grew gentle. She said,
'You are sad, Sue.'
I shook my head.
'I think you are,' she said. 'That's my fault. I have brought you to this lonely place, time after time, thinking only of myself. But you have known what it is, to have a mother's love and then to lose it.'
I looked away.
'It's all right,' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'
77
She said, 'You are brave ..."
I thought of my mother, dying game on the scaffold; and I suddenly wished— what I had never wished before— that she had been some ordinary girl, that had died in a regular way. As if she guessed it, Maud said quietly now,
'And what— it doesn't trouble you, my asking?— what did your mother die of?'
I thought for a moment. I said at last that she had swallowed a pin, that had choked her.
I really did know a woman that died that way. Maud stared at me, and put her hand to her throat. Then she gazed down at her own mother's tomb.
'How would you feel,' she said quietly, 'if you had fed her that pin yourself?'
It seemed an odd sort of question; but, of course, I was used by now to her saying odd sorts of things. I told her I should feel very ashamed and sad.
'Would you?' she said. 'You see, I have an interest in knowing. For it was my birth that killed my mother. I am as to blame for her death as if I had stabbed her with my own hand!'
She looked strangely at her fingers, that had red earth at the tips. I said,
'What nonsense. Who has made you think that? They ought to be sorry.'
'No-one made me think it,' she answered. 'I thought it myself.'
'Then that's worse, because you're clever and ought to know better. As if a girl could stop herself from being born!'
'I wish I had been stopped!' she said. She almost cried it. One of the dark birds started up from between the stones, its wings beating the air— it sounded like a carpet being snapped out of a window. We both turned our heads to see it fly; and when I looked at her again, her eyes had tears in them.
I thought, 'What do you have to cry for? You're in love, you're in love.' I tried to remind her.
'Mr Rivers,' I began. But she heard the name and shivered.
'Look at the sky,' she said quickly. The sky had grown darker. 'I think it will thunder again. Here is the new rain, look!'
She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears. I went to her and touched her arm.
'Put your cloak about you,' I said. Now the rain fell quick and hard. She let me lift her hood and fasten it, as a child might; and I think, if I had not drawn her from the grave, she would have stayed there and been soaked. But I made her stumble with me to the door of the little chapel. It was shut up fast with a rusting chain and a padlock, but above it was a porch of rotted wood. The rain struck the wood and made it tremble.
Our skirts were dark with water at the hems. We stood close to one another, our shoulders tight against the chapel door, and the rain came down— straight down, like arrows. A thousand arrows and one poor heart. She said,
'Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.'
She said it in a flat voice, like a girl saying a lesson; and though I had waited so hard to hear her say it, when I answered my words came out heavy as hers. I said,
'Oh, Miss Maud, I am gladder than anything!'
A drop of rain fell between our faces.
78
Are you truly?' she said. Her cheeks were damp, her hair clinging to them. 'Then,' she went on miserably, 'I am sorry. For I have not told him yes. How can I? My uncle—
My uncle will never give me up. It wants four years until I am twenty-one. How can I ask Mr Rivers to wait so long?'
Of course, we had guessed she'd think that. We had hoped that she would; for in thinking it she'd be all the more ready to run and be married in secret. I said, carefully, Are you sure, about your uncle?'
She nodded. 'He will not spare me, so long as there are books still, to be read and noted; and there will always be those! Besides, he is proud. Mr Rivers, I know, is a gentleman's son, but— '
'But your uncle won't think him quite enough a swell?'
She bit her lip. 'I'm afraid that if he knew Mr Rivers had asked for my hand, he would send him from the house. But then, he must go anyway, when his work here is finished! He must go— ' Her voice shook. 'And how will I see him, then? How may you keep a heart, for four years, like that?'
She put her hands to her face and wept in earnest. Her shoulders jumped. It was awful to see. I said, 'You mustn't cry.' I touched her cheek, putting the damp hair from it. I said, 'Truly, miss, you mustn't cry. Do you think Mr Rivers will give you up now?
How could he? You mean more to him than anything. Your uncle will come round, when he sees that.'
'My happiness is nothing to him,' she said. 'Only his books! He has made me like a book. I am not meant to be taken, and touched, and liked. I am meant to keep here, in a dim light, for ever!'
She spoke more bitterly than I had ever heard her speak before. I said,
'Your uncle loves you, I'm sure. But Mr Rivers— ' The words got caught in my throat, and I coughed. 'Mr Rivers loves you, too.'
'You think he does, Sue? He spoke so fiercely yesterday, beside the river, while you slept. He spoke of London— of his house, his studio— he says he longs to take me there, not as his pupil, but as his wife. He says he thinks of nothing but that. He says he thinks that to wait for me will kill him! You think he means it, Sue?'
She waited. I thought, 'It's not a lie, it's not a lie, he loves her for her money. I think he would die if he lost it now.' I said,
'I know it, miss.'
She looked at the ground. 'But, what can he do?'
'He must ask your uncle.'
'He cannot!'
'Then'— I drew in my breath— 'you must find another way.' She said nothing, but moved her head. 'You must do that.' Still nothing. 'Isn't there,' I said, 'another way you might take . . .?'
She lifted her eyes to mine and blinked back her tears. She looked anxiously to left and to right, then drew a little closer. She said, in a whisper:
'You'll tell no-one, Sue?'
'Tell them what, miss?'
She blinked again, hesitating. 'You must promise not to tell. You must swear it!'
79
'I swear!' I said. 'I swear!'— all the time thinking, Come on, say it Now!— for it was dreadful, seeing her so afraid to give up her secret, when I knew what the secret was.
Then she did say it. 'Mr Rivers,' she said, more quietly than ever, 'says we might go away, at night.'
'At night!' I said.
'He says we might be privately married. He says my uncle might try to claim me then; but he does not think he will. Not once I am a— a wife.'
Her face, as she said the word, grew pale, I saw the blood fall out of her cheek. She looked at the stone on her mother's grave. I said,
'You must follow your heart, miss.'
'I am not sure. After all, I am not sure.'
'But to love, and then to lose him!' Her gaze grew strange. I said, 'You love him, don't you?'
She turned a little, and still looked queer, and would not answer. Then she said,
'I don't know.'
'Don't know? How can you not know a thing like that? Doesn't your blood beat hard when you see him coming? Doesn't his voice thrill in your ears, and his touch set you shaking? Don't you dream of him, at night?'
She bit her plump lip. And those things mean I love him?'
'Of course! What else could they mean?'
She did not answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and gave a shiver. She put her hands together, and again she stroked the spot upon her palm where he had yesterday touched his lips.
Only now I saw, she was not stroking the flesh so much as rubbing at it. She was not nursing the kiss. She felt his mouth like a burn, like an itch, like a splinter, and was trying to rub the memory of it away.