She caught my eye in the glass. I made another curtsey.
'Shall I go, miss?' I said.
She stepped back. 'Stay,' she said, waving her hand, 'and put my rooms in order, will you?'
She went to the door. At the handle, however, she stopped. She said,
'I hope you will be happy here, Susan.' Now she was blushing again. My own cheek cooled, when I saw that. 'I hope your aunt, in London, will not miss you too greatly. It was an aunt, I think, that Mr Rivers mentioned?' She lowered her eyes. 'I hope you found Mr Rivers quite well, when you saw him?'
She let the question fall, like it was nothing to her; and I knew confidence men who did the same, dropping One good shilling among a pile of snide, to make all the coins seem honest. As if she gave a fig, for me and my old aunty!
I said, 'He was very well, miss. And sent his compliments.'
She had opened the door now, and half- hid herself behind it. 'Did he truly?' she said.
'Truly, miss.'
She put her brow against the wood. 'I think he is kind,' she said softly.
I remembered him squatting at the side of that kitchen chair, his hand reaching high beneath the layers of petticoat, saying, You sweet bitch.
'I'm sure he's very kind, miss,' I said.
Then, from somewhere in the house there came the quick, peevish tinkling of a little hand-bell, and, 'There's Uncle!' she cried, gazing over her shoulder. She turned and ran, leaving the door half- closed. I heard the slap of her slippers and the creaking of the stairs as she went down.
I waited a second, then stepped to the door, put my foot to it, and kicked it shut. I went to the fire and warmed my hands. I do not think I had been quite warm since leaving Lant Street. I lifted my head and, seeing the glass that Maud had looked in, rose and gazed at my own face— at my freckled cheek and my teeth. I showed myself my tongue. Then I rubbed my hands and chuckled: for she was just as Gentleman had promised, and clearly tit over heels in love with him already; and that three thousand pounds might as well have been counted and wrapped and had my name put on it, and the doctor be standing ready with a strait- coat at the madhouse door.
That's what I thought, after seeing her then.
But I thought it in a discontented sort of way; and the chuckle, I have to admit, was rather forced. I could not have said quite why, though. I supposed it was the gloom— for the house seemed darker and stiller than ever, now that she had gone.
There was only the dropping of ash in the grate, the bumping and rattling of panes of glass. I went to the window. The draught was awful. There had been little red sand-bags laid upon the sills to keep it out, but they didn't work; and they had all got wet, and were mouldy. I put my hand to one, and my finger came away green. I stood and shivered, and looked at the view— if you could call it a view, that was just plain 45
grass and trees. A few black birds pulled worms from the lawn. I wondered which way London was.
I wished hard to hear an infant cry, or Mr Ibbs's sister. I would have given five pounds for a parcel of poke or a few bad coins to tarnish.
Then I thought of something else. Put my rooms in order, Maud had said; and here was only one room, that I supposed must be her parlour; so somewhere else must be another, where she slept in her bed. Now, the walls in that house were all of dark oak panelling,
very gloomy on the eye and very baffling, for the doors were set so pat in their frames, you could not spot them. But I looked hard and, in the wall across from where I stood, I saw a crack, and then a handle; and then the shape of the door sprung at me, plain as daylight.
It was the door to her bedroom, just as I had supposed; and of course, this room had another door in it, that was the door to my own room, where I had stood the night before and listened for her breaths. That seemed a very foolish thing to have done, now that I saw what was on the other side of it. For it was only an ordinary lady's room— not very grand, but grand enough, with a faint, sweet smell to it, and a high four-posted bed with curtains and a canopy of old moreen. I was not sure that sleeping in a bed like that wouldn't make me sneeze: I thought of all the dust and dead flies and spiders that must be gathered in the canopy, that looked as though it hadn't been taken down in ninety years. The bed had been made, but a night-dress lay upon it— I folded this up and put it beneath the pillow; and there were one or two fair hairs there that I caught up and took to the grate. So much for maiding. Upon the chimney-breast there was a great aged looking- glass, shot through like marble, with silver and grey. Beyond it was a small old- fashioned press, that was carved all over with flowers and grapes, quite black with polish, and here and there split. I should say that ladies wore nothing but leaves in the day it was built, for it had six or seven slight gowns laid carelessly in it now, that made the shelves groan, and a crinoline cage, against which the doors could not be fastened. Seeing that, I thought again what a shame it was that Maud had no mother: for she would certainly have got rid of ancient stuff like this and found her daughter something more up to the minute and dainty.
But one thing a business like ours at Lant Street teaches you is, the proper handling of quality goods. I got hold of the gowns— they were all as odd and short and girlish as each other— and shook them out, then laid them nicely back on their shelf. Then I wedged a shoe against the crinoline to hold it flat; after that, the doors closed as they were meant to. This press was in one alcove. In another was a
dressing- table. That was strewn about with brushes and bottles and pinst— I tidied those, too— and fitted beneath with a set of fancy drawers. I opened them up. They held— well, here was a thing. Thev all held gloves.
More gloves than a milliner's. White ones, in the top drawer; black silk ones in the middle; and buff mittens in
the lowest.
They were each of them marked on the inside at the wrist with a crimson thread that I guessed spelled out Maud's name. I should have liked to have a go at that, with 46
scissors and a pin.
I did no such thing, of course, but left the gloves all lying neatly, and I went about the room again until I had touched and studied it all There was not much more to look at; but there was one more curious thing, and that was a little wooden box, inlaid with ivory, that sat upon a table beside her bed.
The box was locked, and when I took it up it gave a dull sort of rattle. There was no key handy: I guessed she kept it somewhere about her, perhaps on a string. The lock was a simple one, however, and with locks like that, you only have to show them the wire and they open themselves, it's like giving brine to an oyster. I used one of her hairpins.
The wood turned out to be lined with plush. The hinge was of silver, and oiled not to squeak. I am not sure what I thought to find in there— perhaps, something from Gentleman, some keepsake, some letter, some little bill-and-coo. But what there was, was a miniature portrait, in a frame of gold hung on a faded ribbon, of a handsome, fair- haired lady. Her eyes were kind. She was dressed in a style from twenty years before, and the frame was an old one: she did not look much like Maud, but I thought it a pretty safe bet that she was her mother.— Though I also thought that, if she was, then it was queer that Maud kept her picture locked up in a box, and did not wear it.
I p u z z l e d s o l o n g o v e r t h i s , t u r n i n g t h e p i c t u r e , l o o k i n g f o r m a r k s , t h a t t h e frame— which had been cold when I took it up, like everything there— grew warm.
But then there came a sound, from somewhere in the house, and I thought how it would be, if Maud— or Margaret, or Mrs Stiles— should come to the room and catch me
standing by the open box, the portrait in my hand. I quickly laid it back in its place, and made it fast again.
The hairpin I had bent to make a pick-lock with, I kept. I shouldn't have liked Maud to have found it and thought me a thief.
There was nothing to do, after I had done that. I stood some more at the window. At eleven o'clock a maid brought up a tray. 'Miss Maud isn't here,' I said, when I saw the silver tea-pot; but the tea was for me. I drank it in fairy- sips, to make it last the longer.
Then I took the tray back down, thinking to save the maid another journey. When they saw me carrying it into the kitchen, however, the girls there stared and the cook said,
'Well, I never! If you think Margaret ain't quick enough coming, you must speak to Mrs Stiles. But I'm sure, Miss Fee never called anyone idle.'
Miss Fee was the Irish maid who had got sick with the scarlatina. It seemed very cruel to be supposed prouder than her, when I was only trying to be kind.
But I said nothing. I thought, 'Miss Maud likes me, if you don't!' For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for the time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.
At least at Briar you always knew what hour it was. The twelve struck, and then the half, and I made my way to the back-stairs and hung about there until one of the parlourmaids went by, and she showed me the way to the library. It was a room on the first floor, that you reached from a gallery overlooking a great wood staircase and a hall; but it was all dark and dim and shabby, as it was everywhere in that house— you 47
would never have thought, looking about you there, that you were right in the home of a tremendous scholar. By the door to the library, on a wooden shield, hung some creature's head with one glass eye: I stood and put my fingers to its little white teeth, waiting to hear the clock sound one. Through the door came Maud's voice— very faint, but slow and level, as though she might be reading to her uncle from a book.
Then the hour sounded, and I lifted my hand and knocked. A man's thin voice called out for me to enter.
I saw Maud first: she was sitting at a desk with a book before her, her hands upon the covers. Her hands were bare, she had her little white gloves laid neatly by, but she sat beside a shaded lamp, that threw all its light upon her fingers, and they seemed pale as ashes upon the page of print. Above her was a window. Its glass had yellow paint upon it. All about her, over all the walls of the room, were shelves; and the shelves had books on— you never saw so many. A stunning amount. How many stories does one man need? I looked at them and shuddered. Maud rose, closing the book that was before her. She took up the white gloves and drew them back on.
She looked to her right, to the end of the room that, because of the open door, I could not see. A cross voice said,
'What is it?'
I pushed the door further, and saw another painted window, more shelves, more books, and a-second great desk. This one was piled with papers, and had another shaded lamp. Behind it sat Mr Lilly, Maud's old uncle; and to describe him as I saw him then, is to tell everything.
He wore a velvet coat, and a velvet cap, that had a stub of red wool jutting from it where a tassel might once have hung. In his hand there was a pen, that he held clear of the paper; and the hand itself was dark, as Maud's was fair— for it was stained all over with India ink, like a regular man's might be stained with tobacco. His hair, however, was white. His chin was shaved bare. His mouth was small and had no colour, but his tongue— that was hard and pointed— was almost black, from where he must have given a lick to his finger and thumb, when turning pages.
His eyes were damp and feeble. Before them he had a pair of glasses, shaded green.