was Maud, in her innocent way, who let us have it.
For she saw him one morning, very early, from the window of her room. She stood at the glass and put her head against it, and said,
'There is Mr Rivers, look, walking on the lawn.'
I went and stood beside her and, sure enough, there he was, strolling about the grass, smoking a cigarette. The sun, being still rather low, made his shadow very long.
Ain't he tall?' I said, gazing sideways at Maud. She nodded. Her breath made the glass mist, and she wiped it away. Then she said,
'Oh!'— as if he might have fallen over— 'Oh! I think his cigarette has gone out. Poor Mr Rivers!'
He was studying the dark tip of his cigarette, and blowing at it; now he was putting his hand to his trouser pocket, searching for a match. Maud made another swipe at the window-glass.
'Now,' she said, 'can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don't believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets ..."
She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking.
I said, 'It won't kill him, miss.'
'But poor Mr Rivers,' she said again. 'Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!'
We didn't have any matches. Margaret kept them in her apron. When I told Maud that she said,
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'Then take a candle! Take anything! Take a coal from the fire! Oh, can't you be quicker?— Don't say I sent you, mind!'
Can you believe she had me doing that?— tripping down two sets of stairs, with a lighted coal in a pair of fire-tongs, just so a man might have his morning smoke? Can you believe I did it? Well, I was a servant now, and must. Gentleman saw me stepping across the grass to him, saw what I carried, and laughed.
I said, All right. She has sent me down with it for you to light your cigarette from.
Look glad, she is watching. But make a business of it, if you want.'
He did not move his head, but raised his eyes to her window.
'What a good girl she is,' he said.
'She is too good for you, that I do know.'
He smiled. But only as a gentleman should smile to a servant; and his face he made kind. I imagined Maud, looking down, breathing quicker upon the glass. He said quietly,
'How do we do, Sue?'
'Pretty well,' I answered.
'You think she loves me?'
'I do. Oh, yes.'
He drew out a silver case and lifted free a cigarette. 'But she hasn't told you so?'
'She don't have to.'
He leaned close to the coal. 'Does she trust you?'
'I think she must. She has nobody else.'
He drew on the cigarette, then breathed out in a sigh. The smoke stained the cold air blue. He said, 'She's ours.'
He stepped back a little way, then gestured with his eyes; I saw what he wanted, let the coal fall to the lawn, and he stooped to help me get it. 'What else?' he said. I told him, in a murmur, about the sleeping-drops, and about her being afraid of her own dreams. He listened, smiling, all the time fumbling with the fire- tongs over the piece of coal, and finally catching it up and rising, and placing my hands upon the handle of the tongs and pressing them tight.
'The drops and the dreams are good,' he said quietly. 'They'll help us, later. But you know, for now, what you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She's our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.— Keep it like this,' he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. 'Like this, so the coal won't fall and scorch Miss Lilly's carpets . . .'
I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:
'They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.'
He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.
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From his place on the step, I saw Mr Way studying him rather as the hard boys of the Borough did— as if not quite sure what he wanted to do most: laugh at him, or punch his lights out. But
Gentleman kept his eyes very innocent. He only lifted his face to the sun, and stretched, so that Maud might see him better from the shadows of her room.
She stood and watched him walk and smoke his cigarette, every morning |ifter that.
She would stand at the window with her face pressed to the glass, and the glass would mark her brow with a circle of red— a perfect circle of crimson in her pale face. It was like the spot upon the cheek of a girl with a fever. I thought I saw it growing darker and fiercer with every day that passed.
Now she watched Gentleman, and I watched them both; and the three of us waited for the fever to break.
I had thought it might take two weeks, or three. But two weeks had gone by already, and we had got nowhere. Then another two passed, and it was all just the same. She was too good at waiting, and the house was too smooth. She would give a little jump out of her groove, to be nearer to Gentleman; and he would sneak a little way out of his, to be closer to her; but that would only make new grooves for them to glide in.
We needed the whole show to go bust.
We needed her to grow confiding, so that I could help her on her way. But, though I dropped a thousand little hints— such as, what a kind gentleman Mr Rivers was; and how handsome and how well-bred; and how her uncle seemed to like him; and how she seemed to like him, and how he seemed to like her; and if a lady ever thought of marrying, didn't she think a gent like Mr Rivers might be just the gent for the job?— though I gave her a thousand little chances like that, to open up her heart, she never took one. The weather turned cold again, then grew warmer. It got to March.
Then it was almost April. By May, Mr Lilly's pictures would all be mounted, and Gentleman would have to leave. But still she said nothing; and he held back from pressing her, out of fear that a wrong move would frighten her off.
I grew fretful, waiting. Gentleman grew fretful. We all grew nervy as narks— Maud would sit fidgeting for hours at a trot, and when the house clock sounded she would give a little start, that
would make me start; and when it came time for Gentleman to call on her, I would see her flinching, listening for his step— then his knock would come, and she would jump, or scream, or drop her cup and break it. Then at night, she would lie stiff and open-eyed, or turn and murmur in her sleep.
All, I thought, for love! I had never seen anything like it. I thought about how such a business got worked out, in the Borough. I thought of all the things a girl could ordinarily do, when she liked a fellow that she guessed liked her.
I thought of what I would do, if a man like Gentleman liked me.
I thought perhaps I ought to take her aside and tell her, as one girl to another.
Then I thought she might think me rude.— Which is pretty rum, in light of what happened later.
But something else happened first. The fever broke at last. The show went bust, and all our waiting paid off.
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She let him kiss her.
Not on her lips, but somewhere altogether better.
I know, because I saw it.
It was down by the river, on the first day of April. The weather was too warm for the time of year. The sun shone bright in a sky of grey, and everyone said there would be thunder.
She had a jacket and a cloak above her gown, and was hot: she called me to her, and had me take away the cloak, and then the jacket. She was sitting at her painting of the rushes, and Gentleman was near her, looking on and smiling. The sun made her squint: every now and then she would raise her hand to her eyes. Her gloves were quite spoiled with paint, and there was paint upon her face.