Fingersmith

  It was all bad, and couldn’t have been worse. The parson read another prayer, then raised his hands and closed his eyes.

  ‘These two that God has joined together,’ he said, ‘let no man put in sunder.’

  And that was it.

  They were married.

  Gentleman kissed her and she stood and swayed, as if dazed. Mrs Cream said in a murmur,

  ‘She don’t know what’ve hit her, look at her. She’ll know it later—plum feller like him. Heh heh.’

  I did not turn to her. If I had, I should have punched her. The parson shut his Bible and led us from the altar to the room where they kept the register. Here Gentleman wrote his name and Maud—who was now to be Mrs Rivers—wrote hers; and Mrs Cream and I put ours beneath them. Gentleman had already shown me how to write Smith; but still, I wrote it clumsily and was ashamed.—Ashamed, of that! The room was dark and smelled of damp. In the beams, things fluttered—perhaps birds, perhaps bats. I saw Maud gazing at the shadows, as if afraid the things should swoop.

  Gentleman took her arm and held it, and then he led her from the church. There had come clouds before the moon, and the night was darker. The parson shook hands with us, then made Maud a bow; then he went off. He went fast, and as he walked he took his robe off, and his clothes were black beneath it—he seemed to snuff himself out like a light. Mrs Cream took us to her cottage. She carried the lantern, and we walked behind her, stumbling on her path: her doorway was low, and knocked Gentleman’s hat off. She took us up a set of tilting stairs too narrow for our skirts, and then to a landing, about as big as a cupboard, where we all jostled about for a moment and the cuff of Maud’s cloak got laid upon the chimney of the lantern and was singed.

  There were two shut doors there, leading to the two little bedrooms of the house. The first had a narrow straw mattress on a pallet on the floor, and was for me. The second had a bigger bed, an arm-chair and a press, and was for Gentleman and Maud. She went into it, and stood with her eyes on the floor, looking at nothing. There was a single candle lit. Her bags lay beside the bed. I went to them and took her things out, one by one, and put them in the press. Mrs Cream said, ‘What handsome linen!’—She was watching from the door. Gentleman stood with her, looking strange. It was him that had taught me the handling of a petticoat but now, seeing me take out Maud’s shimmies and stockings, he seemed almost afraid. He said,

  ‘Well, I shall smoke a final cigarette downstairs. Sue, you’ll make things comfortable up here?’

  I did not answer. He and Mrs Cream went down, their boots sounding loud as thunder and the door and the boards and the crooked staircase trembling. I heard him outside then, striking a match.

  I looked at Maud. She was still holding the stalks of honesty. She took a step towards me and said quickly,

  ‘If I should call out to you later, will you come?’

  I took the flowers from her, and then the cloak. I said, ‘Don’t think of it. It will be over in a minute.’

  She caught hold of my wrist with her right hand, that still had the glove upon it. She said, ‘Listen to me, I mean it. Never mind what he does. If I call out to you, say you’ll come. I’ll give you money for it.’

  Her voice was strange. Her fingers shook, yet gripped me hard. The thought of her giving me so much as a farthing was awful. I said,

  ‘Where are your drops? Look, there’s water here, you might take your drops and they will make you sleep.’

  ‘Sleep?’ she said. She laughed and caught her breath. ‘Do you think I want to sleep, on my wedding-night?’

  She pushed my hand away. I stood at her back and began to undress her. When I had taken her gown and her corset I turned and said, quietly,

  ‘You had better use the pot. You had better wash your legs, before he comes.’

  I think she shuddered. I did not watch her, but heard the splash of water. Then I combed her hair. There was no glass for her to stand at, and when she got into the bed she looked to her side and there was no table, no box, no portrait, no light—I saw her put out her hand as if blind.

  Then the house-door closed, and she fell back and seized the blankets and pulled them high about her breast. Against the white of the pillow her face seemed dark; yet I knew that it was pale. We heard Gentleman and Mrs Cream, talking together in the room below. Their voices came clearly. There were gaps between the boards, and a faint light showed.

  I looked at Maud. She met my gaze. Her eyes were black, but gleamed like glass. ‘Will you look away, still?’ she said, in a whisper, when she saw me turn my head. Then I turned back. I could not help it, though her face was awful, it was terrible to see. Gentleman talked on. Some breeze got into the room and made the candle-flame dip. I shivered. Still she held my gaze with hers. Then she spoke again.

  ‘Come here,’ she said.

  I shook my head. She said it again. I shook my head again—but then went to her, anyway—went softly to her across the creaking boards, and she lifted her arms and drew my face to hers, and kissed me. She kissed me, with her sweet mouth, made salt with her tears; and I could not help but kiss her back—felt my heart, now like ice in my breast, and now like water, running, from the heat of her lips.

  But then she did this. She kept her fingers upon my head and pushed my mouth too hard against hers; and she seized my hand and took it, first to her bosom, then to where the blankets dipped, between her legs. There she rubbed with my fingers until they burned.

  The quick, sweet feeling her kiss had called up in me turned to something like horror, or fear. I pulled from her, and drew my hand away. ‘Won’t you do it?’ she said softly, reaching after me. ‘Didn’t you do it before, for the sake of this night? Can’t you leave me to him now, with your kisses on my mouth, your touch upon me, there, to help me bear his the better?—Don’t go!’ She seized me again. ‘You went, before. You said I dreamed you. I’m not dreaming now. I wish I were! God knows, God knows, I wish I were dreaming, and might wake up and be at Briar again!’

  Her fingers slipped from my arm and she fell back and sagged against her pillow; and I stood, clasping and unclasping my hands, afraid of her look, of her words, of her rising voice; afraid she might shriek, or swoon—afraid, God damn me! that she might cry out, loud enough for Gentleman or Mrs Cream to hear, that I had kissed her.

  ‘Hush! Hush!’ I said. ‘You are married to him now. You must be different. You are a wife. You must—’

  I fell silent. She lifted her head. Below, the light had been taken up and moved. Gentleman’s boots came loud again upon the narrow stairs. I heard him slow his step, then hesitate at the door. Perhaps he was wondering if he should knock, as he had used to knock at Briar. At last he slowly put his thumb to the latch, and came in.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he said.

  He brought the chill of the night in with him. I did not say another word, to him or to her. I did not look at her face. I went to my own room and lay upon my bed. I lay, in the darkness, in my cloak and my gown, my head between the pillow and the mattress; and all I heard, each time I woke in the night, was the creeping, creeping of little creatures through the straw beneath my cheek.

  In the morning, Gentleman came to my room. He came in his shirt-sleeves.

  ‘She wants you, to dress her,’ he said.

  He took his breakfast downstairs. Maud had been brought up a tray, with a plate upon it. The plate held eggs and a kidney; she had not touched them. She sat very still, in the arm-chair beside the window; and I saw at once how it would be with her, now. Her face was smooth, but dark about the eyes. Her hands were bare. The yellow ring glittered. She looked at me, as she looked at everything—the plate of eggs, the view beyond the window, the gown I held up to place over her head—with a soft, odd, distant kind of gaze; and when I spoke to her, to ask her some trifling thing, she listened, and waited, then answered and blinked, as if the question, and the answer—even the movement of her own throat making the words—were all perfectly surprising and strange.

  I dressed
her, and she sat again beside the window. She kept her hands bent at the wrist, the fingers slightly lifted, as if even to let them rest against the soft stuff of her wide skirt might be to hurt them.

  She held her head at a tilt. I thought she might be listening for the chiming of the house-bell at Briar. But she never mentioned her uncle, or her old life, at all.

  I took her pot and emptied it, in the privy behind the house. At the foot of the stairs Mrs Cream came to me. She had a sheet over her arm. She said,

  ‘Mr Rivers says the linen on the bed needs changing.’

  She looked as if she would like to wink. I would not gaze at her long enough to let her. I had forgotten about this part. I went slowly up the stairs and she came behind me, breathing harder than ever. She made Maud a kind of curtsey, then went to the bed and drew back the blankets. There were a few spots of dark blood there, that had been rolled upon and smeared. She stood and looked at them, and then she caught my eye—as much as to say, ‘Well, I shouldn’t have believed it. Quite a little love-match, after all!’ Maud sat gazing out of the window. From the room downstairs came the squeak of Gentleman’s knife on his plate. Mrs Cream raised the sheet, to see if the blood had marked the mattress underneath; it hadn’t, and that pleased her.

  I helped her change it, then saw her to the door. She had made another curtsey, and seen Maud’s queer, soft gaze.

  ‘Took it hard, have she?’ she whispered. ‘Maybe missing her ma?’

  I said nothing at first. Then I remembered our plot, and what was to happen. Better, I thought drearily, to make it happen soon. I stood on the little landing with her and closed the door. I said quietly,

  ‘Hard ain’t the word for it. There’s trouble, up here. Mr Rivers dotes on her and won’t bear gossip—he has brought her to this quiet place, hoping the country air will calm her.’

  ‘Calm her?’ she said then. ‘You mean—? Bless me! She ain’t likely to break out—turn the pigs loose—set the place afire?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘She is only—only too much in her head.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ said Mrs Cream. But I could see her thinking. She hadn’t bargained on having a mad girl in the house. And whenever she brought a tray up then, she looked sideways at Maud and set it down very quick, as if afraid she might get bitten.

  ‘She doesn’t like me,’ said Maud, after she saw her do that two or three times; and I swallowed and said, ‘Not like you? What an idea! Why should she not like you?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ she answered quietly, looking down at her hands.

  Later Gentleman heard her say it, too; and then he got me on my own. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Keep Mrs Cream in fear of her, and her in fear of Mrs Cream, while seeming not to—very good. That will help us, when it comes time to call in the doctor.’

  He gave it a week before he sent for him. I thought it the worst week of my life. He had told Maud they should stay a day; but on the second morning he looked at her and said,

  ‘How pale you are, Maud! I think you aren’t quite well. I think we ought to stay a little longer, until your strength comes back to you.’

  ‘Stay longer?’ she said. Her voice was dull. ‘But can’t we go, to your house in London?’

  ‘I really think you are not well enough.’

  ‘Not well? But, I am quite well—you must only ask Sue. Sue, won’t you tell Mr Rivers how well I am?’

  She sat and shook. I said nothing. ‘Just a day or two more,’ said Gentleman. ‘Until you are rested. Until you are calm. Perhaps, if you were to keep more to the bed—?’

  She began to weep. He went to her side, and that made her shudder and weep harder. He said, ‘Oh, Maud, it tears at my heart to see you like this! If I thought it would be a comfort to you, of course I should take you to London at once—I should carry you, in my own arms—do you think I would not? But do you look at yourself now, and still tell me you are well?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said then. ‘It is so strange here. I’m afraid, Richard—’

  ‘And won’t it be stranger, in London? And shouldn’t you be frightened there, where it’s so loud and crowded and dark? Oh, no, this is the place to keep you. Here you have Mrs Cream, to make you comfortable—’

  ‘Mrs Cream hates me.’

  ‘Hates you? Oh, Maud. Now you are growing foolish; and I should be sorry to think you that; and Sue should also be sorry—shouldn’t you, Sue?’ I would not answer. ‘Of course she would,’ he said, with his hard blue eyes on mine. Maud looked at me, too, then looked away. Gentleman took her head in his hands and kissed her brow.

  ‘There now,’ he said. ‘Let us have no more argument. We’ll stay another day—only a day, until that paleness is driven from your cheek, and your eyes are bright again!’

  He said the same thing then, the next day. On the fourth day he was stern with her—said she seemed to mean to disappoint him, to make him wait, when he longed only to carry her back to Chelsea as his bride; then on the fifth day, he took her in his arms and almost wept, and said he loved her.

  After that, she did not ask how long they were to stay there. Her cheek never grew rosy. Her eye stayed dull. Gentleman told Mrs Cream to make her every kind of nourishing dish, and what she brought were more eggs, more kidneys, livers, greasy bacons and puddings of blood. The meat made the room smell sour. Maud could eat none of it. I ate it instead—since somebody must. I ate it, and she only sat beside the window gazing out, turning the ring upon her finger, stretching her hands, or drawing a strand of hair across her mouth.

  Her hair was dull as her eyes. She would not let me wash it—she would hardly let me brush it, she said she couldn’t bear the scraping of the comb upon her head. She kept in the gown she had travelled from Briar in, that had mud about the hem. Her best gown—a silk one—she gave to me. She said,

  ‘Why should I wear it, here? I had much rather see you in it. You had much better wear it, than let it lie in the press.’

  Our fingers touched beneath the silk, and we flinched and stepped apart. She had never tried to kiss me, after that first night.

  I took the dress. It helped to pass the awful hours, sitting letting out the waist; and she seemed to like to watch me sew it. When I had finished it, and put it on and stood before her, her expression was strange. ‘How well you look!’ she said, her blood rising. ‘The colour sets off your eyes and hair. I knew it would. Now you are quite the beauty—aren’t you? And I am plain—don’t you think?’

  I had got her a little looking-glass from Mrs Cream. She caught it up in her trembling hand and came and held it before our faces. I remembered the time she had dressed me up, in her old room, and called us sisters; and how gay she had seemed then, and how plump and careless. She had liked to stand before her glass and make herself look fair, for Gentleman. Now—I saw it! I saw it, in the desperate slyness of her gaze!—now she was glad to see herself grown plain. She thought it meant he would not want her.

  I could have told her once that he would want her anyway.

  Now, I don’t know what he did with her. I never spoke to him more than I had to. I did everything that was needed, but I did it all in a thick, miserable kind of trance, shrinking from thought and feeling—I was as low, almost, as she was. And Gentleman, to do him justice, seemed troubled on his own account. He only came to kiss or bully her, a little while each day; the rest of the time he sat in Mrs Cream’s parlour, lighting cigarettes—the smoke came rising through the floor, to mix with the smell of the meat, the chamber-pot, the sheets on the bed. Once or twice he went riding. He went for news of Mr Lilly—but heard only that the word was, there was some queer stir at Briar, no-one knew quite what. In the evenings he would stand at a fence at the back of the house, looking over the black-faced pigs; or he would walk a little, in the lane or about the churchyard. He would walk, however, as if he knew we watched him—not in the old, show-off way he had used to stretch and smoke his cigarettes, but with a twitch to his step, as if he could not bear the feel of our gazes on
his back.

  Then at night I would undress her, and he would come, and I would leave them, and lie alone, with my head between my pillow and my rustling mattress.

  I should have said he needed to do it to her only the once. I should have thought he might have been frightened he should get her with child. But there were other things I thought he might like her to do, now he had learned how smooth her hands were, how soft her bosom was, how warm and glib her mouth.

  And every morning, when I went in to her, she seemed paler and thinner and in more of a daze than she had seemed the night before; and he caught my eye less, and plucked at his whiskers, his swagger all gone.

  He at least knew what a dreadful business he was about, the bloody villain.

  At last he sent for the doctor to come.

  I heard him writing the letter in Mrs Cream’s parlour. The doctor was one he knew. I believe he had been crooked once, perhaps in the ladies’ medicine line, and had taken to the madhouse business as being more safe. But the crookedness, for us, was only a security. He wasn’t in on Gentleman’s plot. Gentleman wouldn’t have cared to cut the cash with him.

  Besides, the story was too sound. And there was Mrs Cream to back it. Maud was young, she was fey, and had been kept from the world. She had seemed to love Gentleman, and he loved her; but they hadn’t been married an hour before she started to turn queer.

  I think any doctor would have done what that one did, hearing Gentleman’s story, and seeing Maud, and me, as we were then.

  He came with another man—another doctor, his assistant. You need two doctors’ words to put a lady away. Their house was near Reading. Their coach was odd-looking, with blinds like louvred shutters and, on its back, spikes. They came not to take Maud, though—not that time; only to study her. The taking came later.