173177.fb2 Fingersmith - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 22

Fingersmith - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 22

I studied them and said, 'Hmm. These are sad cards. Here is a kind and handsome lady, look; and here a parting, and the beginning of strife.'

She stared, then put her hand to her throat. 'Go on,' she said. Her face was pale now.

'Let us look,' I said, 'at the next three cards. They show your Present.'

I turned them over with a flourish.

'The King of Diamonds,' I said. 'A stern old gentleman. The Five of Clubs: a parched mouth. The Cavalier of Spades— '

I took my time. She leaned towards me.

'What's he?' she said. 'The Cavalier?'

I said he was a young man on horseback, with good in his heart; and she looked at me in such an astonished believing sort of way, I was almost sorry. She said, in a low 63

voice, 'Now I am afraid! Don't turn over the next cards.'

I said, 'Miss, I must. Or all your luck will leave you. Look here. These show your Future.'

I turned the first. The Six of Spades.

'A journey!' I said. 'Perhaps, a trip with Mr Lilly? Or perhaps, a journey of the heart..."

She didn't answer, only sat gazing at the cards I had turned up. Then: 'Show the last one,' she said in a whisper. I showed it. She saw it first.

'Queen of Diamonds,' she said, with a sudden frown. 'Who's she?'

I did not know. I had meant to turn up the Two of Hearts, for lovers; but after all, must have muddled the deck.

'The Queen of Diamonds,' I said at last. 'Great wealth, I think.'

'Great wealth?' She leaned away from me and looked about her, at the faded carpet and the black oak walls. I took the cards and shuffled them. She brushed at her skirt and rose. 'I don't believe,' she said, 'that your grandmother really was a gipsy. You are too fair in the face. I don't believe it. And I don't like your fortune-telling. It's a game for servants.'

She stepped away from me, and stood again before the glass; and though I thought she would turn and say something kinder, she didn't. But as she went, she moved a chair: and then I saw the Two of Hearts. It had fallen on the floor— she had had her slipper on it, and her heel had creased the pips.

The crease was a deep one. I always knew that card, after that, in the games we played, in the weeks that followed.

That afternoon, however, she made me put the cards away, saying the sight of them made her giddy; and that night she was fretful. She got into bed, but had me pour her out a little cup of water; and as I stood undressing I saw her take up a bottle and slip three drops from it into the cup. It was sleeping-draught. That was the first time I saw her take it. It made her yawn. When I woke next day, though, she was already awake, lying with a strand of her hair pulled to her mouth, and gazing at the figures in the canopy over the bed.

'Brush my hair hard,' she said to me, as she stood for me to dress her. 'Brush it hard and make it shine. Oh, how horrid and white my cheek is! Pinch it, Sue.' She put my fingers to her face, and pressed

them 'Pinch my cheek, don't mind if you bruise it. I'd rather a blue cheek than a horrid white one!'

Her eyes were dark, perhaps from the sleeping-drops. Her brow was creased. It troubled me to hear her talk of bruises. I said,

'Stand still, or I shan't be able to dress you at all.— That's better. Now, which gown will you have?'

The grey?'

'The grey's too soft on the eye. Let's say, the blue . . .'

The blue brought out the fairness of her hair. She stood before the glass and watched as I buttoned it tight. Her face grew smoother, the higher I went. Then she looked at me. She looked at my brown stuff dress. She said,

'Your dress is rather plain, Sue— isn't it? I think you ought to change it.'

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I said, 'Change it? This is all I have.'

'All you have? Good gracious. I am weary of it already. What were you used to wearing for Lady Alice, who was so nice? Did she never pass any of her own dresses on to you?'

I felt— and I think I was right in feeling it— that Gentleman had let me down a bit here, sending me off to Briar with just the one good gown. I said,

'Well, the fact is, miss, Lady Alice was kind as an angel; but she was also rather near.

She kept my frocks back, to take to India for her girl there.'

Maud blinked her dark eyes and looked sorry. She said,

'Is that how ladies treat their maids, in London?'

'Only the near ones, miss,' I answered.

Then she said, 'Well, I have nothing to be near for, here. You must and shall have another gown, to spend your mornings in. And perhaps another besides that, for you to change into when— Well, say we ever had a visitor?'

She hid her face behind the door of her press. She said,

'Now, I believe we are of a similar size. Here are two or three dresses, look, that I never wear and shan't miss. You like your skirts long, I see. My uncle does not care to see me in a long skirt, he believes long skirts unhealthy. But he shan't mind, of course, about

you. You need only let down this hem a little here. You can do that, of course?'

Well, I was certainly used to taking stitches out; and I could sew a straight seam when I needed to. I said, 'Thank you, miss.' She held a dress before me. It was a queer thing of orange velvet, with fringes and a wide skirt. It looked like it had been blown together by a strong wind in a ladies' tailor's. She studied me, and then said,

'Oh, try it, Susan, do! Look, I shall help you.' She came close, and began to undress me. 'See, I can do it, quite as well as you. Now I am your maid, and you are the mistress!'

She laughed, a little nervously, all the time she worked. 'Why, look here in the glass,'

she said at last. 'We might be sisters!'

She had tugged my old brown dress off me and put the queer orange one over my head, and she made me stand before the glass while she saw to the hooks. 'Breathe in,'

she said. 'Breathe harder! The gown grips tight, but will give you the figure of a lady.'

Of course, her own waist was narrow, and she was taller by an inch. My hair was the darker. We did not look like sisters, we just both looked like frights. My dress showed all my ankle. If a boy from the Borough had seen me then, I should have fallen down and died.

But there were no Borough boys to see me; and no Borough girls, either. And it was a very good velvet. I stood, plucking at the fringes on the skirt, while Maud ran to her jewel box for a brooch, that she fastened to my bosom, tilting her head to see how it looked. Then there came a knock on the parlour door.

'There's Margaret,' she said, her face quite pink. She called, 'Come here to the dressing- room, Margaret!'