'Who the devil are you?'
Maud worked at the buttons at her wrist.
'This is my new maid, Uncle,' she said quietly. 'Miss Smith.'
Behind Mr Lilly's green glasses, I saw his eyes screw themselves up and grow damper.
'Miss Smith,' he said, looking at me but talking to his niece. 'Is she a papist, like the last one?'
'I don't know,' said Maud. 'I have not asked her. Are you a papist, Susan?'
I didn't know what that was. But I said, 'No, miss. I don't think so.'
Mr Lilly at once put his hand across his ear.
'I don't care for her voice,' he said. 'Can't she be silent? Can't she be soft?'
Maud smiled. 'She can, Uncle,' she said.
'Then why is she here, disturbing me now?'
48
'She has come to fetch me.'
'To fetch you?' he said. 'Did the clock sound?'
He put his hand to the fob of his waistcoat and drew out an ancient great gold repeater, tilting his head to catch the chime, and opening his mouth. I looked at Maud, who stood, still fumbling with the fastening of her glove; and I took a step, meaning to help her. But when he saw me do that, the old man jerked like Mr Punch in the puppet-show, and out came his black tongue.
'The finger, girl!' he cried. 'The finger! The finger!'
He held his own dark finger to me, and shook his pen until the ink flew: I saw later that the piece of carpet underneath his desk was quite black, and so guessed he shook his pen rather often. But at that moment he looked so strange, and spoke so shrilly, my heart quite failed me. I thought he must be prone to fits. I took another step, and that made him shriek still harder— at last Maud came to me and touched my arm.
'Don't be afraid,' she said softly. 'He means only this, look.' And she showed me how, at my feet, there was set into the dark floorboards, in the space between the doorway and the edge of the carpet, a flat brass hand with a pointing finger.
'Uncle does not care to have servants' eyes upon his books,' she said, 'for fear of spoiling them. Uncle asks that no servant advance further into the room than this mark here.'
She placed the toe of her slipper upon the brass. Her face was smooth as wax, her voice like water.
'Does she see it?' said her uncle.
'Yes ' she answered, drawing back her toe. 'She sees it very well. She will know next time— shan't you, Susan?'
'Yes, miss,' I said— hardly knowing what I should say, or how or who I should look at; for it was certainly news to me, that gazing at a line of print could spoil it. But what did I know, about that? Besides which, the old man was so queer, and had given me such a turn, I thought that anything might have been true. 'Yes, miss,' I said, a second time; and then: 'Yes, sir.'
Then I made a curtsey. Mr Lilly snorted, looking hard at me through his green glasses.
Maud fastened her glove, and we turned to leave him.
'Make her soft, Maud,' he said, as she pulled the door behind us.
'I will, Uncle,' she murmured.
Now the passage seemed dimmer than ever. She took me round the gallery and up the staircase to the second floor, where her rooms were. Here there was a bit of lunch laid out, and coffee in another silver pot; but when she saw what Cook had sent up, she made a face.
'Eggs,' she said. 'Done soft, like you must be. What did you think of my uncle, Susan?'
I said, 'I'm sure he's very clever, miss.'
'He is.'
'And writing, I believe, a great big dictionary?'
She blinked, then nodded. A dictionary, yes. A great many years' labour. We are presently at F.'
She held my gaze, as if to see what I thought of that.
49
'Astonishing,' I said.
She blinked again, then put a spoon to the side of the first of the eggs and took its head off. Then she looked at the white and yellow mess inside it and made another face, and put it from her. 'You must eat this for me,' she said. 'You must eat them all.
And I shall have the bread-and-butter.'
There were three eggs there. I don't know what she saw in them, to be so choosy over.
She passed them to me and, as I ate them, she sat watching me, taking bites of bread and sips of coffee, and once
rubbing for a minute at a spot upon her glove, saying, 'Here is a drop of yolk, look, come upon my finger. Oh, how horrid the yellow is, against the white!'
I saw her frowning at that mark, then, until the meal was finished. When Margaret came to take the tray away, she rose and went into her bedroom; and when she came back her gloves were white again— she had been to her drawer and got a new pair.
The old ones I found later, as I put coal on her bedroom fire: she had cast them there, at the back of the grate, and the flames had made the kid shrink, they looked like gloves for a doll.
She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored— as who wouldn't be, in a house like that? When we had finished our lunch she went to the window: the sky was grey and threatening rain, but she said she had a fancy to go out walking. She said, 'Now, what shall I wear for it?', and we stood at the door of her little black press, looking over her coats, her bonnets and her boots. That killed nearly an hour. I think that's why she did it. When I was clumsy over the lacing of her shoe, she put her hands upon mine and said,
'Be slower. Why should we hurry? There is no-one to hurry for, is there?'
She smiled, but her eyes were sad. I said, 'No, miss.'
In the end she put on a pale grey cloak, and over her gloves she drew mittens. She had a little leather bag kept ready, that held a handkerchief, a bottle of water, and scissors: she had me carry this, not saying what the scissors were for— I supposed she meant to cut flowers. She took me down the great staircase to the door, and Mr Way heard us and came running to throw back the bolts. 'How do you do, Miss Maud?' he said, making a bow; and then: And you, Miss Smith.' The hall was dark. When we went outside we stood blinking, our hands at our eyes against the sky and the watery sun.
The house had seemed grim when I first saw it, at night, in the fog and I should like to say it seemed less grim when you saw it by daylight; but it seemed worse. I suppose it had been grand enough once, but now its chimneys were leaning like drunks, and its roof was green with moss and birds' nests. It was covered all over with a dead kind of creeper, or with the stains where a creeper had long ago crept; and all about the foot of the walls were the chopped-off trunks of ivy. It had a great front door, split down the middle; but rain had made the wood swell, they only ever opened up one half. Maud had to press her crinoline flat, and walk quite sideways, in order to leave the house at all.
It was odd to see her stepping out of that gloomy place, like a pearl coming out of an 50