‘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 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 scheme, until the scheme is perfect.
‘Very good,’ he’ll say—like a proper 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 red-headed 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 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. 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 it. I see only a series of voluptuous rooms—dim rooms, close rooms, 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 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 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 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!’