Gentleman kissed her and she stood and swayed, as if dazed. Mrs Cream said in a murmur,
'She don't know what've hit her, look at her. She'll know it later— plum feller like him.
Heh heh.'
I did not turn to her. If I had, I should have punched her. The parson shut his Bible and led us from the altar to the room where they kept the register. Here Gentleman wrote his name and Maud— who was now to be Mrs Rivers— wrote hers; and Mrs Cream and I put ours beneath them. Gentleman had already shown me how to write Smith; but still, I wrote it clumsily and was ashamed.— Ashamed, of that! The room was dark and smelled of damp. In the beams, things fluttered— perhaps birds, perhaps bats.
I saw Maud gazing at the shadows, as if afraid the things should swoop.
Gentleman took her arm and held it, and then he led her from the church. There had come clouds before the moon, and the night was darker. The parson shook hands with us, then made Maud a bow; then he went off. He went fast, and as he walked he took his robe off, and his clothes were black beneath it— he seemed to snuff himself out like a light. Mrs Cream took us to her
cottage. She carried the lantern, and we walked behind her, stumbling on her path: her doorway was low, and knocked Gentleman's hat off. She took us up a set of tilting stairs too narrow for our skirts, and then to a landing, about as big as a cupboard, where we all jostled about for a moment and the cuff of Maud's cloak got laid upon 101
the chimney of the lantern and was singed.
There were two shut doors there, leading to the two little bedrooms of the house. The first had a narrow straw mattress on a pallet on the floor, and was for me. The second had a bigger bed, an arm-chair and a press, and was for Gentleman and Maud. She went into it, and stood with her eyes on the floor, looking at nothing. There was a single candle lit. Her bags lay beside the bed. I went to them and took her things out, one by one, and put them in the press. Mrs Cream said, 'What handsome linen!'— -She was watching from the door. Gentleman stood with her, looking strange. It was him that had taught me the handling of a petticoat but now, seeing me take out Maud's shimmies and stockings, he seemed almost afraid. He said,
'Well, I shall smoke a final cigarette downstairs. Sue, you'll make things comfortable up here?'
I did not answer. He and Mrs Cream went down, their boots sounding loud as thunder and the door and the boards and the crooked staircase trembling. I heard him outside then, striking a match.
I looked at Maud. She was still holding the stalks of honesty. She took a step towards me and said quickly,
'If I should call out to you later, will you come?'
I took the flowers from her, and then the cloak. I said, 'Don't think of it; It will be over in a minute.'
She caught hold of my wrist with her right hand, that still had the glove upon it. She said, 'Listen to me, I mean it. Never mind what he does. If I call out to you, say you'll come. I'll give you money for it.'
Her voice was strange. Her fingers shook, yet gripped me hard. The thought of her giving me so much as a farthing was awful. I said,
'Where are your drops? Look, there's water here, you might take your drops and they will make you sleep.'
'Sleep?' she said. She laughed and caught her breath. 'Do you think I want to sleep, on my wedding- night?'
She pushed my hand away. I stood at her back and began to undress her. When I had taken her gown and her corset I turned and said, quietly,
'You had better use the pot. You had better wash your legs, before he comes.'
I think she shuddered. I did not watch her, but heard the splash of water. Then I combed her hair. There was no glass for her to stand at, and when she got into the bed she looked to her side and there was no table, no box, no portrait, no light— I saw her put out her hand as if blind.
Then the house-door closed, and she fell back and seized the blankets and pulled them high about her breast. Against the white of the pillow her face seemed dark; yet I knew that it was pale. We heard Gentleman and Mrs Cream, talking together in the room below. Their voices came clearly. There were gaps between the boards, and a faint light showed.
I looked at Maud. She met my gaze. Her eyes were black, but gleamed like glass.
'Will you look away, still?' she said, in a whisper, when she saw me turn my head.
Then I turned back. I could not help it, though her face was awful, it was terrible to 102
see. Gentleman talked on. Some breeze got into the room and made the candle- flame dip. I shivered. Still she held my gaze with hers. Then she spoke again.
'Come here,' she said.
I shook my head. She said it again. I shook my head again— but then went to her, anyway— went softly to her across the creaking boards, and she lifted her arms and drew my face to hers, and kissed me. She kissed me, with her sweet mouth, made salt with her tears; and I could not help but kiss her back— felt my heart, now like ice in my breast, and now like water, running, from the heat of her lips.
But then she did this. She kept her fingers upon my head and pushed my mouth too hard against hers; and she seized my hand
and took it, first to her bosom, then to where the blankets dipped, between her legs.
There she rubbed with my fingers until they burned.
The quick, sweet feeling her kiss had called up in me turned to something like horror, or fear. I pulled from her, and drew my hand away. 'Won't you do it?' she said softly, reaching after me. 'Didn't you do it before, for the sake of this night? Can't you leave me to him now, with your kisses on my mouth, your touch upon me, there, to help me bear his the better?— Don't go!' She seized me again. 'You went, before. You said I dreamed you. I'm not dreaming now. I wish I were! God knows, God knows, I wish I were dreaming, and might wake up and be at Briar again!'
Her fingers slipped from my arm and she fell back and sagged against her pillow; and I stood, clasping and unclasping my hands, afraid of her look, of her words, of her rising voice; afraid she might shriek, or swoon— afraid, God damn me! that she might cry out, loud enough for Gentleman or Mrs Cream to hear, that I had kissed her.
'Hush! Hush!' I said. 'You are married to him now. You must be different. You are a wife. You must— '
I fell silent. She lifted her head. Below, the light had been taken up and moved.
Gentleman's boots came loud again upon the narrow stairs. I heard him slow his step, then hesitate at the door. Perhaps he was wondering if he should knock, as he had used to knock at Briar. At last he slowly put his thumb to the latch, and came in.
'Are you ready?' he said.
He brought the chill of the night in with him. I did not say another word, to him or to her. I did not look at her face. I went to my own room and lay upon my bed. I lay, in the darkness, in my cloak and my gown, my head between the pillow and the mattress; and all I heard, each time I woke in the night, was the creeping, creeping of little creatures through the straw beneath my cheek.
In the morning, Gentleman came to my room. He came in his shirtsleeves.
'She wants you, to dress her,' he said.
He took his breakfast downstairs. Maud had been brought up a tray, with a plate upon it. The plate held eggs and a kidney; she had not touched them. She sat very still, in the arm-chair beside the window; and I saw at once how it would be with her, now.
Her face was smooth, but dark about the eyes. Her hands were bare. The yellow ring glittered. She looked at me, as she looked at everything— the plate of eggs, the view beyond the window, the gown I held up to place over her head— with a soft, odd, distant kind of gaze; and when I spoke to her, to ask her some trifling thing, she 103
list e n e d , a n d w a i t e d , t h e n a n s w e r e d a n d b l i n k e d , a s i f t h e q u e s t i o n , a n d t h e answer— even the movement of her own throat making the words— were all perfectly surprising and strange.
I dressed her, and she sat again beside the window. She kept her hands bent at the wrist, the fingers slightly lifted, as if even to let them rest against the soft stuff of her wide skirt might be to hurt them.
She held her head at a tilt. I thought she might be listening for the chiming of the house-bell at Briar. But she never mentioned her uncle, or her old life, at all.
I took her pot and emptied it, in the privy behind the house. At the foot of the stairs Mrs Cream came to me. She had a sheet over her arm. She said,
'Mr Rivers says the linen on the bed needs changing.'
She looked as if she would like to wink. I would not gaze at her long enough to let her.
I had forgotten about this part. I went slowly up the stairs and she came behind me, breathing harder than ever. She made Maud a kind of curtsey, then went to the bed and drew back the blankets. There were a few spots of dark blood there, that had been rolled upon and smeared. She stood and looked at them, and then she caught my eye— as much as to say, 'Well, I shouldn't have believed it. Quite a little love- match, after all!' Maud sat gazing out of the window. From the room downstairs came the squeak of Gentleman's knife on his plate. Mrs Cream raised the sheet, to see if the blood had marked the mattress underneath; it hadn't, and that pleased her.