In the mornings, when I walked with Maud, just the two of us, I walked at her side. Now, of course, she walked with Gentleman: he would offer her his arm and, after a show of hesitation, she would take it; I think she held it more easily, through having grown used to holding mine. She walked pretty stiffly, though; but then, he would find little artful ways to pull her closer. He would bend his head until it was near hers. He would pretend to brush dust from her collar. There would start off space between them, but steadily the space would close—at last, there would only be the rub of his sleeve upon hers, the buckling of her skirt about his trousers. I saw it all; for I walked behind them. I carried her satchel of paints and brushes, her wooden triangle, and a stool. Sometimes they would draw away from me, and seem quite to forget me. Then Maud would remember, and turn, and say,
‘How good you are, Sue! You do not mind the walk? Mr Rivers thinks another quarter of a mile will do it.’
Mr Rivers always thought that. He kept her slowly walking about the park, saying he was looking for scenes for her to paint, but really keeping her close and talking in murmurs; and I had to follow, with all their gear.
Of course, I was the reason they were able to walk at all. I was meant to watch and see that Gentleman was proper.
I watched him hard. I also watched her. She would look sometimes at his face; more often at the ground; now and then at some flower or leaf or fluttering bird that took her fancy. And when she did that he would half turn, and catch my eye, and give a devilish kind of smile; but by the time she gazed at him again his face would be smooth.
You would swear, seeing him then, that he loved her.
You would swear, seeing her, that she loved him.
But you could see that she was fearful, of her own fluttering heart. He could not go too fast. He never touched her, except to let her lean upon his arm, and to guide her hand as she painted. He would bend close to her, to watch her as she dabbled in the colours, and then their breaths would come together and his hair would mix with hers; but if he went a little nearer she would flinch. She kept her gloves on.
At last he found out that spot beside the river, and she began a painting of the scenery there, adding more dark rushes each day. In the evening she sat reading in the drawing-room, for him and Mr Lilly. At night she went fretfully to her bed, and sometimes took more sleeping-drops, and sometimes shivered in her sleep.
I put my hands upon her, when she did that, till she was still again.
I was keeping her calm, for Gentleman’s sake. Later on he would want me to make her nervous; but for now I kept her calm, I kept her neat, I kept her dressed very handsome. I washed her hair in vinegar, and brushed it till it shone. Gentleman would come to her parlour and study her, and bow. And when he said, ‘Miss Lilly, I believe you grow sweeter in the face with every day that passes!’, I knew he meant it. But I knew, too, that he meant it as a compliment not to her—who had done nothing—but to me, who did it all.
I guessed little things like that. He couldn’t speak plainly, but made great play with his eyes and with his smiles, as I have said. We waited out our chance for a talk in private; and just as it began to look as though that chance would never come, it did—and it was Maud, in her innocent way, who let us have it.
For she saw him one morning, very early, from the window of her room. She stood at the glass and put her head against it, and said,
‘There is Mr Rivers, look, walking on the lawn.’
I went and stood beside her and, sure enough, there he was, strolling about the grass, smoking a cigarette. The sun, being still rather low, made his shadow very long.
‘Ain’t he tall?’ I said, gazing sideways at Maud. She nodded. Her breath made the glass mist, and she wiped it away. Then she said, ‘Oh!’—as if he might have fallen over—‘Oh! I think his cigarette has gone out. Poor Mr Rivers!’
He was studying the dark tip of his cigarette, and blowing at it; now he was putting his hand to his trouser pocket, searching for a match. Maud made another swipe at the window-glass.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don’t believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets . . .’
She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking.
I said, ‘It won’t kill him, miss.’
‘But poor Mr Rivers,’ she said again. ‘Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!’
We didn’t have any matches. Margaret kept them in her apron. When I told Maud that she said,
‘Then take a candle! Take anything! Take a coal from the fire! Oh, can’t you be quicker?—Don’t say I sent you, mind!’
Can you believe she had me doing that?—tripping down two sets of stairs, with a lighted coal in a pair of fire-tongs, just so a man might have his morning smoke? Can you believe I did it? Well, I was a servant now, and must. Gentleman saw me stepping across the grass to him, saw what I carried, and laughed.
I said, ‘All right. She has sent me down with it for you to light your cigarette from. Look glad, she is watching. But make a business of it, if you want.’
He did not move his head, but raised his eyes to her window.
‘What a good girl she is,’ he said.
‘She is too good for you, that I do know.’
He smiled. But only as a gentleman should smile to a servant; and his face he made kind. I imagined Maud, looking down, breathing quicker upon the glass. He said quietly,
‘How do we do, Sue?’
‘Pretty well,’ I answered.
‘You think she loves me?’
‘I do. Oh, yes.’
He drew out a silver case and lifted free a cigarette. ‘But she hasn’t told you so?’
‘She don’t have to.’
He leaned close to the coal. ‘Does she trust you?’
‘I think she must. She has nobody else.’
He drew on the cigarette, then breathed out in a sigh. The smoke stained the cold air blue. He said, ‘She’s ours.’
He stepped back a little way, then gestured with his eyes; I saw what he wanted, let the coal fall to the lawn, and he stooped to help me get it. ‘What else?’ he said. I told him, in a murmur, about the sleeping-drops, and about her being afraid of her own dreams. He listened, smiling, all the time fumbling with the fire-tongs over the piece of coal, and finally catching it up and rising, and placing my hands upon the handle of the tongs and pressing them tight.
‘The drops and the dreams are good,’ he said quietly. ‘They’ll help us, later. But you know, for now, what you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She’s our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.—Keep it like this,’ he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. ‘Like this, so the coal won’t fall and scorch Miss Lilly’s carpets . . .’
I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:
‘They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.’
He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.
From his place on the step, I saw Mr Way studying him rather as the hard boys of the Borough did—as if not quite sure what he wanted to do most: laugh at him, or punch his lights out. But Gentleman kept his eyes very innocent. He only lifted his face to the sun, and stretched, so that Maud might see him better from the shadows of her room.
She stood and watched him walk and smoke his cigarette, every morning after that. She would stand at the window with her f
ace pressed to the glass, and the glass would mark her brow with a circle of red—a perfect circle of crimson in her pale face. It was like the spot upon the cheek of a girl with a fever. I thought I saw it growing darker and fiercer with every day that passed.
Now she watched Gentleman, and I watched them both; and the three of us waited for the fever to break.
I had thought it might take two weeks, or three. But two weeks had gone by already, and we had got nowhere. Then another two passed, and it was all just the same. She was too good at waiting, and the house was too smooth. She would give a little jump out of her groove, to be nearer to Gentleman; and he would sneak a little way out of his, to be closer to her; but that would only make new grooves for them to glide in. We needed the whole show to go bust.
We needed her to grow confiding, so that I could help her on her way. But, though I dropped a thousand little hints—such as, what a kind gentleman Mr Rivers was; and how handsome and how well-bred; and how her uncle seemed to like him; and how she seemed to like him, and how he seemed to like her; and if a lady ever thought of marrying, didn’t she think a gent like Mr Rivers might be just the gent for the job?—though I gave her a thousand little chances like that, to open up her heart, she never took one. The weather turned cold again, then grew warmer. It got to March. Then it was almost April. By May, Mr Lilly’s pictures would all be mounted, and Gentleman would have to leave. But still she said nothing; and he held back from pressing her, out of fear that a wrong move would frighten her off.
I grew fretful, waiting. Gentleman grew fretful. We all grew nervy as narks—Maud would sit fidgeting for hours at a trot, and when the house clock sounded she would give a little start, that would make me start; and when it came time for Gentleman to call on her, I would see her flinching, listening for his step—then his knock would come, and she would jump, or scream, or drop her cup and break it. Then at night, she would lie stiff and open-eyed, or turn and murmur in her sleep.
All, I thought, for love! I had never seen anything like it. I thought about how such a business got worked out, in the Borough. I thought of all the things a girl could ordinarily do, when she liked a fellow that she guessed liked her.
I thought of what I would do, if a man like Gentleman liked me.
I thought perhaps I ought to take her aside and tell her, as one girl to another.
Then I thought she might think me rude.—Which is pretty rum, in light of what happened later.
But something else happened first. The fever broke at last. The show went bust, and all our waiting paid off.
She let him kiss her.
Not on her lips, but somewhere altogether better.
I know, because I saw it.
It was down by the river, on the first day of April. The weather was too warm for the time of year. The sun shone bright in a sky of grey, and everyone said there would be thunder.
She had a jacket and a cloak above her gown, and was hot: she called me to her, and had me take away the cloak, and then the jacket. She was sitting at her painting of the rushes, and Gentleman was near her, looking on and smiling. The sun made her squint: every now and then she would raise her hand to her eyes. Her gloves were quite spoiled with paint, and there was paint upon her face.
The air was thick and warm and heavy, but the earth was cold to the touch: it had all the chill of winter in it still, and all the dampness of the river. The rushes smelt rank. There was a sound, as of a locksmith’s file, that Gentleman said was bullfrogs. There were long-legged spiders, and beetles. There was a bush, with a show of tight, fat, furry buds.
I sat beside the bush, on the upturned punt: Gentleman had carried it there for me, to the shelter of the wall. It was as far away from him and Maud as he dared place me. I kept the spiders from a basket of cakes. That was my job, while Maud painted, and Gentleman looked on, smiling, and sometimes putting his hand on hers.
She painted, and the queer hot sun went lower, the grey sky began to be streaked with red, and the air grew even thicker. And then I slept. I slept and dreamt of Lant Street—I dreamt of Mr Ibbs at his brazier, burning his hand and shouting. The shout woke me up. I started from the punt, not knowing for a second where I was. Then I looked about me. Maud and Gentleman were nowhere to be seen.
There was her stool, and there the terrible painting. There were her brushes—one was dropped upon the ground—and there her paints. I went over and picked up the fallen brush. I thought it would be like Gentleman, after all, to have taken her back to the house and left me to come up, sweating, with everything behind them. But I could not imagine that she would go with him, alone. I felt almost afraid for her. I felt almost like a real maid, worried for her mistress.
And then I heard her voice, murmuring. I walked a little way, and saw them.
They had not gone far—only just along the river, where it bent about the wall. They did not hear me come, they did not look round. They must have walked together along the line of rushes; and then I suppose he had spoken to her at last. He had spoken, for the first time, without me to overhear him—and I wondered what words he had said, that could make her lean against him, like that. She had her head upon his collar. Her skirt rose at the back, almost to her knees. And yet, her face she kept turned hard from his. Her arms hung at her side, like a doll’s arms. He moved his mouth against her hair, and whispered.
Then, while I stood watching, he lifted one of her weak hands and slowly drew the glove half from it; and then he kissed her naked palm.
And by that, I knew he had her. I think he sighed. I think she sighed, too—I saw her sag still closer to him, then give a shiver. Her skirt rose even higher, and showed the tops of her stockings, the white of her thigh.
The air was thick as treacle. My gown was damp where it gripped. A limb of iron would have sweated, in a dress on such a day. An eye of marble would have swivelled in its socket to gaze as I did. I could not look away. The stillness of them—her hand, so pale against his beard, the glove still bunched about her knuckles, the lifted skirt—it seemed to hold me like a spell. The purr of the bullfrogs was louder than before. The river lapped like a tongue among the rushes. I watched, and he dipped his head, and softly kissed her again.
I should have been glad to see him do it. I was not. Instead, I imagined the rub of his whiskers upon her palm. I thought of her smooth white fingers, her soft white nails.—I had cut them, that morning. I had dressed her and brushed her hair. I had been keeping her, neat and in her looks—all for the sake of this moment. All for him. Now, against the dark of his jacket and hair, she seemed so neat—so slight, so pale—I thought she might break. I thought he might swallow her up, or bruise her.
I turned away. I felt the heat of the day, the thickness of the air, the rankness of the rushes, too hard. I turned, and stole softly back to where the painting was. After a minute there came thunder, and another minute after that I heard the sound of skirts, and then Maud and Gentleman walked quickly about the curving wall, she with her arm in his, her gloves buttoned up and her eyes on the ground; him with his hand upon her fingers, his head bent. When he saw me he gave me a look. He said,
‘Sue! We didn’t like to wake you. We have been walking, and lost ourselves in gazing at the river. Now the light is all gone, and we shall have rain, I think. Have you a coat for your mistress?’
I said nothing. Maud, too, was silent, and looked nowhere but at her feet. I put her cloak about her, then took the painting and the paints, the stool and the basket, and followed her and Gentleman back, through the gate in the wall, to the house. Mr Way opened the door to us. As he closed it the thunder came again. Then the rain began to fall, in great, dark, staining drops.
‘Just in time!’ said Gentleman softly, gazing at Maud and letting her draw her hand from him.
It was the hand he had kissed. She must have felt his lips there still, for I saw her turn from him and hold it to her bosom, and stroke her fingers over her palm.
5.
The rain fell all that
night. It made rivers of water that ran beneath the basement doors, into the kitchen, the still-room and the pantries. We had to cut short our supper so that Mr Way and Charles might lay down sacks. I stood with Mrs Stiles at a back-stairs window, watching the bouncing raindrops and the flashes of lightning. She rubbed her arms and gazed at the sky.
‘Pity the sailors at sea,’ she said.
I went up early to Maud’s rooms, and sat in the darkness, and when she came she did not know, for a minute, that I was there: she stood and put her hands to her face. Then the lightning flashed again, and she saw me, and jumped.
‘Are you here?’ she said.
Her eyes seemed large. She had been with her uncle, and with Gentleman. I thought, ‘She’ll tell me now.’ But she only stood gazing at me, and when the thunder sounded she turned and moved away. I went with her to her bedroom. She stood as weakly for me to undress her as she had stood in Gentleman’s arms, and the hand he had kissed she held off a little from her side, as if to guard it. In her bed she lay very still, but lifted her head, now and then, from her pillow. There was a steady drip, drip in one of the attics. ‘Do you hear the rain?’ she said; and then, in a softer voice: ‘The thunder is moving away . . .’
I thought of the basements, filling with water. I thought of the sailors at sea. I thought of the Borough. Rain makes London houses groan. I wondered if Mrs Sucksby was lying in bed, while the damp house groaned about her, thinking of me.
Three thousand pounds! she had said. My crikey!
Maud lifted her head again, and drew in her breath. I closed my eyes. ‘Here it comes,’ I thought.
But after all, she said nothing.
When I woke, the rain had stopped and the house was still. Maud lay, as pale as milk: her breakfast came and she put it aside and would not eat it. She spoke quietly, about nothing. She did not look or act like a lover. I thought she would say something lover-like soon, though. I supposed her feelings had dazed her.