? But this is the girl that must be cheated, and robbed of her liberty, for us to be free. This is the girl

the doctors will take, while we look on without a murmur. You remember our plan?' I nod. 'But— ' 'What?'

'I begin to fear that, after all, I haven't the heart for it..." 'You've a heart, instead, for little fingersmiths? Oh, Maud.' Now his voice is rich with scorn. 'Have you forgotten what she has come to you for? Do you think she has forgotten? Do you suppose yourself anything to her, but that? You have been too long among your uncle's books.

Girls love easily, there. That is the point of them. If they loved so in life, the books would not have to be written.'

He looks me over. 'She would laugh in your face, if she knew.' His tone grows sly.

'She would laugh in mine, were I to tell her ..." 'You shall not tell her!' I say, lifting my head and stiffening. The thought is awful to me. 'Tell her once, and I keep at Briar for good. My uncle shall know how you've used me— I shan't care how he treats me for it.'

'I shall not tell her,' he answers slowly, 'if you will only do as you must, with no further delay. I shall not tell her, if you will let her think you love me and have agreed to be my wife; and so make good our escape, as you promised.'

I turn my face from his. Again there is a silence. Then I murmur— what else should I murmur?— 'I will.' He nods, and sighs. He still holds me tightly, and after another moment he puts his mouth against my ear.

'Here she comes!' he whispers. 'She is creeping about the wall. She means to watch and not disturb us. Now, let her know I have you . . .'

He kisses my head. The bulk and heat and pressure of him, the warmth and thickness 176

of the day, my own confusion, make me stand and let him, limply. He takes one hand from about my waist and lifts my arm. He kisses the cloth of my sleeve. When I feel his mouth upon my wrist, I flinch. 'Now, now,' he says. 'Be good, for a moment.

Excuse my whiskers. Imagine my mouth hers.' The words come wetly upon my flesh.

He pushes my glove a little way along my hand, he parts his lips, he touches my palm with the point of his

ngue; and I shudder, with weakness, with fear and distaste— with rl'smay, to know Sue stands and watches, in satisfaction, thinking me his.

For he has shown me to myself. He leads me to her, we walk to the house, she takes my cloak, takes my shoes; her cheek is pink, after all- she stands frowning at the glass, moves a hand, lightly, across her face . . • That is all she does; but I see it, and my heart gives a plunge— that caving, or dropping, that has so much panic in it, so much darkness, I supposed it fear, or madness. I watch her turn and stretch, walk her random way about the room— see her make all the careless unstudied gestures I have marked so covetously, so long. Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.

I think she must see it. Now he has named it, I think it must colour or mark me— I think it must mark me crimson, like paint marks the hot red points, the lips and gashes and bare whipped limbs, of my uncle's pictures. I am afraid, that night, to undress before her. I am afraid to lie at her side. I am afraid to sleep. I am afraid I will dream of her. I am afraid that, in dreaming, I will turn and touch her ...

But after all, if she senses the change in me, she thinks I am changed because of Richard. If she feels me tremble, if she feels my heart beat hard, she thinks I tremble for him. She is waiting, still waiting. Next day I take her walking to my mother's grave. I sit and gaze at the stone, that I have kept so neat and free from blemish. I should like to smash it with a hammer. I wish— as I have wished many times— that my mother were alive, so that I might kill her again. I say to Sue: 'Do you know, how it was she died? It was my birth that did it!'— and it is an effort, to keep the note of triumph from my voice.

She does not catch it. She watches me, and I begin to weep; and where she might say anything to comfort me— anything at all— what she says is: 'Mr Rivers.'

I l o o k f r o m h e r i n c o n t e m p t , t h e n . S h e c o m e s a n d l e a d s m e t o t h e c h a p e l door— perhaps, to turn my thoughts to marriage. The door is locked and can't be passed. She waits for me to speak. At last I tell her, dutifully: 'Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.'

She says she is glad. And, when I weep again— false tears, this time, that wash away the true ones— and when I choke and wring my hands and cry out, 'Oh! What shall I do?', she touches me and holds my gaze, and says: 'He loves you.'

'You think he does?'

She says she knows it. She does not flinch. She says, 'You must follow your heart.'

'I am not sure,' I say. 'If I might only be sure!'

'But to love,' she says, 'and then to lose him!'

177

I grow too conscious of the closeness of her gaze, and look away. She talks to me of beating blood, of thrilling voices, of dreams. I feel his kiss, like a burn upon my palm; and all at once she sees, not that I love him, but how much I have come to fear and hate him.

She grows white. 'What will you do?' she says, in a whisper.

'What can I do?' I say. 'What choice have I?'

She does not answer. She only turns from me, to gaze for a moment at the barred chapel door. I look at the pale of her cheek, at her jaw, at the mark of the needle in the lobe of her ear. When she turns back, her face has changed.

'Marry him,' she tells me. 'He loves you. Marry him, and do everything he says.'

She has come to Briar to ruin me, to cheat me and do me harm. Look at her, I tell myself. See how slight she is, how brown and trifling! A thief, a little fingersmith— /1

think I will swallow down my desire, as I have swallowed down grief, and rage. Shall I be thwarted, shall I be checked— held to my past, kept from my future— by her? I think, / shan't. The day of our flight draws near. / shan't. The month grows warmer, the nights grow close. / shan't, I shan't—

'You are cruel,' Richard says. 'I don't think you love me as you ought. I think— ' and he glances, slyly, at Sue— 'I think there must be someone else you care for . . .'

Sometimes I see him look at her, and think he has told her. Sometimes she looks at me, so strangely— or else her hands, in touching me, seem so stiff, so nervous and unpractised— I think she knows. Now and then I am obliged to leave them alone together, in my own room; he might tell her, then.

What do you say, Suky, to this? She loves you!

Loves me? Like a lady loves her maid?

Like certain ladies love their maids, perhaps. Hasn't she found little ways to keep you close about her?— Have I done that? Hasn't she feigned troublesome dreams?— Is that what I have done? Has she had you kiss her? Careful, Suky, she doesn't try to kiss you back . . .

Would she laugh, as he said she would? Would she shiver? It seems to me she lies more cautiously beside me now, her legs and arms tucked close. It seems to me she is often wary, watchful. But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells. I have come to terrible life— or else, the things about me have come to life, their colours grown too vivid, their surfaces too harsh. I flinch, from falling shadows. I seem to see figures start out from the fading patterns in the dusty carpets and drapes, or creep, with the milky blooms of damp, across the ceilings and walls.

Even my uncle's books are changed to me; and this is worse, this is worst of all. I have supposed them dead. Now the words— like the figures in the walls— start up, are filled with meaning. I grow muddled, stammer. I lose my place. My uncle shrieks— seizes, from his desk, a paperweight of brass, and throws it at me. That steadies me, for a time. But then he has me read, one night, from a certain work . . .

Richard watches, his hand across his mouth, a look of amusement dawning on his face.

For the work tells of all the means a woman may employ to pleasure another, when in want of a man.

'And she pressed her lips and tongue to it, and into it— '

178

'You like this, Rivers?' asks my uncle.

'I confess, sir, I do.'

'Well, so do many men; though I fear it is hardly to my taste. Still, I am glad to note your interest. I address the subject fully, of course, in my Index. Read on, Maud. Read on.'

I do. And despite myself— and in spite of Richard's dark, tormenting gaze— I feel the stale words rouse me. I colour, and am ashamed. I am ashamed to think that what I have supposed the secret book of my heart may be stamped, after all, with no more miserable matter than this— have its place in my uncle's collection. I leave the drawing- room each night and go upstairs— g o s l o w l y , t a p p i n g t h e t o e s o f m y slippered feet against each step. If I strike them equally, I shall be safe. Then I stand in darkness. When Sue comes to undress me I will myself to suffer her touch, coolly, as I think a mannequin of wax might suffer the quick, indifferent touches of a tailor.

And yet, even wax limbs must yield at last, to the heat of the hands that lift and place them. There comes a night when, finally, I yield to hers.

I have begun, in sleeping, to dream unspeakable dreams; and to wake, each time, in a confusion of longing and fear. Sometimes she stirs. Sometimes she does not. 'Go back to sleep,' she will say, if she does. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I rise and go about the room; sometimes, take drops. I take drops, this night; then return to her side; but sink, not into lethargy, but only into more confusion. I think of the books I have lately read, to Richard and to my uncle: they come back to me, now, in phrases, fragments— pressed her lips and tongue— takes hold of my hand— hip, lip and tongue— forced it half-strivingly— took hold of my breasts— opened wide the lips of my little— the lips of her little cunt—

I cannot silence them. I can almost see them, rising darkly from their own pale pages, to gather, to swarm and combine. I put my hands before my face. I do not know how long I lie for, then. But I must make some sound, or movement; for when I draw my hands away, she is awake, and watching. I know that she is watching, though the bed is so dark.

'Go to sleep,' she says. Her voice is thick.

I feel my legs, very bare inside my gown. I feel the point at which they join. I feel the words, still swarming. The warmth of her limbs comes inching, inching through the fibres of the bed.

I say, 'I'm afraid . . .'

Then her breathing changes. Her voice grows clearer, kinder. She yawns. 'What is it?'

she says. She rubs her eye. She pushes the hair back from her brow. If she were any girl but Sue! If she were Agnes! If she were a girl in a book— !

Girls love easily, there. That is their point.

Hip, lip and tongue—

'Do you think me good?' I say.

'Good, miss?'

She does. It felt like safety, once. Now it feeis like a trap. 1 say, 'I wish— I wish you would tell me— '

'Tell you what, miss?'

179

Tell me. Tell me a way to save you. A way to save myself. The room is perfectly black.

Hip, lip—

Girls love easily, there.

' I w i s h , ' I s a y , ' I w i s h y o u w o u l d t e l l m e w h a t i t i s a w i f e m u s t d o , o n h e r wedding- night

And at first, it is easy. After all, this is how it is done, in my uncle's books: two girls, one wise and one unknowing . .. 'He will want,' she says, 'to kiss you. He will want to embrace you.' It is easy. I say my part, and she— with a little prompting— says hers.

The words sink back upon their pages. It is easy, it is easy .. .

Then she rises above me and puts her mouth to mine.

I have felt, before, the pressure of a gentleman's still, dry lips against my gloved hand, my cheek. I have suffered Richard's wet, insinuating kisses upon my palm. Her lips are cool, smooth, damp: they fit themselves imperfectly to mine, but then grow warmer, damper. Her hair falls against my face. I cannot see her, I can only feel her, and taste her. She tastes of sleep, slightly sour. Too sour. I part my lips— to breathe, or to swallow, or perhaps to move away; but in breathing or swallowing or moving I only seem to draw her into my mouth. Her lips part, also. Her tongue comes between them and touches mine.

And at that, I shudder, or quiver. For it is like the finding out of something raw, the troubling of a wound, a nerve. She feels me jolt, and draws away— but slowly, slowly and unwillingly, so that

our damp mouths seem to cling together and, as they part, to tear. She holds herself above me. I feel the rapid beating of a heart, and suppose it my own. But it is hers.

Her breath comes, fast. She has begun, very lightly, to tremble.

Then I catch the excitement of her, the amazement of her.

'Do you feel it?' she says. Her voice sounds strangely in the absolute darkness. 'Do you feel it?'

I do. I feel it as a falling, a dropping, a trickling, like sand from a bulb of glass. Then I move; and I am not dry, like sand. I am wet. I am running, like water, like ink.

I begin, like her, to shake.

'Don't be frightened,' she says. Her voice has a catch. I move again, but she moves, too, she comes nearer to me, and my flesh gives a leap, to hers. She is trembling, worse than before. She is trembling, from the closeness of me! She says, 'Think more o f M r R i v e r s . ' — I t h i n k o f R i c h a r d , w a t c h i n g . S h e s a y s a g a i n , ' D o n ' t b e frightened.'— But it is she who seems frightened. Her voice still has its catch. She kisses me again. Then she raises her hand and I feel the tips of her fingers flutter against my face.

'Do you see?' she says. 'It is easy, it is easy. Think more of him. He will want— He will want to touch you.'

'To touch me?'

'Only touch you,' she says. The fluttering hand moves lower. 'Only touch you. Like this. Like this.'

When she puts up my nightgown and reaches between my legs, we both grow still.

When her hand moves again, her fingers no longer flutter: they have grown wet, and 180

slide, and in sliding seem, like her lips as they rub upon mine, to quicken and draw me, to gather me, out of the darkness, out of my natural shape. I thought I longed for her, before. Now I begin to feel a longing so great, so sharp, I fear it will never be assuaged. I think it will mount, and mount, and make me mad, or kill me. Yet her hand moves slowly, still. She whispers. 'How soft you are! How warm! I want— ' The hand moves even slower. She begins to press. I catch my breath. That makes her hesitate, and then press harder. At last she presses so hard I feel the giving of my flesh, I feel her inside me. I think I cry out. She does not hesitate now, however, but comes nearer to me and puts her hips about my thigh; then presses again.

So slight she is!— but her hip is sharp, her hand is blunt, she leans, she pushes, she moves her hips and hand as if to a rhythm, a time, a quickening beat. She reaches. She reaches so far, she catches the life, the shuddering heart of me: soon I seem to be nowhere but at the points at which my flesh is gripped by hers. And then, 'Oh, there!'

she says. 'Just there! Oh, there!'— I am breaking, shattering, bursting out of her hand.

She begins to weep. Her tears come upon my face. She puts her mouth to them. You pearl, she says, as she does it. Her voice is broken. You pearl.

I don't know how long we lie, then. She sinks beside me, with her face against my hair.

She slowly draws back her fingers. My thigh is wet from where she has leaned and moved upon me. The feathers of the mattress have yielded beneath us, the bed is close and high and hot. She puts back the blanket. The night is still deep, the room still black. Our breaths still come fast, our hearts beat loud— faster, and louder, they seem to me, in the thickening silence; and the bed, the room— the house!— seem filled with echoes of our voices, our whispers and cries.

I cannot see her. But after a moment she finds my hand and presses it, hard, then takes it to her mouth, kisses my fingers, lies with my palm beneath her cheek. I feel the weight and shape of the bones of her face. I feel her blink. She does not speak. She closes her eyes. Her face grows heavy. She shivers, once. The heat is rising from her, like a scent. I reach and draw the blanket up again, and lay it gently about her.

Everything, I say to myself, is changed. I think I was dead, before. Now she has touched the life of me, the quick of me; she has put back my flesh and opened me up.

Everything is changed. I still feel her, inside me. I still feel her, moving upon my thigh.

I imagine her waking, meeting my gaze. I think, 'I will tell her, then. I will say, "I meant to cheat you. I cannot cheat you now. This was Richard's plot. We can make it ours.'"— We can make it ours, I think; or else, we can give it up entirely. I need only escape from Briar: she can

help me do that— she's a thief, and clever. We can make our own secret way to London, find money for ourselves . . .

So I calculate and plan, while she lies slumbering with her face upon my hand. My heart beats hard again. I am filled, as with colour or light, with a sense of the life we will have, together. Then I also sleep. And in sleeping I suppose I must move away from her— or she must move, from me— and then she must wake, with the day, and rise: for when I open my eyes she has gone, the bed is cool. I hear her in her own room, splashing water. I rise up from my pillow, and my nightgown gapes at my breast: she has undone the ribbons, in the dark. I move my legs. I am wet, still wet, 181

from the sliding and the pressing of her hand.

You pearl, she said.

Then she comes, and meets my gaze. My heart leaps within me.

She looks away.

I think her only awkward, at first. I think her shy and self- conscious. She goes silently about the room, taking out my petticoats and gown. I stand, so she may wash and dress me. Now she will speak, I think. But, she does not. And when she sees the blush upon my breast, the marks left by her mouth, the dampness between my legs, it seems to me that she shudders. Only then do I begin to grow afraid. She calls me to the glass.

I watch her face. It seems queer in reflection, crooked and wrong. She puts the pins to my hair, but keeps her eyes all the time on her own uncertain hands. I think, She is ashamed.

So then, I speak.

'What a thick sleep I had,' I say, very softly. 'Didn't I?'

Her eyelids flutter. 'You did,' she answers. 'No dreams.'

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

She colours; and I watch her rising blush and feel, again, the pressure of her mouth against mine, the drawing of our fierce, imperfect kisses, the pushing of her hand. I meant to cheat her. I cannot cheat her, now. 'I am not what you think,' I will say. 'You think me good. I am not good. But I might, with you, begin to try to be. This was his plot. We can make it ours— '

'In your dream?' she says at last, moving from me. 'I don't think so, miss. Not me. I should say, Mr Rivers. Look! There he is. His cigarette almost smoked. You will miss him— ' She falters once; but then goes on, 'You will miss him, if you wait.'

I sit dazed for a moment, as if struck by her hand; then I rise, go lifelessly to the window, watch Richard walk, smoke his cigarette, put back the tumbling hair from his brow. But I keep at the glass, long after he has left the lawn and gone in to my uncle. I would see my face, if the day were dark enough; I see it anyway, though: my hollowing cheek, my lips, too plump, too pink— plumper and pinker than ever now, from the pressing of Sue's mouth. I remember my uncle— 'I have touched your lip with poison, Maud'— and Barbara, starting away. I remember Mrs Stiles, grinding lavender soap against my tongue, then wiping and wiping her hands upon her apron.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed, at all. She has put back my flesh; but flesh will close, will seal, will scar and harden. I hear her go to my drawing- room; I watch her sit, cover up her face. I wait, but she does not look— I think she will never look honestly at me, again. I meant to save her. Now I see very clearly what will happen, if I do— if I draw back from Richard's plot. He will go from Briar, with her at his side. Why should she stay? She will go, and I shall be left— to my uncle, to the books, to Mrs Stiles, to some new meek and bruisable girl ... I think of my life— of the hours, the minutes, the days that have made it up; of the hours, the minutes and days that stretch before me, still to be lived. I think of how they will be— without Richard, without money, without London, without liberty. Without Sue.

And so you see it is love— not scorn, not malice; only love— that makes me harm her, 182

in the end.

Chapter Eleven

We leave, just as we have planned, on the last day of April. /y 1/ Richard's stay is complete. My uncle's prints are mounted and bound: he takes me to view them, as a sort of treat.

'Fine work,' he says. 'You think, Maud? Hmm?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you look?'

'Yes, Uncle.'

'Yes. Fine work. I believe I shall send for Hawtrey and Huss. I shall have them come— next week? What do you say? Shall we make an occasion of it?'

I do not answer. I am thinking of the dining- room, the drawing- room— and me, in some other shadowy place, far off. He turns to Richard.

'Rivers,' he says, 'should you like to come back, as a guest, with Hawtrey?'

Richard bows, looks sorry. 'I fear, sir, I shall be occupied elsewhere.'

'Unfortunate. You hear that, Maud? Most unfortunate . . .'

He unlocks his door. Mr Way and Charles are going about the gallery with Richard's bags. Charles is rubbing his eyes with his sleeve.— 'Get on with you!' says Mr Way savagely, kicking out with his foot. Charles lifts his head, sees us emerging from my uncle's room— sees my uncle, I suppose— and shakes in a sort of convulsion, and runs.

My uncle also shakes, then.

'Do you see, Rivers, the torments to which I am exposed? Mr Way, I hope you will catch that boy and whip him!'

'I will, sir,' says Mr Way.

Richard looks at me, and smiles. I do not smile back. And when, at the steps, he takes my hand, my fingers sit quite nervelessly against his own. 'Good-bye,' he says. I say nothing. He turns to my uncle: 'Mr Lilly. Farewell to you, sir!'

'A handsome man,' my uncle says, as the trap is drawn from sight. 'Hmm, Maud?

What, are you silent? Shan't you like it, to have to return to our solitary ways?'

We go back into the house. Mr Way pulls closed the swollen door, and the hall grows dark. I climb the stairs at my uncle's side, as I once, as a girl, climbed them with Mrs Stiles. How many times, I think, have I mounted them, since then? How many times has my heel struck this spot, that spot? How many slippers, how many strait gowns, how many gloves, have I outgrown or outworn? How many voluptuous words have I silently read?— how many mouthed, for gentlemen?

The stairs, the slippers and gloves, the words, the gentlemen, will all remain, though I escape. Will they? I think again of the rooms of my uncle's house: the dining- and drawing- room, the library. I think of the little crescent I once picked out in the paint 183

that covers the library windows: I try to imagine it, eyeless. I remember how once I woke and watched my room seem to gather itself together out of the dark, and thought,

/ shall never escape! Now I know that I shall. But I think that Briar will haunt me, too.— Or else, I will haunt it, while living out some dim and partial life beyond its walls.

I think of the ghost I shall make: a neat, monotonous ghost,

walking for ever on soft-soled feet, through a broken house, to the pattern of ancient carpets.

But perhaps, after all, I am a ghost already. For I go to Sue and she shows me the gowns and linens she means for us to take, the jewels she means to shine, the bags she will fill; but she does it all without meeting my gaze; and I watch, and say nothing. I am more aware of her hands than of the objects she takes up; feel the stir of her breath, see the movement of her lip, but her words slip from my memory the moment she has said them. At last she has nothing more to show. We must only wait. We take our lunch. We walk to my mother's grave. I stare at the stone, feeling nothing. The day is mild, and damp: our shoes, as we walk, press dew from the springing green earth and mark our gowns with streaks of mud.

I have surrendered myself to Richard's plan, as I once gave myself to my uncle. The plot, the flight— they seem fired, now, not so much by my wants as by his. I am empty of want. I sit at my supper, I eat, I read; I return to Sue and let her dress me as she likes, take wine when she offers it, stand at the window at her side. She moves fretfully, from foot to foot. 'Look at the moon,' she says softly, 'how bright it is! Look at the shadows on the grass.— What time is it? Not eleven, yet?— To think of Mr Rivers, somewhere upon the water, now ..."

There is only one thing I mean to do, before I go: one deed— one terrible deed— the vision of which has risen, to goad and console me, through all the bitten-down rages, the dark and uneasy sleeps, of my life at Briar; and now, as the hour of our flight nears, as the house falls silent, still, unsuspecting, I do it. Sue leaves me, to look over our bags. I hear her, unfastening buckles.— That is all I wait for.

I go stealthily from the room. I know my way, I do not need a lamp, and my dark dress hides me. I go to the head of the stairs, cross quickly the broken carpets of moonlight that the windows there throw upon the floor. Then I pause, and listen.

Silence. So then I go on, into the corridor which faces mine, along a path which is the mirror of the path that has led from my own rooms. At the first door I pause again, and listen again, to be sure that all is still within.

This is the door to my uncle's rooms. I have never entered here, before. But, as I guess, the handle and hinges are kept greased, and turn without a sound. The rug is a thick one, and makes a whisper of my step.

His drawing- room is even darker, and seems smaller, than mine: he has hangings upon the walls, and more book-presses. I don't look at them. I go to his dressing- room door, put my ear to the wood; take the handle and turn it. One inch, two inches, three.— I hold my breath, my hand upon my heart. No sound. I push the door further, stand and listen again. If he stirs, I will turn and go. Does he move? For a second there is nothing. Still I wait, uncertain. Then comes the soft, even rasp of his breathing.

184

He has his bed-curtains pulled close but keeps a light, as I do, upon a table: this seems curious to me, I should never have supposed him to be nervous of the dark. But the dim light helps me. Without moving from my place beside the door, I look about me; and at last see the two things I have come to take. On his dressing- stand, beside his jug of water: his watch-chain with, upon it, the key to his library, bound in faded velvet; and his razor.

I go quickly and take them up— the chain uncurling softly, I feel it slither against my glove. If it should fall— ! It does not fall. The door-key swings like a pendulum. The razor is heavier than I expect, the blade is free of its clasp, at an angle, showing its edge. I pull it a little freer, and turn it to the light: it must be sharp, for what I want it for. I think it is sharp enough. I lift my head. In the glass above the mantel, picked out against the shadows of the room, I see myself— my hands: in one a key, in the other a blade. I might pass for a girl in an allegory. Confidence Abused.

Behind me, the drapes to my uncle's bed do not quite meet. In the space between them a shaft of light— so weak it is hardly light, but rather a lessening of darkness— leads to his face. I have never seen him sleep before. In form he seems slight, like a child. The blanket is drawn to his chin, uncreased, pulled tight. His lips let out his breath in a puff. He is dreaming— black- letter dreams, perhaps, or pica, morocco, calf. He is counting spines. His spectacles sit neatly, as if with folded arms, on the table beside his head. Beneath

the lashes of one of his soft eyes there is a gleaming line of moisture. The razor is warming in my hand . . .

But this is not that kind of story. Not yet. I stand and watch him sleep for almost a minute; and then I leave him. I go as I have come— carefully, silently. I go to the stairs, and from there to the library, and once inside that room I lock the door at my back and light a lamp. My heart is beating hardest, now. I am queasy with fear and anticipation.

But time is racing, and I cannot wait. I cross to my uncle's shelves and unfasten the glass before the presses. I begin with The Curtain Drawn Up, the book he gave me first: I take it, and open it, and set it upon his desk. Then I lift the razor, grip it tight, and fully unclasp it. The blade is stiff, but springs the last inch. It is its nature to cut, after all.

Still, it is hard— it is terribly hard, I almost cannot do it— to put the metal for the first time to the neat and naked paper. I am almost afraid the book will shriek, and so discover me. But it does not shriek. Rather, it sighs, as if in longing for its own laceration; and when I hear that, my cuts become swifter and more true.

When I return to Sue she is at the window, wringing her hands. Midnight has sounded.

She supposed me lost. But she is too relieved to scold me. 'Here's your cloak,' she says. 'Fasten it up now, quick. Take your bag.— Not that one, that one's too heavy for you. Now, we must go.' She thinks me nervous. She puts her finger to my mouth. She says, 'Be steady' Then she takes my hand and leads me through the house.

Soft as a thief, she goes. She tells me where I may walk. She does not know that I have recently stood, light as a shadow, and watched my uncle sleep. But then, we go by the servants' way, and the naked passages and stairs are strange to me, all this part of the house is strange to me. She keeps her hand in mine until we reach the basement 185

door. Then she sets down her bag, so she may smear the key and the bolts with grease, to make them turn. She catches my eye and winks, like a boy. My heart aches in my breast.

Then the door is opened and she takes me into the night; and the park is changed, the house seems queer— for of course, I have never

before seen it at such an hour as this, I have only stood at my window and gazed out.

If I stood there now, would I see myself running, Sue tugging my hand? Would I seem so bleached of depth and colour, like the lawn, the trees, the stones and stumps of ivy?

For a second I hesitate, turn and watch the glass, quite sure that, if I only wait, I will see my face. Then I look at the other windows. Will no-one wake, and come, and call me back?

No-one wakes, no-one calls. Sue pulls at my hand again, and I turn and follow. I have the key to the gate in the wall: when we are through and the lock is fast again I let it fall among the rushes. The sky is clear. We stand in shadow, saying nothing— two Thisbes, awaiting a Pyramus. The moon makes the river half silver, half deepest black.

He keeps to the black part. The boat sits low upon the water— a dark-hulled boat, slender, rising at the prow. The dark boat of my dreams. I watch it come, feel Sue's hand turn in mine; then step from her, take the rope he casts, let him guide me to my seat, unresisting. She comes beside me, staggering, her balance all gone. He braces the boat against the bank with a single oar, and as she sits, we turn, and the current takes us.