Sometimes they would draw away from me, and seem quite to forget me. Then Maud would remember, and turn, and say,
'How good you are, Sue! You do not mind the walk? Mr Rivers thinks another quarter of a mile will do it.'
Mr Rivers always thought that. He kept her slowly walking about the park, saying he was looking for scenes for her to paint, but really keeping her close and talking in murmurs; and I had to follow, with all their gear.
Of course, I was the reason they were able to walk at all. I was meant to watch and see that Gentleman was proper.
I watched him hard. I also watched her. She would look sometimes at his face; more often at the ground; now and then at some flower or leaf or fluttering bird that took her fancy. And when she did that he would half turn, and catch my eye, and give a devilish kind of smile; but by the time she gazed at him again his face would be smooth.
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You would swear, seeing him then, that he loved her.
You would swear, seeing her, that she loved him.
But you could see that she was fearful, of her own fluttering heart. He could not go too fast. He never touched her, except to let her lean upon his arm, and to guide her hand as she painted. He would bend close to her, to watch her as she dabbled in the colours, and then their breaths would come together and his hair would mix with hers; but if he went a little nearer she would flinch. She kept her gloves on.
At last he found out that spot beside the river, and she began a painting of the scenery there, adding more dark rushes each day. In the evening she sat reading in the drawing- room, for him and Mr Lilly. At night she went fretfully to her bed, and sometimes took more sleeping-drops, and sometimes shivered in her sleep.
I put my hands upon her, when she did that, till she was still again.
I was keeping her calm, for Gentleman's sake. Later on he would want me to make her nervous; but for now I kept her calm, I kept her neat, I kept her dressed very handsome. I washed her hair in vinegar, and brushed it till it shone. Gentleman would come to her parlour and study her, and bow. And when he said, 'Miss Lilly, I believe you grow sweeter in the face with every day that passes!', I knew he meant it. But I knew, too, that he meant it as a compliment not to her— who had done nothing— but to me, who did it all.
I guessed little things like that. He couldn't speak plainly, but made great play with his eyes and with his smiles, as I have said. We waited out our chance for a talk in private; and just as it began to look as though that chance would never come, it did and it
was Maud, in her innocent way, who let us have it.
For she saw him one morning, very early, from the window of her room. She stood at the glass and put her head against it, and said,
'There is Mr Rivers, look, walking on the lawn.'
I went and stood beside her and, sure enough, there he was, strolling about the grass, smoking a cigarette. The sun, being still rather low, made his shadow very long.
Ain't he tall?' I said, gazing sideways at Maud. She nodded. Her breath made the glass mist, and she wiped it away. Then she said,
'Oh!'— as if he might have fallen over— 'Oh! I think his cigarette has gone out. Poor Mr Rivers!'
He was studying the dark tip of his cigarette, and blowing at it; now he was putting his hand to his trouser pocket, searching for a match. Maud made another swipe at the window-glass.
'Now,' she said, 'can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don't believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets ..."
She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking.
I said, 'It won't kill him, miss.'
'But poor Mr Rivers,' she said again. 'Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!'
We didn't have any matches. Margaret kept them in her apron. When I told Maud that she said,
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'Then take a candle! Take anything! Take a coal from the fire! Oh, can't you be quicker?— Don't say I sent you, mind!'
Can you believe she had me doing that?— tripping down two sets of stairs, with a lighted coal in a pair of fire-tongs, just so a man might have his morning smoke? Can you believe I did it? Well, I was a servant now, and must. Gentleman saw me stepping across the grass to him, saw what I carried, and laughed.
I said, All right. She has sent me down with it for you to light your cigarette from.
Look glad, she is watching. But make a business of it, if you want.'
He did not move his head, but raised his eyes to her window.
'What a good girl she is,' he said.
'She is too good for you, that I do know.'
He smiled. But only as a gentleman should smile to a servant; and his face he made kind. I imagined Maud, looking down, breathing quicker upon the glass. He said quietly,
'How do we do, Sue?'
'Pretty well,' I answered.
'You think she loves me?'
'I do. Oh, yes.'
He drew out a silver case and lifted free a cigarette. 'But she hasn't told you so?'
'She don't have to.'
He leaned close to the coal. 'Does she trust you?'
'I think she must. She has nobody else.'
He drew on the cigarette, then breathed out in a sigh. The smoke stained the cold air blue. He said, 'She's ours.'
He stepped back a little way, then gestured with his eyes; I saw what he wanted, let the coal fall to the lawn, and he stooped to help me get it. 'What else?' he said. I told him, in a murmur, about the sleeping-drops, and about her being afraid of her own dreams. He listened, smiling, all the time fumbling with the fire- tongs over the piece of coal, and finally catching it up and rising, and placing my hands upon the handle of the tongs and pressing them tight.
'The drops and the dreams are good,' he said quietly. 'They'll help us, later. But you know, for now, what you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She's our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.— Keep it like this,' he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. 'Like this, so the coal won't fall and scorch Miss Lilly's carpets . . .'
I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:
'They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.'
He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.
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