'Don't laugh.'
'Laugh? You might be glad I don't do worse. You'll know— you'll know, if anyone will!— the sports to which gentlemen's appetites are said to be pricked, by matters like this. Thank heavens I'm not a gentleman so much as a rogue: we go by different codes.
You may love and be damned, for all I care.— Don't wriggle, Maud!' I have tried to twist from his hands. He holds me tighter, then lets me lean from him a little, but grips my waist. 'You may love and be damned,' he says again. 'But keep me from my money— keep us languishing here: put back our plot, our hopes, your own bright future— you shall not, no. Not now I know what trifling thing you have made us stay for. Now, let her wake up.— I promise you, it is as tiresome to me as to you, when you twist so!— Let her wake up
and seek us out. Let her see us like this. You won't come to me? Very good. I shall hold you here, and let her suppose us lovers at last; and so have done with it. Stand steady, now.'
He leans from me and gives a wordless shout. The sound beats against the thick air and makes it billow, then fades to a silence.
'That will bring her,' he says.
I move my arms. 'You are hurting me.'
'Stand like a lover then, and I shall grow gentle as anything.' He smiles again.
'Suppose me her.— Ah!' Now I have tried to strike him. 'Do you mean to make me bruise you?'
He holds me harder, keeping his hands upon me but pinning down my arms with his 175
own. He is tall, he is strong. His fingers meet about my waist— as young men's fingers are meant to do, I believe, on the waists of their sweethearts. For a time I strain against the pressure: we stand braced and sweating as a pair of wrestlers in a ring. But I suppose that, from a distance, we might seem swaying in a kind of love.
But I think this dully; and soon I feel myself begin to tire. The sun is still hot upon us.
The frogs still chant, the water still laps among the reeds. But the day has been punctured or ripped: I can feel it begin to droop and settle, close about me, in suffocating folds.
'I am sorry,' I say weakly.
'You needn't be sorry, now.'
'It is only— '
'You must be strong. I have seen you be strong, before.'
'It is only— '
But, only what? How might I say it? Only that she held my head against her breast, when I woke bewildered. That she warmed my foot with her breath, once. That she ground my pointed tooth with a silver thimble. That she brought me soup— clear soup— instead of an egg, and smiled to see me drink it. That her eye has a darker fleck of brown. That she thinks me good . . .
Richard is watching my face. 'Listen to me, Maud,' he says now. He pulls me tight. I am sagging in his arms. 'Listen! If it were any girl but her. If it were Agnes! Hey? But this is the girl that must be cheated, and robbed of her liberty, for us to be free. This is the girl
the doctors will take, while we look on without a murmur. You remember our plan?' I nod. 'But— ' 'What?'
'I begin to fear that, after all, I haven't the heart for it..." 'You've a heart, instead, for little fingersmiths? Oh, Maud.' Now his voice is rich with scorn. 'Have you forgotten what she has come to you for? Do you think she has forgotten? Do you suppose yourself anything to her, but that? You have been too long among your uncle's books.
Girls love easily, there. That is the point of them. If they loved so in life, the books would not have to be written.'
He looks me over. 'She would laugh in your face, if she knew.' His tone grows sly.
'She would laugh in mine, were I to tell her ..." 'You shall not tell her!' I say, lifting my head and stiffening. The thought is awful to me. 'Tell her once, and I keep at Briar for good. My uncle shall know how you've used me— I shan't care how he treats me for it.'
'I shall not tell her,' he answers slowly, 'if you will only do as you must, with no further delay. I shall not tell her, if you will let her think you love me and have agreed to be my wife; and so make good our escape, as you promised.'
I turn my face from his. Again there is a silence. Then I murmur— what else should I murmur?— 'I will.' He nods, and sighs. He still holds me tightly, and after another moment he puts his mouth against my ear.
'Here she comes!' he whispers. 'She is creeping about the wall. She means to watch and not disturb us. Now, let her know I have you . . .'
He kisses my head. The bulk and heat and pressure of him, the warmth and thickness 176
of the day, my own confusion, make me stand and let him, limply. He takes one hand from about my waist and lifts my arm. He kisses the cloth of my sleeve. When I feel his mouth upon my wrist, I flinch. 'Now, now,' he says. 'Be good, for a moment.
Excuse my whiskers. Imagine my mouth hers.' The words come wetly upon my flesh.
He pushes my glove a little way along my hand, he parts his lips, he touches my palm with the point of his
ngue; and I shudder, with weakness, with fear and distaste— with rl'smay, to know Sue stands and watches, in satisfaction, thinking me his.
For he has shown me to myself. He leads me to her, we walk to the house, she takes my cloak, takes my shoes; her cheek is pink, after all- she stands frowning at the glass, moves a hand, lightly, across her face . . • That is all she does; but I see it, and my heart gives a plunge— that caving, or dropping, that has so much panic in it, so much darkness, I supposed it fear, or madness. I watch her turn and stretch, walk her random way about the room— see her make all the careless unstudied gestures I have marked so covetously, so long. Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.
I think she must see it. Now he has named it, I think it must colour or mark me— I think it must mark me crimson, like paint marks the hot red points, the lips and gashes and bare whipped limbs, of my uncle's pictures. I am afraid, that night, to undress before her. I am afraid to lie at her side. I am afraid to sleep. I am afraid I will dream of her. I am afraid that, in dreaming, I will turn and touch her ...
But after all, if she senses the change in me, she thinks I am changed because of Richard. If she feels me tremble, if she feels my heart beat hard, she thinks I tremble for him. She is waiting, still waiting. Next day I take her walking to my mother's grave. I sit and gaze at the stone, that I have kept so neat and free from blemish. I should like to smash it with a hammer. I wish— as I have wished many times— that my mother were alive, so that I might kill her again. I say to Sue: 'Do you know, how it was she died? It was my birth that did it!'— and it is an effort, to keep the note of triumph from my voice.
She does not catch it. She watches me, and I begin to weep; and where she might say anything to comfort me— anything at all— what she says is: 'Mr Rivers.'
I l o o k f r o m h e r i n c o n t e m p t , t h e n . S h e c o m e s a n d l e a d s m e t o t h e c h a p e l door— perhaps, to turn my thoughts to marriage. The door is locked and can't be passed. She waits for me to speak. At last I tell her, dutifully: 'Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.'
She says she is glad. And, when I weep again— false tears, this time, that wash away the true ones— and when I choke and wring my hands and cry out, 'Oh! What shall I do?', she touches me and holds my gaze, and says: 'He loves you.'
'You think he does?'
She says she knows it. She does not flinch. She says, 'You must follow your heart.'
'I am not sure,' I say. 'If I might only be sure!'
'But to love,' she says, 'and then to lose him!'
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I grow too conscious of the closeness of her gaze, and look away. She talks to me of beating blood, of thrilling voices, of dreams. I feel his kiss, like a burn upon my palm; and all at once she sees, not that I love him, but how much I have come to fear and hate him.
She grows white. 'What will you do?' she says, in a whisper.
'What can I do?' I say. 'What choice have I?'
She does not answer. She only turns from me, to gaze for a moment at the barred chapel door. I look at the pale of her cheek, at her jaw, at the mark of the needle in the lobe of her ear. When she turns back, her face has changed.
'Marry him,' she tells me. 'He loves you. Marry him, and do everything he says.'