‘No, Uncle.’
‘What? Do you mumble?’
‘No, sir.’
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?
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 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 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 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 tongue; and I shudder, with weakness, with fear and distaste—with dismay, 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 look from her in contempt, then. She comes and leads me to the chapel 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!’
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—! I 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, I shan’t. The day of our flight draws near. I shan’t. The month grows warmer, the nights grow close. I 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.