This makes a period of, perhaps a month; though to my childish mind it seems longer.
My uncle waits, all that time, as he might wait for the breaking of a horse. Now and then he has Mrs Stiles conduct me to his library, and questions her as to my progress.
'How do we do, Mrs Stiles?'
'Still badly, sir.'
'Still fierce?'
'Fierce, and snappish.'
'You've tried your hand?'
She nods. He sends us away. Then come more shows of temper, more rages and tears.
At night, Barbara shakes her head.
'What a dot of a girl, to be so naughty! Mrs Stiles says she never saw such a little Tartar as you. Why can't you be good?'
I was good, in my last home— and see how I was rewarded! Next morning I upturn my chamber-pot and tread the mess into the carpet. Mrs Stiles throws up her hands and screams; then strikes my face. Then, half-clad and dazed as I am, she drags me from my dressing- room to my uncle's door.
He flinches from the sight of us. 'Good God, what is it?'
'Oh, a frightful thing, sir!'
'Not more of her violence? And do you bring her here, where she might break out, among the books?'
But he lets her speak, looking all the time at me. I stand very stiff, with a hand at my hot face, my pale hair loose about my shoulders.
At length he takes off his spectacles and closes his eyes. His eyes appear naked to me, and very soft at the lids. He raises his thumb and smudged forefinger to the bridge of his nose, and pinches.
'Well, Maud,' he says as he does it, 'this is sorry news. Here is Mrs Stiles, and here am I, and here are all my staff, all waiting on your good manners. I had hoped the nurses had raised you better than this. I had hoped to find you biddable.' He comes towards me, blinking, and puts his hand upon my face. 'Don't shrink so, girl! I want only to 122
examine your cheek. It is hot, I think. Well, Mrs Stiles's hand is a large one.' He looks about him. 'Come, what have we that is cool, hmm?'
He has a slim brass knife, blunt-edged, for cutting pages. He stoops and puts the blade of it against my face. His manner is mild, and frightens me. His voice is soft as a girl's.
He says, 'I am sorry to see you hurt, Maud. Indeed I am. Do you suppose I want you harmed? Why should I want that? It is you who must want it, since you provoke it so.
I think you must like to be struck.— That is cooler, is it not?' He has turned the blade. I shiver. My bare arms
creep with cold. He moves his mouth. 'All waiting,' he repeats, 'on your good manners.
Well, we are good at that, at Briar. We can wait, and wait, and wait again. Mrs Stiles and my staff are paid to do it; I am a scholar, and inclined to it by nature. Look about you here, at my collection. Do you suppose this the work of an impatient man? My books come to me slowly, from obscure sources. I have contentedly passed many tedious weeks in expectation of poorer volumes than you!' He laughs, a dry laugh that might once have been moist; moves the point of the knife to a spot beneath my chin; tilts up my face and looks it over. Then he lets the knife fall, and moves away. He tucks the wires of his spectacles behind his ears.
'I advise you to whip her, Mrs Stiles,' he says, 'if she prove troublesome again.'
Perhaps children are like horses after all, and may be broken. My uncle returns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely back to my sewing. It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patience. There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks— conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich— instead of women— then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs.— I cannot say.
And of course, these are thoughts that come to me later, when I know the full measure of my uncle's particular mania. That day, in my childish way, I glimpse only its surface. But I see that it is dark, and know that it is silent— indeed, its substance is the substance of the darkness and the silence which fills my uncle's house like water or like wax.
Should I struggle, it will draw me deep into itself, and I will drown.
I do not wish, then, to do that.
I cease struggling at all, and surrender myself to its viscid, circular currents.
That is the first day, perhaps, of my education. But next day, at eight, begin my lessons proper. I never have a governess: my uncle tutors me himself, having Mr Way set a desk and a stool for me close to the pointing finger on his library floor. The stool is high: my legs swing from it and the weight of my shoes makes them tingle and finally grow numb. Should I fidget, however— should I cough, or sneeze— t h e n m y u n c l e w i l l c o m e a n d s n a p a t m y f i n g e r s w i t h t h e r o p e o f silk-covered beads. His patience has curious lapses, after all; and though he claims to be free of a desire to harm me, he harms me pretty often.
Still, the library is kept warmer than my own room, to ward off mould from the books; and I find I prefer to write, than to sew. He gives me a pencil with a soft lead that 123
moves silently upon paper, and a green-shaded reading- lamp, to save my eyes.
The lamp smells, as it heats, of smouldering dust: a curious smell— I shall grow to hate it!— the smell of the parching of my own youth.
My work itself is of the most tedious kind, and consists chiefly of copying pages of text, from antique volumes, into a leather-bound book. The book is a slim one, and when it is filled my job is to render it blank again with a piece of india-rubber. I remember this task, more than I remember the pieces of matter I am made to copy: for the pages, from endless friction, grow smudged and fragile and liable to tear; and the sight of a smudge on a leaf of text, or the sound of tearing paper, is more than my uncle, in his delicacy, can bear. They say children, as a rule, fear the ghosts of the dead; what I fear most as a child are the spectres of past lessons, imperfectly erased.
I call them lessons; but I am not taught as other girls are. I learn to recite, softly and clearly; I am never taught to sing. I never learn the names of flowers and birds, but am schooled instead in the hides with which books are bound— as say, morocco, russia, calf, chagrin; and their papers— Dutch, China, motley, silk. I learn inks; the cutting of pens; the uses of pounce; the styles and sizes of founts: sans-serif, antique, Egyptian, pica, brevier, emerald, ruby, Pearl. . . They are named for jewels. It is a cheat. For they are hard and dull as cinders in a grate.
But I learn quickly. The season turns. I am made small rewards: new gloves, soft-soled slippers, a gown— stiff as the first, but of velvet. I am allowed to take my supper in the dining- room, at one end of a great oak table, set with silver. My uncle sits at the other end. He keeps a reading- easel beside his place, and speaks very seldom; but if I should be so unlucky as to let fall a fork, or to jar my knife against my plate, then he will raise his face and fix me with a damp and terrible eye. 'Have you some weakness about the hands, Maud, that obliges you to grind your silver in that way?'
'The knife is too large and too heavy, Uncle,' I answer him fretfully once.
Then he has my knife taken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, and hearts, and calves' feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson— as if reverting to the substance they were made from. My appetite leaves me. I care most for the wine. I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial.