‘And she pressed her lips and tongue to it, and into it—’
‘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—go slowly, tapping the toes of my 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 halfstrivingly—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 feels like a trap. I say, ‘I wish—I wish you would tell me—’
‘Tell you what, miss?’
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 wish,’ I say, ‘I wish you would tell me what it is a wife must do, on her 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 of Mr Rivers.’—I think of Richard, watching. She says again, ‘Don’t be 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 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, 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, in the end.
11.
We leave, just as we have planned, on the last day of April.
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 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, I 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.