'That's better.'
He was still on his knee, with his face tilted upwards. She touched his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her hands, and then she drew them quickly back. She said,
'Sue will help us all she can. But we must be careful, Richard.'
He smiled and shook his head. He said,
'And you think, seeing me now, I shall never be that?' He rose and stepped from her.
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He said, 'Do you know how careful my love will make me? See here, look at my hands. Say there's a cobweb spun between them. It's my ambition. And at its centre there's a spider, of the colour of a jewel. The spider is you. This is how I shall bear you— so gently, so carefully and without jar, you shall not know you are being taken.'
He said that, with his white hands cupped; and then, as she gazed into the space between them, he spread his fingers and laughed. I turned away. When I looked at her again, he had taken her hands in his and was holding them loosely, before his heart.
She seemed a little easier. They sat, and talked in murmurs.
And I remembered all she had said at the graves, and how she had rubbed her palm. I thought, 'That was nothing, she has forgotten it now. Not love him, when he's so handsome and seems so kind?'
I thought, 'Of course she loves him.' I watched as he leaned to her and touched her and made her blush. I thought, 'Who wouldn't?'
Then he raised his head and caught my gaze and, stupidly, I blushed, too. He said,
'You know your duties, Sue. You've a careful eye. We shall be glad of that, in time.
But today— well, have you no other little business, that will take you elsewhere?'
He gestured with his eyes to the door of Maud's bedroom.
'There's a shilling in it for you,' he said, 'if you do.'
I almost stood. I almost went. So used had I got, to playing the servant. Then I saw Maud. The colour had quite gone from her face. She said, 'But suppose Margaret or one of the girls should come to the door?'
'Why should they do that?' said Gentleman. And if they do, what will they hear? We shall be perfectly silent. Then they will go again.' He smiled at me. 'Be kind, Sue,' he said slyly. 'Be kind, to lovers. Did you never have a sweetheart of your own?'
I might still have gone, before he said that. Now I thought suddenly, Who did he think he was? He might pretend to be a lord; he
was only a con-man. He had a snide ring on his finger, and all his coins were bad ones.
I knew more than he did about Maud's secrets. I slept beside her in her own bed. I had made her love me like a sister; he had made her afraid. I could turn her heart against him if I wanted to, like that! It was enough that he was going to marry her at last. It was enough that he could kiss her, whenever he liked. I wouldn't leave her now to be tugged about and made nervous. I thought, 'Damn you, I'll get my three thousand just the same!'
So I said, 'I shan't leave Miss Lilly. Her uncle wouldn't like it. And if Mrs Stiles was to hear of it, then I should lose my place.'
He looked at me and frowned. Maud did not look at me at all; but I knew she was grateful. She said gently,
After all, Richard, we shouldn't ask too much of Sue. We shall have time enough to be together, soon— shan't we?'
He said then that he supposed that that was true. They kept close before the fire, and after a while I went and sat and sewed beside the window and let them gaze at one another's faces undisturbed. I heard the hiss of his whispers, the rush of his breath as he laughed. But Maud was silent. And when he left, and took her hand and pressed it to his mouth, she trembled so hard, I thought back to all the times I had watched her 82
tremble before, and wondered how I had ever mistaken that trembling for love. Once the door was closed she stood at the glass, as she often did, studying her face. She stood there for a minute, then turned. She stepped very slowly and softly, from the glass to the sofa, from the sofa to the chair, from the chair to the window— she moved, in short, across the whole of the room, until she reached my side. She leaned to look at my work and her hair, in its net of velvet, brushed my own.
'You sew neatly,' she said— though I had not, not then. I had sewn hard, and my stitches were crooked.
Then she stood and said nothing. Once or twice she drew in her breath. I thought there was something she longed to ask me, but dared not. In the end she moved away again.
And so our trap— that I had thought so lightly of, and worked so hard to lay— was finally set; and wanted only time to go quickly by
and spring it. Gentleman was hired to work as Mr Lilly's secretary until the end of April, and meant to stay out his contract to the last— 'So that the old man won't have the breaking of that to charge me with,' he said to me, laughing, 'alongside the breaking of certain other things.' He planned to leave when he was meant to— that is, the evening of the last day of the month; but, instead of taking the train for London, he would hang about, and come back to the house at the dead of night, for me and Maud. He must steal her away and not be caught, and then he must marry her— quick as he could, and before her uncle should hear of it and find her and take her home again. He had it all figured out. He could not fetch her in a pony and cart, for he should never have got it past the gate-house. He meant to bring a boat and take her off along the river, to some small out-of-the-way church where she would not be known as Mr Lilly's niece.
Now, to marry a girl at any church you must have been living in the parish of it for fifteen days; but he fixed that up, as he fixed everything. A few days after Maud had promised him her hand, he found some excuse and took a horse and went riding off to Maidenhead. He got a special licence for the wedding there— that meant they should not have to put out the banns— and then he went about the county, looking out for the right kind of church. He found one, in a place so small and broken-down it had no name— or anyway, that's what he told us. He said the vicar was a drunkard. Hard by the church there was a cottage, owned by a widow who kept black-faced pigs. For two pounds she said she would keep him a room and swear to whoever he liked that he had lived there a month.
Women like that will do anything for gentlemen like him. He got back to Briar that night looking pleased as a weasel, and handsome than ever; and he came to Maud's parlour and sat us down anc spoke to us in murmurs of all he had done.
When he had finished, Maud looked pale. She had begun to leave off eating, and was grown thin about the face. Her eyes were dark at the lids. She put her hands together.
'Three weeks,' she said.
I thought I knew what she meant. She had three weeks left to
make herself want him. I saw her counting the days in her head, and thinking.
She was thinking of what was coming at the end of them.
For, she never learned to love him. She never grew to like his kisses or the feel of his 83
hand upon hers. She still shrank from him in a miserable fright— then nerved herself to face him, let him draw her close, let him touch her hair and face. I supposed at first he thought her backwards. Then I guessed he liked her to be slow. He would be kind to her, then pressing, and then, when she grew awkward or confused he would say,
'Oh! now you are cruel. I think you mean only to practise on my love.'
'No indeed,' she would answer. 'No, how can you say it?'
'I don't think you love me as you ought.'
'Not love you?'
'You won't show it. Perhaps'— a n d h e r e h e ' d g i v e a s l y g l a n c e , t o c a t c h m y eye— 'perhaps there's someone else you care for?'
Then she would let him kiss her, as if to prove that there was not. She would be stiff, or weak as a puppet. Sometimes she would almost weep. Then he would comfort her.
He would call himself a brute that did not deserve her, that ought to give her up to a better lover; then she would let him kiss her again. I heard the meeting of their lips, from my cold place beside the window. I heard the creeping of his hand upon her skirt.
Now and then I would look— just to be sure he had not put her in too much of a fright.
But then, I didn't know what was worse— seeing her face shut up, her cheek made pale, her mouth against his beard; or meeting her eye as the tears were pressed from it and came spilling.
'Let her alone, why don't you?' I said to him one day, when she had been called from the room to find a book for her uncle. 'Can't you see she don't care for it, having you pestering her like that?'