Well, no more of that. Here is work, not leisure. You will soon forget the substance, in the scrutiny of the form.'
So he says to me, many times. I do not believe him. I am thirteen. The books fill me, at first, with a kind of horror: for it seems a frightful thing, that children, in becoming women and men, should do as they describe— get lusts, grow secret limbs and cavities, be prone to fevers, to crises, seek nothing but the endless joining together of smarting flesh. I imagine my mouth, stopped up with kisses. I imagine the parting of my legs. I imagine myself fingered and pierced ... I am thirteen, as I have said. The fear gives way to restlessness: I begin to lie each night at Barbara's side, wakeful while she sleeps on; one time I put back the blanket to study the curve of her breast. Then I take to watching her as she bathes and dresses. Her legs— that I know from my uncle's books should be smooth— are dark with hair; the place between them— which I know should be neat, and fair— darkest of all. That troubles me. Then at last, one day, she catches me gazing. 'What are you looking at?' she says. 'Your cunt,' I answer. 'Why is it so black?' She starts away from me as if in horror, lets her skirt fall, puts her hands before her breast. Her cheek flares crimson. 'Oh!' she cries. 'I never did! Where did you learn such words?' 'From my uncle,' I say.
'Oh, you liar! Your uncle's a gentleman. I'll tell Mrs Stiles!' She does. I think Mrs Stiles will hit me; instead, like Barbara, she starts back. But then, she takes up a block of soap and, while
Barbara holds me, she presses the soap into my mouth— presses it hard, then passes it back and forth across my lips and tongue.
'Speak like a devil, will you?' she says as she does it. 'Like a slut and a filthy beast?
Like your own trash mother? Will you? Will
you?'
Then she lets me fall, and stands and wipes her hands convulsively upon her apron.
She has Barbara keep to her own bed, from that night on; and she makes her keep the door between our rooms ajar, and put out a light.
'Thank God she wears gloves, at least,' I hear her say. 'That may keep her from further mischief ..."
I wash my mouth, until my tongue grows cracked, and bleeds; I weep and weep; but still taste lavender. I think my lip must have poison in it, after all.
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But soon, I do not care. My cunt grows dark as Barbara's, I understand my uncle's books to be filled with falsehoods, and I despise myself for having supposed them truths. My hot cheek cools, my colour dies, the heat quite fades from my limbs. The restlessness turns all to scorn. I become what I was bred to be. I become a librarian.
'The Lustful Turk,' my uncle might say, looking up from his papers. 'Where do we have it?'
'We have it here, Uncle,' I will answer.— For within a year I know the place of every b o o k u p o n h i s s h e l v e s . I k n o w t h e p l a n o f h i s g r e a t i n d e x — his Universal Bibliography of Priapus and Venus. For to Priapus and Venus he has devoted me, as other girls are apprenticed to the needle or the loom.
I know his friends— those gentlemen who visit, and still hear me recite. I know them now for publishers, collectors, auctioneers— enthusiasts of his work. They send him books— more books each week— and letters:
' " M r L i l l y : o n t h e C l e l a n d . G r i v e t o f P a r i s c l a i m s n o k n o w l e d g e o f t h e l o s t , sodomitical matter. Shall I pursue?'"
My uncle hears me read, his eyes creased hard behind their lenses.
'What think you, Maud?' he says. '— Well, never mind it now. We must leave the Cleland to languish, and hope for more in the spring. So, so. Let me see . . .' He divides the slips of paper upon his desk. 'Now, The Festival of the Passions. Have we still the second volume, on loan from Hawtrey? You must copy it, Maud ..."
'I will,' I say.
You think me meek. How else should I answer? Once, early on, I forget myself, and yawn. My uncle studies me. He has taken his pen from his page, and slowly rolls its nib.
'It appears you find your occupation dull,' he says at last. 'Perhaps you would like to return to your room.' I say nothing. 'Should you like it?'
'Perhaps, sir,' I say, after a moment.
'Perhaps. Very good. Put back your book then, and go. But, Maud— ' This last, as I cross to the door. 'Do you instruct Mrs Stiles to keep the fuel from your fire. You don't suppose I shall pay, to keep you warm in idleness, hmm?'
I hesitate, then go. This is, again, in winter— it seems always winter there! I sit wrapped in my coat until made to dress for dinner. But at the table, when Mr Way brings the food to my plate, my uncle stops him. 'No meat,' he says, laying a napkin across his lap, 'for idle girls. Not in this house.'
Then Mr Way takes the platter away. Charles, his boy, looks sorry. I should like to strike him. Instead I must sit, twisting my hands into the fabric of my skirt, biting down my rage as I once swallowed tears, hearing the sliding of the meat upon my uncle's ink-stained tongue, until I am dismissed.
Next day at eight o'clock, I return to my work; and am careful never to yawn again.
I grow taller, in the months that follow. I become slender and more pale. I become handsome. I outgrow my skirts and gloves and slippers.— My uncle notes it, vaguely, and instructs Mrs Stiles to cut me new gowns to the pattern of the old. She does, and makes me sew them. I believe she must take a sort of malicious pleasure from the dressing of me to suit his fancy; then again, perhaps in her grief for 128
her daughter she has forgotten that little girls are meant to turn out women. Anyway, I have been too long at Briar, and draw a comfort, now, from regularity. I have grown used to my gloves and my hard-boned gowns, and flinch at the first unloosening of the strings. Undressed, I seem to feel myself as naked and unsafe as one of my uncle's lenseless eyes.
Asleep, I am sometimes oppressed by dreams. Once I fall into a fever, and a surgeon sees me. He is a friend of my uncle's and has heard me read. He fingers the soft flesh beneath my jaw, puts his thumbs to my cheeks, draws down my eye- lids. 'Are you troubled,' he says, 'with uncommon thoughts? Well, we must expect that. You are an uncommon girl.' He strokes my hand and prescribes me a medicine— a single drop to be taken in a cup of water— 'for restlessness'. Barbara puts out the mixture, while Mrs Stiles looks on.
Then Barbara leaves me, to be married, and I am given another maid. Her name is Agnes. She is small, and slight as a bird— one of those little, little birds that men bring down with nets. She has red hair and white skin marked with freckles, like paper foxed with damp. She is fifteen, innocent as butter. She thinks my uncle kind. She thinks me kind, at first. She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it.
When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behind her tears, keeps still its look of mine.
I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.
So my life passes. You might suppose I would not know enough of ordinary things, to know it queer. But I read other books besides my uncle's; and overhear the talk of servants, and catch their looks, and so, by that— by the curious and pitying glances of parlourmaids and grooms!— I see well enough the oddity I have become.