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, I shall never escape! I am not meant to escape! Briar will never let me!
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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.
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Mr Huss has put on his hat. Now he takes it off. "The nymph," he asks, his eyes on my face, "or the statue?"
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"Here comes fair Galatea," he says.
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"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, 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."
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"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?"
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"Say never, then. Rivers, gas poisons books. Did you know?"
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"Not while I keep books," says my uncle.
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"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?"
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"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."
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"She should not," says my uncle.
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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."
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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 --"
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"Fools," he says, when the gentlemen have gone. "Eh, Rivers? But come, I'm impatient to begin. You have your tools?"
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"I can fetch them, sir, in a moment."
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"Come come," says my uncle. "Now you grow tedious. Here's my coachman, look. Maud, do you step back from the door."
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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!"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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"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."
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"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."
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"The books?" I say. Then, letting my gaze fall to my plate of broken meat: "Very much, of course."
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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."
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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."
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"For its own sake?" My uncle blinks at me. "Maud, what do you say?"
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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?"
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"I mean drawing for its own sake, sir," says Richard gently, before I can reply.
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"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?"
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"Then, Maud, do you let Mr Rivers teach you. I don't care, anyhow, to imagine you idle. Hmm?"
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"I should say it would, sir, most definitely."
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"I'm afraid I have no skill."
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"Yes, sir," I say.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"Very good," he'll say -- like a proper drawing-master with an able girl. "Very good. You learn quickly."
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"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?"
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Once he takes her fingers. She colours scarlet at his touch.
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"Do you blush?" he says then, in amazement. "You don't suppose I mean to insult you?"
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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?"
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"Oh, sir! I couldn't hope to judge."
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"No, sir!"
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"I am only a little warm, sir."
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"Well, why do you blush?"
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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.
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"Warm, in December --?"
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"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?"
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"Indeed, miss, I don't know!"
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"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?"
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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 noone 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.
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"And you understand how?"
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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.
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"You know that we must," he says.
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"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.
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"We must get rid of Agnes."
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"Of course."
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"Quite fair, sir."
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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."
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"How is the day, Agnes?" he calls. "Still fair?"
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"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.
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I have not, until this moment. Now I see his face.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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"Scarlet fever," she whispers, not meeting my gaze.
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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.
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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.
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Then she looks at me in scorn.
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"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."
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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.
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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,
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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!
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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.
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She's ours, he writes.
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I think I am dreaming of her when Margaret comes to my room with a letter, from him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But I could not want a lover, more than I want freedom.
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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.
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"Do you prefer to talk with servants, Maud, than with me?" he says. He is peevish, since Richard left us.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"Well, we must be kind to her. It will seem dull to her here, perhaps, after London."
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She says nothing.
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"As girl to me."
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"Do, miss?"
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"Do you think she will do?"
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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."
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"Will you have Mrs Stiles bring her to me, so soon as she has taken her breakfast?"
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"Yes, miss."
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Once I rise and go stealthily to it, and put my ear to the panels; but hear nothing.
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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?"
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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."
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"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…"
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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.
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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?
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"Lady Alice always said so, miss," she says.
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"Yes, miss."
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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.
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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!"
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"Did she?"
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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."
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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.
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No names! it says; -- but I think you know me. Here is the girl who will make us rich -- that fresh little fmgersmith, 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?
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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.
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Then I take the book back. "I am sorry," I say. But I am not sorry, I am only amazed. 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.
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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…
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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.
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"What would they make of you upon the wards, I wonder," he says, in a different voice, "with all that you know now?"
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"No, sir," I say.
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"You are distracted, Maud," my uncle says. "Have you another occupation to which you would rather attend?"
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"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.
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"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?"
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"No, Uncle."
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He pauses. I think he will return to his notes. But he goes on.
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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.
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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 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.
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"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."
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You have come to Briar, I think, to swallow up me.
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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.
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I ask her, as we walk to my room, What does she think of my uncle? She believes him composing a dictionary.
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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, lead-enly; 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.
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"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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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 --
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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.
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"Visits?"
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"Ah."
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She looks about her. Then, after a second: "Make visits, miss?"
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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…
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"To other ladies?"
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She lifts her head. "London, miss?"
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"Ladies, like me."
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"Ladies, miss?"
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I nod. "What do ladies do there, at this hour in the day?"
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"You are thinking of London," I say.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's her, I whisper. That's her. She's your daughter now!
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"Dreaming?"
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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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"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.
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"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 do not know it, cannot name it -- will be averted; and I -- or she -- 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.
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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.
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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."
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"Don't leave me, Sue!" I say.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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…"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Then: "Thank you, Sue," I say.
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I say it often, in the days and nights that follow. I never said it to Agnes. Thank you, Sue."
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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.
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"Yes, Sue," when she bids me sit or stand, lift an arm or foot.
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"No, Sue," when she is afraid my gown must pinch me.
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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.
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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 unreading 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.
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No, my boots are 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.
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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.
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"Not as I know of," she says.
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"Do you have sisters, Sue?" I ask her once, perhaps a week after she has come. We are walking by the river.
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"No, miss."
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"Brothers?"
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"And so you grew up -- like me -- quite alone?"
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"Cousins. You mean, your aunt's children?"
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"Well, miss, not what you would call, alone… Say, with cousins all about."
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"Your aunt, Mr Rivers's nurse."
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"My aunt?" She looks blank.
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"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 now. I say, "The Thames will take them, even if the boat does not."
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She looks, however, not at the barge, but at me.
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"Oh!" She blinks. "Yes, miss. To be sure…"
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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.
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"The Thames?" she says.
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This trifling bit of water, the Thames? Oh, no, miss." She laughs, uncertainly.
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"The river," I answer. "This river, here."
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"How can that be? The Thames is very wide" -- she holds her hands far apart -- "and this is narrow. Do you see?"
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I say, after a moment, that I have always supposed that rivers grow wider as they flow. She shakes her head.
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"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.
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"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…"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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One time she brings me back from my uncle's room and I find the luncheontable 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…
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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.
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"Look here," she says, when she has finished. "Look here, miss. Do you see?"
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She will laugh. The sound is as strange, at Briar, as I imagine it must be in a prison or a church.
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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.
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Finally I let her smooth a pointed tooth with a silver thimble.
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Then she will ease a card from the pyramid's foundation; and as the structure topples, she will laugh.
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"Let me look," she says. She has seen me rubbing my cheek. "Come to the light."
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"Than a serpent's tooth, Sue?"
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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.
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"Well, that is sharper," she says, drawing back her hand, "than --"
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"Than a needle, I was going to say." She looks about her. "Do snakes have teeth, miss?"
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"I think they must, since they are said to bite."
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"That's true," she says distractedly. "Only, I had imagined them gummier…"
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"Well, perhaps at the Zoo."
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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 fester); the darkening of eye-lashes with impure castor-oil; and the reckless climbing -- for purposes of concealment, or flight -- of chimneys.
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"A snake-bite, miss?" She reappears, still frowning. "In London? Do you mean, at the Zoo?"
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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?"
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"I can't say as I do."
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"Curious. I was certain, you know, that you would."
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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.
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"Are you sure?"
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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.
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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 fingertips to the little dimples in the curving flesh. "Why, miss, with a needle," she said, "and a bit of ice…" The thimble rubs on.
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"Yes, miss. If I hurt, you may scream; and then I will stop."
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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May a lady taste the fingers of her maid? She may, in my uncle's books. -- The thought makes me colour.
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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.
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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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