Madness, my mother's malady, perhaps beginning its slow ascent in me! That thought makes me more frightened yet. I take, for a day or two, more of my drops: they calm me, but change me. My uncle marks it.
'You grow clumsy,' he says, one morning. I have mishandled a book. 'You think I have you come, day after day, to my library, to abuse it?'
'No, Uncle.'
'What? Do you mumble?'
'No, sir.'
172
He wets and purses his mouth, and studies me harder. When he speaks again, his tone is strange to me.
'What age are you?' he says. I am surprised, and hesitate. He sees it. 'Don't strike coy attitudes with me, miss! What age are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?— You may show astonishment. You think me insensible to the passage of years, because I am a scholar?
Hmm?'
'I am seventeen, Uncle.'
'Seventeen. A troublesome age, if we are to believe our own books.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Yes, Maud. Only remember: your business is not with belief, but with study.
Remember this, also: you are not too great a girl— nor am I too aged a scholar— for me to have Mrs Stiles come and hold you still while I take a whip to you. Hmm?
You'll remember these things? Will you?'
'Yes, sir,' I say.
It seems to me now, however, that I must remember too much. My face, my joints, are set aching with the effort of striking looks and poses. I can no longer say with certainty which of my actions— which of my feelings, even— are true ones, which are sham. Richard still keeps his gaze close upon me. I will not meet it. He is reckless, teasing, threatening: I choose not to understand. Perhaps I am weak, after all. Perhaps, as he and my uncle believe, I draw a pleasure from torment. It is certainly a torment to me now, to sit at a lesson with him, to sit at a dinner-table with him, to read to him, at night, from my uncle's books. It begins to be a torment, too, to pass time with Sue.
Our routines are spoiled. I am too conscious that she waits, as he does: I feel her watching, gauging, willing me on. Worse, she begins to speak in his behalf— to tell me, bluntly, how clever he is, how kind and interesting.
'You think so, Sue?' I ask her, my eyes upon her face; and her gaze might flutter uneasily away, but she will always answer: 'Yes, miss. Oh, yes, miss. Anyone would say it, wouldn't they?'
Then she will make me neat— always neat, handsome and neat— she will take down my hair and dress it, straighten seams, lift lint from the fabric of my gowns. I think she does it as much to calm
herself, as to calm me. 'There,' she will say, when she has finished. 'Now you are better.'— Now she is better, she means. 'Now your brow is smooth. How creased it was, before! It mustn't be creased— '
It mustn't be creased, for Mr Rivers's sake: I hear the unspoken words, my blood surges again; I take her arm in mine and pinch it.
'Oh!'
I do not know who cries it, she or I: I reel away, unnerved. But in the second I have her skin between my fingers, my own flesh leaps in a kind of relief. I shake, horribly, for almost an hour.
'Oh, God!' I say, hiding my face. 'I'm afraid, for my own mind! Do you think me mad?
Do you think me wicked, Sue?'
'Wicked?' she answers, wringing her hands. And I can see her thinking: A simple girl like you?
173
She puts me into my bed and lies with her arm against mine; but soon she sleeps, and then draws away. I think of the house in which I lie. I think of the room beyond the bed— its edges, its surfaces. I think I shall not sleep, unless I touch them. I rise, it is cold, but I go quietly from thing to thing— chimney-piece, dressing- table, carpet, press. Then I come to Sue. I would like to touch her, to be sure that she is there. I dare not. But I cannot leave her. I lift my hands and move and hold them an inch, just an inch, above her— her hip, her breast, her curling hand, her hair on the pillow, her face, as she sleeps.
I do that, perhaps three nights in a row. Then this happens.
Richard begins to make us go to the river. He has Sue sit far from me, against the upturned boat; and he, as always, keeps close at my side, pretending to watch as I paint. I paint the same spot so many times, the card starts to rise and crumble beneath my brush; but I paint on, stubbornly, and he will now and then lean close to whisper, idly but fiercely:
'God damn you, Maud, how can you sit so calm and steady? Hey? Do you hear that bell?' The Briar clock sounds clearly there, beside the water. 'There's another hour gone, that we might have passed in freedom. Instead, you keep us here— '
'Will you move?' I say. 'You are standing in my light.'
'You are standing in mine, Maud. See how easy it is, to remove that shadow? One little step is all that must be made. Do you see? Will you look? She won't. She prefers her painting. That piece of— Oh! Let me find a match, I shall burn it!'
I glance at Sue. 'Be quiet, Richard.'
But the days grow warm, and at last comes a day, so close and airless, the heat overpowers him. He spreads his coat upon the ground and sprawls upon it, tilts his hat to shadow his eyes. For a time, then, the afternoon is still and almost pleasant: there is only the calling of frogs in the rushes, the slapping of water, the cries of birds, the occasional passing of boats. I draw the paint across the card in ever finer, ever slower strokes, and almost fall into slumber.
Then Richard laughs, and my hand gives a jump. I turn to look at him. He puts his finger to his lip. 'See there,' he says softly. And he gestures to Sue.
She still sits before the upturned boat, but her head has fallen back against the rotten wood and her limbs are spread and loose. A blade of hair, dark at the tip where she has been biting at it, curves to the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are closed, her breaths come evenly. She is quite asleep. The sun slants against her face and shows the point of her chin, her lashes, her darkening freckles. Between the edges of her gloves and the cuffs of her coat are two narrow strips of pinking flesh.
I look again at Richard— meet his eye— then turn back to my painting. I say quietly,
'Her cheek will burn. Won't you wake her?'
'Shall I?' He sniffs. 'They are not much used to sunlight, where she comes from.' He speaks almost fondly, but laughs against the words; then adds in a murmur: 'Nor where she's going, I think. Poor bitch— she might sleep. She has been asleep since I first got her and brought her here, and has not known it.'
He says it, not with relish, but as if with interest at the idea. Then he stretches and yawns and gets to his feet, and sneezes. The fine weather troubles him. He puts his 174
knuckles to his nose and violently sniffs. 'I beg your pardon,' he says, drawing out his handkerchief.
Sue does not wake, but frowns and turns her head. Her lower lip slightly falls. The blade of hair swings from her cheek, but keeps its curve and point. I have lifted my brush and touched it once to my crumbling painting; now I hold it, an inch from the card; and I watch, as she sleeps. Only that. Richard sniffs again, softly curses the heat, the season. Then, as before, I suppose he grows still. I suppose he studies me. I suppose the brush in my fingers drops paint— for I find it later, black paint upon my blue gown. I do not mark it as it falls, however; and perhaps it is my not marking it, that betrays me. That, or my look. Sue frowns again. I watch, a little longer. Then I turn, and find Richard's eyes upon me.
'Oh, Maud,' he says.
That is all he says. But in his face I see, at last, how much I want her.
For a moment we do nothing. Then he steps to me and takes my wrist. The paintbrush falls.
'Come quickly,' he says. 'Come quickly, before she wakes.'
He takes me, stumbling, along the line of rushes. We walk as the water flows, about the bend of the river and the wall. When we stop, he puts his hands to my shoulders and holds me fast.