'Yes, Uncle.'
Now and then I wonder how he supposes I spend my hours, when not engaged by him.
I think he is too used to the particular world of his books, where time passes strangely, or not at all, and imagines me an ageless child. Sometimes that is how I imagine myself— as if my short, tight gowns and velvet sashes keep me bound, like a Chinese slipper, to a form I should otherwise outleap. My uncle himself— who is at this time, I suppose, not quite above fifty— I have always considered to have been perfectly and permanently aged; as flies remain aged, yet fixed and unchanging, in cloudy chips of amber.
130
I leave him squinting at a page of text. I walk very quietly, in soft-soled shoes. I go to my rooms, where Agnes is.
I find her at work at a piece of sewing. She sees me come, and flinches. Do you know how provoking such a flinch will seem, to a temperament like mine? I stand and watch her sew. She feels my gaze, and begins to shake. Her stitches grow long and crooked. At last I take the needle from her hand and gently put the point of it against her flesh; then draw it off; then put it back; then do this, six or seven times more, until her knuckles are marked between the freckles with a rash of needle-pricks.
'There are to be gentlemen here tonight,' I say, as I do it. 'One a stranger. Do you suppose he will be young, and handsome?'
I say it— idly enough— as a way of teasing. It is nothing to me. But she hears me, and colours.
'I can't say, miss,' she answers, blinking and turning her head; not drawing her hand away, however. 'Perhaps.'
'You think so?'
'Who knows? He might be.'
I study her harder, struck with a new idea.
'Should you like it if he was?'
'Like it, miss?'
'Like it, Agnes. It seems to me now, that you would. Shall I tell him the way to your room? I shan't listen at the door. I shall turn the key, you will be quite private.'
'Oh, miss, what nonsense!'
'Is it? Here, turn your hand.' She does, and I jab the needle harder. 'Now, say you don't like it, having a prick upon your palm!'
She takes her hand away and sucks it, and begins to cry. The sight of her tears— and of her mouth, working on the bit of tender flesh that I have stabbed— first stirs, then troubles me; then makes me weary. I leave her weeping, and stand at my rattling window, my eyes upon the lawn that dips to the wall, the rushes, the Thames.
'Will you be quiet?' I say, when her breath still catches. 'Look at you! Tears, for a gentleman! Don't you know that he won't be handsome, or even young? Don't you know, they never are?'
But of course, he is both.
'Mr Richard Rivers,' my uncle says. The name seems auspicious to me. Later I will discover it to be false— as false as his rings, his smile, his manner; but now, as I stand in the drawing- room and he rises to make me his bow, why should I think to doubt him? He has fine features, even teeth, and is taller than my uncle by almost a foot. His hair is brushed and has oil upon it, but is long: a curl springs from its place and tumbles across his brow. He puts a hand to it, repeatedly. His hands are slender, smooth and— but for a single finger, stained yellow by smoke— quite white.
'Miss Lilly,' he says, as he bends towards me. The lock of hair falls forward, the stained hand lifts to brush it back. His voice is very low, I suppose for my uncle's sake.
He must have been cautioned in advance, by Mr Hawtrey.
Mr Hawtrey is a London bookseller and publisher, and has been
many times to Briar. He takes my hand and kisses it. Behind him comes Mr Huss. He 131
is a gentleman collector, a friend from my uncle's youth. He also takes my hand, but takes it to draw me closer to him, then kisses my cheek. 'Dear child,' he says.
I have been several times surprised by Mr Huss upon the stairs. He likes to stand and watch me climb them.
'How do you do, Mr Huss?' I say now, making him a curtsey.
But it is Mr Rivers I watch. And once or twice, when I turn my face his way, I find his own eyes fixed on me, his gaze a thoughtful one. He is weighing me up. Perhaps he has not supposed I would be so handsome. Perhaps I am not so handsome as rumour has had him think. I cannot tell. But, when the dinner-bell sounds and I move to my uncle's side to be walked to the table, I see him hesitate; then he chooses the place next to mine. I wish he had not. I think he will continue to watch me, and I don't like to be watched, while eating. Mr Way and Charles move softly about us, filling our glasses— mine, that crystal cup, cut with an M. The food is set upon our plates, then the servants leave: they never stay when we have company, but return between courses. At Briar we eat, as we do everything, by the chiming of the clock. A supper of gentlemen lasts one hour and a half.
We are served hare soup, this night; then goose, crisp at the skin, pink at the bones, and with its innards devilled and passed about the table. Mr Hawtrey takes a dainty kidney, Mr Rivers has the heart. I shake my head at the plate he offers.
'I'm afraid you're not hungry,' he says quietly, watching my face.
'Don't you care for goose, Miss Lilly?' asks Mr Hawtrey. 'Nor does my eldest daughter.
She thinks of goslings, and grows tearful.'
'I hope you catch her tears and keep them,' says Mr Huss. 'I often think I should like to see the tears of a girl made into an ink.'
A n i n k ? D o n ' t m e n t i o n i t t o m y d a u g h t e r s , I b e g y o u . T h a t I m u s t h e a r t h e i r complaints, is one thing. Should they once catch the idea of impressing them also upon paper, and making me read them, I assure you, my life would not be worth the living.'
'Tears, for ink?' says my uncle, a beat behind the others. 'What rubbish is this?'
'Girls' tears,' says Mr Huss.
'Quite colourless.'
'I think not. Truly, sir, I think not. I fancy them delicately tinged— perhaps pink, perhaps violet.'
'Perhaps,' says Mr Hawtrey, 'as depending on the emotion that has provoked them?'
'Exactly. You have hit it, Hawtrey, there. Violet tears, for a melancholy book; pink, for a gay. It might be sewn up, too, with hair from a girl's head ..." He glances at me and his look changes. He puts his napkin to his mouth.
'Now,' says Mr Hawtrey, 'I really wonder that that has never been attempted. Mr Lilly?
One hears barbarous stories of course, of hides and bindings
They discuss this for a time. Mr Rivers listens but says nothing. Of course, his attention is all with me. Perhaps he will speak, I think, under cover of their talk. I hope he will. I hope he won't. I sip my wine and am suddenly weary. I have sat at suppers like this, hearing my uncle's friends chase tedious points in small, tight circles, too many times. Unexpectedly, I think of Agnes. I think of Agnes's mouth teasing a 132
bead of blood from her pricked palm. My uncle clears his throat, and I blink.
'So, Rivers,' he says, 'Hawtrey tells me he has you translating, French matter into English. Poor stuff, I suppose, if his press is involved in it.'
'Poor stuff indeed,' answers Mr Rivers; 'or I should not attempt it. It is hardly my line.
One learns, in Paris, the necessary terms; but it was as a student of the fine arts that I was lately there. I hope to find a better application for my talents, sir, than the conjuring of bad English from worse French.'
'Well, well. We shall see.' My uncle smiles. 'You would like to view my pictures.'