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.
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.
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?’
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.
One time she brings me back from my uncle’s room and I find the luncheon-table 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 . . .
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.
‘Look here,’ she says, when she has finished. ‘Look here, miss. Do you see?’ Then she will ease a card from the pyramid’s foundation; and as the structure topples, she will laugh.
She will laugh. The sound is as strange, at Briar, as I imagine it must be in a prison or a church. 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.
Finally I let her smooth a pointed tooth with a silver thimble.
‘Let me look,’ she says. She has seen me rubbing my cheek. ‘Come to the light.’
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.
‘Well, that is sharper,’ she says, drawing back her hand, ‘than—’
‘Than a serpent’s tooth, Sue?’
‘Than a needle, I was going to say.’ She looks about her. ‘Do snakes have teeth, miss?’
‘I think they must, since they are said to bite.’
‘That’s true,’ she says distractedly. ‘Only, I had imagined them gummier . . .’
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. 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?’
‘A snake-bite, miss?’ She reappears, still frowning. ‘In London? Do you mean, at the Zoo?’
‘Well, perhaps at the Zoo.’
‘I can’t say as I do.’
‘Curious. I was certain, you know, that you would.’
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.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, miss. If I hurt, you may scream; and then I will stop.’
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. 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 finger-tips to the little dimples in the curving flesh. ‘Why, miss, with a needle,’ she said, ‘and a bit of ice . . .’ The thimble rubs on. 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.’
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. 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.
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.
May a lady taste the fingers of her maid? She may, in my uncle’s books.—The thought makes me colour.
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, o
ur 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.
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!
10.
The letter works upon me like the snap of a mesmerist’s fingers: I blink, look giddily about me, as if emerging from a trance. I look at Sue: at her hand, at the mark of my mouth upon it. I look at the pillows upon my bed, with the dints of our two heads. I look at the flowers in their vase on the table-top, at the fire in my grate. The room is too warm. The room is too warm and yet I am still trembling, as if cold. She sees it. She catches my eye, and nods to the paper in my hand. ‘Good news, miss?’ she asks; and it is as if the letter has worked some trick upon her, too: for her voice seems light to me—dreadfully light—and her face seems sharp. She puts away the thimble; but watches, watches. I cannot meet her gaze.
Richard is coming. Does she feel it, as I do? She gives no sign. She walks, she sits, as easily as before. She eats her lunch. She takes out my mother’s playing-cards, begins the patient dealing-out of solitary games. I stand at the glass and, in reflection, see her reach to take a card and place it, turn it, set it upon another, raise up the kings, pull out the aces . . . I look at my face and think what makes it mine: the certain curve of cheek, the lip too full, too plump, too pink.
At last she gathers the pack together and says that if I will shuffle and hold it, and wish, she will study the fall of the cards and tell me my future. She says it, apparently quite without irony; and despite myself I am drawn to her side, and sit, and clumsily mix the cards, and she takes them and lays them down. ‘These show your past,’ she says, ‘and these your present.’ Her eyes grow wide. She seems suddenly young to me: for a moment we bend our heads and whisper as I think other, ordinary girls, in ordinary parlours or schools or sculleries, might whisper: Here is a young man, look, on horseback. Here is a journey. Here is the Queen of Diamonds, for wealth—
I have a brooch that is set with brilliants. I think of it now. I think—as I have, before, though not in many days—of Sue, breathing proprietorially over the stones, gauging their worth . . .
After all, we are not ordinary girls, in an ordinary parlour; and she is interested in my fortune only as she supposes it hers. Her eye grows narrow again. Her voice lifts out of its whisper and is only pert. I move away from her while she sits gathering the deck, turning the cards in her hands and frowning. She has let one fall, and has not seen it: the two of hearts. I place my heel upon it, imagining one of the painted red hearts my own; and I grind it into the carpet.
She finds it, when I have risen, and tries to smooth the crease from it; then plays on at Patience, as doggedly as before.
I look, again, at her hands. They have grown whiter, and are healed about the nails. They are small, and in gloves will seem smaller; and then will resemble my own.
This must be done. This should have been done, before. Richard is coming, and I am overtaken by a sense of duties unmet: a panicking sense that hours, days—dark, devious fish of time—have slithered by, uncaptured. I pass a fretful night. Then, when we rise and she comes to dress me, I pluck at the frill on the sleeve of her gown.
‘Have you no other gown,’ I say, ‘than this plain brown thing you always wear?’
She says she has not. I take, from my press, a velvet gown, and have her try it. She bares her arms unwillingly, steps out of her skirt and turns, in a kind of modesty, away from my eyes. The gown is narrow. I tug at the hooks. I settle the folds of cloth about her hips, then go to my box for a brooch—that brooch of brilliants—and pin it carefully over her heart.
Then I stand her before the glass.
Margaret comes, and takes her for me.
I have grown used to her, to the life, the warmth, the particularity of her; she has become, not the gullible girl of a villainous plot—not Suky Tawdry—but a girl with a history, with hates and likings. Now all at once I see how near to me in face and figure she’ll come, and I understand, as if for the first time, what it is that Richard and I mean to do. I place my face against the post of my bed and watch her, gazing at herself in a rising satisfaction, turning a little to the left, a little to the right, brushing the creases from her skirt, settling her flesh more comfortably into the seams of the gown. ‘If my aunty could see me!’ she says, growing pink; and I think, then, of who might be waiting for her, in that dark thieves’ den in London: the aunt, the mother or grandmother. I think how restless she must be, as she counts off the lengthening days that keep her little fingersmith on perilous business, far from home. I imagine her, as she waits, taking out some small thing of Sue’s—some sash, some necklace, some bracelet of gaudy charms—and turning it, over and over, in her hands . . .
She will turn it for ever, though she does not know it yet. Nor does Sue suppose that the last time she kissed her aunt’s hard cheek was the last of all her life.
I think of that; and I am gripped with what I take to be pity. It is hard, painful, surprising: I feel it, and am afraid. Afraid of what my future may cost me. Afraid of that future itself, and of the unfamiliar, ungovernable emotions with which it might be filled.
She does not know it. He must not know it, either. He comes that afternoon—comes, as he used to come, in the days of Agnes: takes my hand, holds my gaze with his, bends to kiss my knuckles. ‘Miss Lilly,’ he says, in a tone of caress. He is dressed darkly, neatly; yet carries his daring, his confidence, close and gaudy about him, like swirls of colour or perfume. I feel the heat of his mouth, even through my gloves. Then he turns to Sue, and she makes a curtsey. The stiff-bodiced dress is not made for curtseying in, however: the dip is a jagged one, the fringes upon her skirt tumble together and seem to shake. Her colour rises. I see him smile as he notes it. But I see, too, that he marks the gown, and perhaps also the whiteness of her fingers.
‘I should have supposed her a lady, I’m sure,’ he says, to me. He moves to her side. There, he seems tall, and darker than ever, like a bear; and she seems slight. He takes her hand, his fingers moving about hers: they seem large, also—his thumb extends almost to the bone of her wrist. He says, ‘I hope you are proving a good girl for your mistress, Sue.’
She gazes at the floor. ‘I hope I am, too, sir.’
I take a step. ‘She is a very good girl,’ I say. ‘A very good girl, indeed.’
But the words are hasty, imperfect. He catches my eye, draws back his thumb. ‘Of course,’ he says smoothly, ‘she could not help but be good. No girl could help it, Miss Lilly, with you for her example.’
‘You are too kind,’ I say.
‘No gentleman could but be, I think, with you to be kind to.’
He keeps his gaze on mine. He has picked me out, found sympathies in me, means to pluck me from the heart of Briar, unscratched; and I would not be myself, niece to my uncle, if I could meet the look he shows me now without feeling the stir of some excitement, dark and awful, in my own breast. But I feel it too hard, and grow almost queasy. I smile; but the smile stretches tight.
Sue tilts her head. Does she suppose me smiling at my own love? The thought makes the smile tighter still, I begin to feel it as an ache about my throat. I avoid her eye, and his. He goes, but makes her step to him and they stand a moment, murmuring at the door. He gives her a coin—I see the yellow gleam of it—he puts it into her hand, closes her fingers about it with his own. His nail shows brown against the fresh pink of her palm. She falls in another awkward curtsey.
Now my smile is fixed like the grimace on the face of a corpse. When she turns back, I cannot look at her. I go to my dressing-room and close the door, lie face down upon my bed, and am seized and shaken by laughter—a terrible laughter, it courses silently through me, like filthy water—I shudder, and shudder, and finally am still.
‘How do you fin
d your new girl, Miss Lilly?’ he asks me at dinner, his eyes upon his plate. He is carefully parting meat from the spine of a fish—the bone so pale and so fine it is almost translucent, the meat in a thickening coating of butter and sauce. Our food comes cold to the table in winter. In summer it comes too warm.
I say, ‘Very—biddable, Mr Rivers.’
‘You think she will suit?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘You won’t have cause to complain, of my recommendation?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I am relieved to hear it.’
He will always say too much, for the sport of the thing. My uncle is watching. ‘What’s this?’ he says now.
I wipe my mouth. ‘My new maid, Uncle,’ I answer. ‘Miss Smith, who replaces Miss Fee. You’ve seen her, often.’
‘Heard her, more like, kicking the soles of her boots against my library door. What of her?’
‘She came to me on Mr Rivers’s word. He found her in London, in need of a place; and was so kind as to remember me.’
My uncle moves his tongue. ‘Was he?’ he says slowly. He looks from me to Richard, from Richard back to me, his chin a little raised, as if sensing dark currents. ‘Miss Smith, you say?’
‘Miss Smith,’ I repeat steadily, ‘who replaces Miss Fee.’ I neaten my knife and fork. ‘Miss Fee, the papist.’
‘The papist! Ha!’ He returns excitedly to his own meat. ‘Now, Rivers,’ he says as he does it.
‘Sir?’