That is all I say. It is enough, I suppose. He holds my gaze, nods, does not smile— I think he knows I should not like to see him smile, at such a moment. He looses his grip about my fingers and then he stands, straightening his coat. That breaks the spell of our conspiracy: now he is large, dark, out of place. I hope he will leave. Again I shiver and, seeing that, he says, 'I'm afraid I've kept you very late. You must be cold, and tired.'
He watches. Perhaps he is gauging my strength and beginning to grow doubtful. I shiver harder. He says, 'You won't be troubled— too troubled— by all I've said?'
I shake my head. But I am afraid to rise from the sofa, in case I tremble upon my legs and seem to him weak. I say, 'Will you go?'
'You are sure?'
'Quite sure. I shall do better if you leave me.'
'Of course.'
He would like to say more. I turn my face and will not let him, and in time hear his careful tread upon the carpet, the gentle opening and closing of the door. I sit a 146
moment, then lift my feet, tuck the skirts of my cloak about my legs, raise my hood, lie with my head upon the hard and dusty sofa cushion.
This is not my bed, and the hour for bed has sounded and passed, and there are none of the things— my mother's portrait, my box, my maid— about me, that I like to have close while I lie sleeping. But tonight, all things are out of their order, all my patterns have been disturbed. My liberty beckons: gaugeless, fearful, inevitable as death.
I sleep, and dream I am moving, swiftly, in a high-prowed boat, upon a dark and silent water.
C h a p t e r Nine
I suppose that even then— or rather, especially then, when our compact is so new, so unproved, its threads still slender and weak— I suppose that even then I might draw back, unloose myself from the tugging of his ambition. I believe I wake thinking I will; for the room— the room in which, in whispers, at the hush of midnight, he took my hand, unfolded his dangerous plan, like a man putting back the rustling wrappers about a poison— the room reassembles itself in the chill half- hour of dawn into all its rigid familiar lines. I lie and watch it. I know every curve and angle. I know them, too well. I remember weeping, as a girl of eleven, at the strangeness of Briar— at the silence, the stillness, the turning passages and cluttered walls. I supposed then that those things would be strange to me for ever, I felt their strangeness make me strange— make me a thing of points and hooks, a burr, a splinter in the gullet of the house. But Briar crept on me. Briar absorbed me. Now I feel the simple weight of the woollen cloak with which I have covered
myself and think, / shall never escape! I am not meant to escape! Briar will never let me!
But, I am wrong. Richard Rivers has come into Briar like a spore of yeast into dough, changing it utterly. When I go, at eight o'clock, to the library, I am sent away: he is there with my uncle, looking over the prints. They pass three hours together. And when, in the afternoon, I am summoned downstairs to make my farewells to the gentlemen, it is only Mr Hawtrey and Mr Huss that I must give my hand to. I find them in the hall, fastening their greatcoats, drawing on their gloves, while my uncle leans upon his cane and Richard stands, a little way off, his hands in his pockets, looking on. He sees me first. He meets my gaze, but makes no gesture. Then the others hear my step and lift their heads to watch me. Mr Hawtrey smiles.
'Here comes fair Galatea,' he says.
Mr Huss has put on his hat. Now he takes it off. 'The nymph,' he asks, his eyes on my face, 'or the statue?'
'Well, both,' Mr Hawtrey says; 'but I meant the statue. Miss Lilly shows as pale, don't you think?' He takes my hand. 'How my daughters would envy you! They eat clay, 147
you know, to whiten their complexions? Pure clay' He shakes his head. 'I do think the fashion for pallor a most unhealthy one. As for you, Miss Lilly, I am struck again— as I always am, when I must leave you!— by the unfairness of your uncle keeping you here in such a miserable, mushroom- like way.'
'I am quite used to it,' I say quietly. 'Besides, I think the gloom makes me show paler than I am. Does Mr Rivers not go with you?'
'The gloom is the culprit. Really, Mr Lilly, I can barely make out the buttons on my coat. Do you mean never to join civilised society, and bring gas to Briar?'
'Not while I keep books,' says my uncle.
'Say never, then. Rivers, gas poisons books. Did you know?'
'I did not,' says Richard. Then he turns to me, and adds, in a lower voice: 'No, Miss Lilly, I am not to go up to London just yet. Your uncle has been kind enough to offer me a little work among his prints. We share a passion, it seems, for Morland.'
His eye is dark— if a blue eye can be dark. Mr Hawtrey says,
'Now Mr Lilly, how's this for an idea: What say, while the mounting of the prints is in progress, you let your niece make a visit to Holywell Street? Shouldn't you like a holiday, Miss Lilly, in London? There, I see by your look that you should.'
'She should not,' says my uncle.
Mr Huss draws close. His coat is thick and he is sweating. He takes the tips of my fingers. 'Miss Lilly,' he says. 'If I might ever— '
'Come come,' says my uncle. 'Now you grow tedious. Here's my coachman, look.
Maud, do you step back from the door ..."
'Fools,' he says, when the gentlemen have gone. 'Eh, Rivers? But come, I'm impatient to begin. You have your tools?'
'I can fetch them, sir, in a moment.'
He bows, and goes. My uncle makes to follow. Then he turns, to look at me. He looks, in a considering sort of way, then beckons me closer. 'Give me your hand, Maud,' he says. I think he means to have me support him on the stairs. But when I offer him my arm he takes it, holds it, raises my wrist to his face, draws back the sleeve and squints at the strip of skin exposed. He peers at my cheek. 'Pale, do they say? Pale as mushroom? Hmm?' He works his mouth. 'You know what kind of matter mushrooms spring from?
Ho!' He laughs. 'Not pale, now!'
I have coloured and drawn away. Still laughing, he lets fall my hand, turns from me, begins to mount the stairs alone. He wears a pair of soft list slippers, that show his stockinged heels; and I watch him climb, imagining my spite a whip, a stick, with which I could lash at his feet and make him stumble.
I am standing, thinking this, hearing his step fade, when Richard returns to the gallery from the floors above. He does not look for me, does not know that I am there, still there, in the shadow of the fastened front door. He only walks; but he walks briskly, his fingers drumming the gallery rail. I think perhaps he even whistles, or hums. We are not used to such sounds at Briar, and with my passion raised and set smarting by my uncle's words they strike me now as thrilling, perilous, like a shifting of timbers and beams. I think the dust must be rising in a cloud from the antique carpets beneath his
148
shoes; and when I raise my eyes to follow his tread I am sure I can see fine crumbs of paint flake and tumble from the ceiling. The
sight makes me giddy. I imagine the house walls cracking__
gaping— collapsing in the concussion of his presence. I am only afraid they will do so before I have had my chance to escape.
But I am afraid, too, of escaping. I think he knows it. He cannot speak privately with me, once Mr Huss and Mr Hawtrey have gone; and he does not dare to steal his way, a second time, to my own rooms. But he knows he must secure me to his plan. He waits, and watches. He takes his supper with us, still; but sits at my uncle's side, not mine.
One night, however, he breaks their conversation to say this:
'It troubles me, Miss Lilly, to think of how bored you must be, now I have come and taken your uncle's attention from his Index. I imagine you are longing to return to your work among the books.'
'The books?' I say. Then, letting my gaze fall to my plate of broken meat: 'Very much, of course.'
'Then I wish I might do something, to make the burden of your days a little lighter.
Have you no work— no painting or sketching, material of that sort— that I might mount for you, in my own time? I think you must. For I see you have many handsome prospects, from the windows of the house.'
He raises a brow, as a conductor of music might raise a baton. Of course, I am nothing if not obedient. I say, 'I cannot paint, or draw. I have never been taught it.'
'What, never?— Forgive me, Mr Lilly. Your niece strikes one as being so competent a mistress of the general run of the female arts, I should have said— But, you know, we might remedy this, with very little trouble. Miss Lilly could take lessons from me, sir.
Might I not teach her, in my afternoons? I have a little experience in the field: I taught drawing for all of one season at Paris, to the daughters of a Comte.'
My uncle screws up his eyes. 'Drawing?' he says. 'What would my niece want with that? Do you mean to assist us, Maud, in the making up of the albums?'