I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fiction; but have never, since I first came to my uncle's house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing. You must remember this, in what follows. You must remember what I cannot do, what I have not seen. I cannot, for example, sit a horse, or dance. I have never held a coin in order to spend it. I have never seen a play, a railway, a mountain, or a sea.
I have never seen London; and yet, I think I know it, too. I know it, from my uncle's books. I know it lies upon a river— which is the same river, grown very much broader, that runs beyond his park. I like to walk beside the water, thinking of this. There is an ancient, overturned punt there, half rotted away— the holes in its hull a perpetual mockery, it seems to me, of my confinement; but I like to sit upon it, gazing at the rushes at the water's edge. I remember the Bible story, of the child that was placed in a basket and was found by the daughter of a king. I should like to find a child. I should like it, not to keep it!— but to take its place in the basket and leave it at Briar to grow up to be me. I think often of the life I would have, in London; and of who might claim me.
That is when I am still young, and given to fancies. When I am older I do not walk by the river so much as stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow 129
paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncle's library I one day, with my finger- nail, make a small and perfect crescent, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye— like a curious wife at the keyhole of a cabinet of secrets.
But I am inside the cabinet, and long to get out. . .
I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.
C h a p t e r Eight
I have said it was my uncle's custom, occasionally to invite interested gentlemen to the house, to take a supper with us and, later, hear me read. He does so now.
'Make yourself neat tonight, Maud,' he says to me, as I stand in his library buttoning up my gloves. 'We shall have guests. Hawtrey, Huss, and another fellow, a stranger. I hope to employ him with the mounting of our pictures.'
Our pictures. There are cabinets, in a separate study, filled with drawers of lewd engravings, that my uncle has collected in a desultory sort of manner, along with his books. He has often spoken of taking on some man to trim and mount them, but has never found a man to match the task. One needs a quite particular character, for work of that sort.
He catches my eye, thrusts out his lips. 'Hawtrey claims to have a gift for us, besides.
An edition of a text we have not catalogued.'
'That is great news, sir.'
Perhaps I speak drily; but my uncle, though a dry man himself, does not mark it. He only puts his hand to the slips of paper before him and divides the heap into two uneven piles. 'So, so. Let me see . . .'
'May I leave you, Uncle?'
He looks up. 'Has the hour struck?'
'It has, I believe.'
He draws out from his pocket his chiming watch and holds it to his ear. The key to his library door— sewn about, at the stem, with faded velvet— swings noiselessly beside it.
He says, 'Go on then, go on. Leave an old man to his books. Go and play, but— gently, Maud.'
'Yes, Uncle.'
Now and then I wonder how he supposes I spend my hours, when not engaged by him.
I think he is too used to the particular world of his books, where time passes strangely, or not at all, and imagines me an ageless child. Sometimes that is how I imagine myself— as if my short, tight gowns and velvet sashes keep me bound, like a Chinese slipper, to a form I should otherwise outleap. My uncle himself— who is at this time, I suppose, not quite above fifty— I have always considered to have been perfectly and permanently aged; as flies remain aged, yet fixed and unchanging, in cloudy chips of amber.
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I leave him squinting at a page of text. I walk very quietly, in soft-soled shoes. I go to my rooms, where Agnes is.
I find her at work at a piece of sewing. She sees me come, and flinches. Do you know how provoking such a flinch will seem, to a temperament like mine? I stand and watch her sew. She feels my gaze, and begins to shake. Her stitches grow long and crooked. At last I take the needle from her hand and gently put the point of it against her flesh; then draw it off; then put it back; then do this, six or seven times more, until her knuckles are marked between the freckles with a rash of needle-pricks.
'There are to be gentlemen here tonight,' I say, as I do it. 'One a stranger. Do you suppose he will be young, and handsome?'
I say it— idly enough— as a way of teasing. It is nothing to me. But she hears me, and colours.
'I can't say, miss,' she answers, blinking and turning her head; not drawing her hand away, however. 'Perhaps.'
'You think so?'
'Who knows? He might be.'
I study her harder, struck with a new idea.
'Should you like it if he was?'
'Like it, miss?'
'Like it, Agnes. It seems to me now, that you would. Shall I tell him the way to your room? I shan't listen at the door. I shall turn the key, you will be quite private.'
'Oh, miss, what nonsense!'
'Is it? Here, turn your hand.' She does, and I jab the needle harder. 'Now, say you don't like it, having a prick upon your palm!'
She takes her hand away and sucks it, and begins to cry. The sight of her tears— and of her mouth, working on the bit of tender flesh that I have stabbed— first stirs, then troubles me; then makes me weary. I leave her weeping, and stand at my rattling window, my eyes upon the lawn that dips to the wall, the rushes, the Thames.
'Will you be quiet?' I say, when her breath still catches. 'Look at you! Tears, for a gentleman! Don't you know that he won't be handsome, or even young? Don't you know, they never are?'
But of course, he is both.
'Mr Richard Rivers,' my uncle says. The name seems auspicious to me. Later I will discover it to be false— as false as his rings, his smile, his manner; but now, as I stand in the drawing- room and he rises to make me his bow, why should I think to doubt him? He has fine features, even teeth, and is taller than my uncle by almost a foot. His hair is brushed and has oil upon it, but is long: a curl springs from its place and tumbles across his brow. He puts a hand to it, repeatedly. His hands are slender, smooth and— but for a single finger, stained yellow by smoke— quite white.
'Miss Lilly,' he says, as he bends towards me. The lock of hair falls forward, the stained hand lifts to brush it back. His voice is very low, I suppose for my uncle's sake.
He must have been cautioned in advance, by Mr Hawtrey.
Mr Hawtrey is a London bookseller and publisher, and has been
many times to Briar. He takes my hand and kisses it. Behind him comes Mr Huss. He 131
is a gentleman collector, a friend from my uncle's youth. He also takes my hand, but takes it to draw me closer to him, then kisses my cheek. 'Dear child,' he says.
I have been several times surprised by Mr Huss upon the stairs. He likes to stand and watch me climb them.
'How do you do, Mr Huss?' I say now, making him a curtsey.
But it is Mr Rivers I watch. And once or twice, when I turn my face his way, I find his own eyes fixed on me, his gaze a thoughtful one. He is weighing me up. Perhaps he has not supposed I would be so handsome. Perhaps I am not so handsome as rumour has had him think. I cannot tell. But, when the dinner-bell sounds and I move to my uncle's side to be walked to the table, I see him hesitate; then he chooses the place next to mine. I wish he had not. I think he will continue to watch me, and I don't like to be watched, while eating. Mr Way and Charles move softly about us, filling our glasses— mine, that crystal cup, cut with an M. The food is set upon our plates, then the servants leave: they never stay when we have company, but return between courses. At Briar we eat, as we do everything, by the chiming of the clock. A supper of gentlemen lasts one hour and a half.