第三章_荆棘之城

Servants. She said I should take my breakfast in Mrs Stiles's pantry. Then she turned and left me -- getting a quick look, I thought, at my frock and my shoes and my open trunk, on the way.

From the next-door room there came the murmur of voices. I heard Margaret saying, "Yes, miss." Then there was the shutting of a door. Then there was silence. I went down to my breakfast -- first losing my way among the dark passages at the bottom of the servants' stairs, and finding myself in the yard with the privy in it. The privy, I saw now, was surrounded by nettles, and the bricks in the yard broken up with weeds. The walls of the house had ivy on them, and some of the windows wanted panes. Gentleman was right, after all, about the place being hardly worth cracking. He was right, too, about the servants. When I found Mrs Stiles's pantry at last there was a man there, dressed in breeches and silk stockings, and with a wig on his head with powder on it. That was Mr Way. He had been steward to Mr Lilly for forty-five years, he said; and he looked it. When a girl brought the breakfasts, he was served first. We had gammon and an egg, and a cup of beer. They had beer with all their meals there, there was a whole room where it was brewed. And they say Londoners can lush!

I waited for the fire to take, then rose and dressed. It was too cold to wash. My gown felt clammy. When I drew the window-curtain back and let the daylight in, I saw -- what I had not been able to see the night before, by the candle -- that the ceiling was streaked brown with damp, and the wood at the walls stained white.

I had used to wash the chamber-pots, at home. Now, seeing Margaret tip my piddle into her bucket, I was not sure I liked it. But I said, Thank you, Margaret" -- then wished I hadn't; for she heard it and tossed her head, as if to say, Who did I think I was, thanking her?

I didn't know what to say to that. She went on, anyway: "Miss Maud rises early. She has asked that you be sent to her. Should you like to wash your hands before you go up? Miss Maud is like her uncle, and Particular."

My hands seemed clean enough to me; but I washed them anyway, in a little stone sink she had there in the corner of her pantry.

He went off at seven. Mrs Stiles would not leave the table before he got up. When she did she said, "You will be glad to hear, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud slept well."

Mr Way said hardly a word to me, but spoke to Mrs Stiles about the running of the house. He asked only after the family I was supposed to have just left; and when I told him, the Dunravens, of Whelk Street, Mayfair, he nodded and looked clever, saying he thought he knew their man. Which goes to show you what a humbug he was.

I felt the beer I had drunk, and wished I had not drunk it. I wished I had used the privy when I came across it in the yard. I was certain I should never find my way to it again.

She took me up. We went, as before, by the servant's stairs, but then struck out into a handsomer passage, that led to one or two doors. At one of these she knocked. I didn't catch the answer that came, but suppose she heard it. She straightened her back and turned the iron handle, and led me in.

The room was a dark one, like all the rooms there. Its walls were panelled all over in an old black wood, and its floor -- which was bare, but for a couple of trifling Turkey carpets, that were here and there worn to the weave -- was also black. There were some great heavy tables about, and one or two hard sofas. There was a painting of a brown hill, and a vase full of dried leaves, and a dead snake in a glass case with a white egg in its mouth. The windows showed the grey sky and bare wet branches. The window-panes were small, and leaded, and rattled in their frames.

There was a little spluttering fire in a vast old grate, and before this -- standing gazing into the weak flames and the smoke, but turning as she heard my step, and starting, and blinking -- there was Miss Maud Lilly, the mistress of the house, that all our plot was built on.

I was nervous.

I had expected her, from all that Gentleman had said, to be quite out of the way handsome. But she was not that -- at least, I did not think her so as I studied her then, I thought her looks rather commonplace. She was taller than me by an inch or two -- which is to say, of an ordinary height, since I am considered short; and her hair was fairer than mine -- but not very fair -- and her eyes, which were brown, were lighter. Her lip and her cheek were very plump and smooth -- she did lick me there, I will admit, for I liked to bite my own lip, and my cheeks had freckles, and my features as a rule were said to be sharp. I was also thought young-looking; but as to that -- well, I should have liked the people who thought it to have studied Maud Lilly as she stood before me now. For if I was young, then she was an infant, she was a chick, she was a pigeon that knew nothing. She saw me come, and started, as I have said; and she took a step or two to meet me, and her pale cheek fired up crimson. Then she stopped, and put her hands before her, neatly, at her skirt. The skirt -- I had never seen such a thing before, on a girl her age -- the skirt was full and short and showed her ankles; and about her waist -- that was astonishingly narrow -- there was a sash. Her hair was caught in a net of velvet. On her feet were slippers, of red prunella. Her hands had clean white gloves upon them, buttoned up tight at the wrist. She said, "Miss Smith. You are Miss Smith, I think? And you have come to be my maid, from London! And may I call you Susan? I hope you shall like it at Briar, Susan; and I hope you shall like me. There is not much to like, in either case. I think you might do it very easily -- very easily, indeed."

She looked at Mrs Stiles, who had kept behind me at the door.

"You need not stay, Mrs Stiles," she said nicely. "But you will have been kind to Miss Smith, I know." She caught my eye. "You've heard, perhaps, that I am an orphan, Susan, like you. I came to Briar as a child: very young, and with no-one at all to care for me. I cannot tell you all the ways in which Mrs Stiles has made me know what a mother's love is, since that time."

She smiled and tilted her head. Mrs Stiles would not catch her gaze, but a bit of colour struggled into her cheeks, and her eye-lids fluttered. I should never have put her down as the motherly sort, myself; but servants grow sentimental over the swells they work for, like dogs grow fond of bullies. You take my word for it.

She spoke in a soft, sweet, halting voice, tilting her head, hardly looking at me, still quite crimson at the cheek. I said, "I am sure I shall like you, miss." Then I remembered all my work at Lant Street, and gripped my skirt and made a curtsey. And when I rose from it she smiled, and came and took my hand in hers.

Anyway, she blinked and looked modest another minute; and then she left us. Maud smiled again, and led me to one of the hard-backed sofas, that was close to the fire. She sat beside me. She asked after my journey -- "We supposed you lost!" she said -- and after my room. Did I like my bed? Did I like my breakfast?

"And have you really," she said, "come from London?" That was all that anyone had been asking, since I left Lant Street -- as if I might have come from anywhere else! But then again, I thought she asked it in a different sort of way: not in a gaping country way, but in a noticing, hungryish manner -- as if London was something to her, and she longed to hear of it.

Next she told me all the duties I should have to do, while I was her maid: the chief of these being, as I also knew, to sit with her and keep her company, and walk with her about the park, and tidy her gowns. She lowered her eyes.

Of course, I thought I knew why that was.

"You'll see we are rather out of the way of fashion, here at Briar," she said. "It matters little, I suppose, since we have so few callers. My uncle only likes to see me neat. But you, of course, will be used to the great styles of London."

I said, "Lady Alice always said so, miss."

"And your last mistress," she went on then, "she was quite a fine lady? She would laugh to look at me, I expect!"

But what I said was, that Lady Alice -- who was the mistress that Gentleman had faked up for me -- was too kind to laugh at anyone, and would anyway know that grand clothes meant nothing, since it was the person inside the clothes that ought to be judged. All in all, I thought, it was a pretty clever thing to say; and she seemed to think so too, for when I had said it she looked at me in a new way and her colour went down, and she took my hand again, saying, "You are a good girl, Susan, I think."

Then I remembered the character that Gentleman had written for me, and thought this might be the moment to present it. I took it from my pocket and handed it over. She rose and broke the wax, then walked to the window to hold the paper to the light. She stood a long time looking at the curling hand, and once sneaked a glance at me; and my heart beat a little fast then, to think she might have noticed something queer there. But it was not that: for I saw at last that her hand, which held the paper, trembled; and I guessed that she had no more idea what a proper character was like than I did, and was only figuring out what she should say.

I thought of Dainty's hair, John's dog-skin coat. "Pretty used," I said.

She coloured still harder as she said that, and again looked from me; and again I thought, "You pigeon!"

"Pretty sorry, miss," I said. "But then, you see, Lady Alice has gone to India. I think I should have found the sun there rather fierce."

I thought it almost a shame, guessing that, that she had no mother.

She said, "You know my uncle is a scholar, Susan?"

She smiled. "Will you prefer the grey skies of Briar? You know, the sun never shines here. My uncle has forbidden it. Strong light, you see, fades print."

I said, "I heard it, miss."

"Well," she said, folding the paper very small and putting it inside her own pocket, "Lady Alice does indeed speak highly of you. I think you must have been sorry to leave her house."

She laughed and showed her teeth, which were small and very white. I smiled, but kept my lips shut -- for my own teeth, that are yellow now, were I am afraid to say quite yellow even then; and seeing hers made me fancy them yellower.

"He keeps a great library. The largest library, of its kind, in all of England. I dare say you will see it soon."

"That will be something, miss, I'm sure."

She smiled again. "You like to read, of course?"

She stared.

I swallowed. "To read, miss?" She nodded, waiting. "Pretty much," I said at last. That is, I am sure I should, if I was ever much in the way of books and papers. By which I mean" -- I coughed -- "if I was to be shown."

"To learn, I mean," I said.

I held the book, saying nothing; but beginning to sweat. I opened it and looked at a page. It was full of a close black print. I tried another. That one was worse. I felt Maud's gaze, like a flame against my hot face. I felt the silence. My face grew hotter. Take a chance, I thought.

She stared, even harder; and then she gave a short, disbelieving sort of laugh. "You are joking," she said. "You don't mean, you cannot read? Not really? Not a word, not a letter?" Her smile became a frown. There was, beside her, a little table with a book upon it. Still half smiling, half frowning, she took the book up and handed it to me. "Go on," she said kindly. "I think you are being modest. Read me any part, I shan't mind if you stumble."

"Our Father," I tried, " which art in heaven --"

"Be taught?" she said, coming close and gently taking back the book. "Oh, no! No, no, I shouldn't allow it. Not read! Ah, Susan, were you to live in this house, as the niece of my uncle, you should know what that meant. You should know, indeed!"

But she was shaking her head, and the look on her face was something.

But then, I forgot the rest. I closed the book, and bit my lip, and looked at the floor. I thought, very bitterly, "Well, here will all our scheming end. She won't want a maid that can't read her a book, or write fancy letters in a curling hand!" I lifted my eyes to hers and said, "I might be taught it, miss. I am that willing. I'm sure I could learn, in half a wink --"

She smiled. And while she still held my gaze, still smiling, there came the slow and heavy tolling of the great house-bell, eight times; and then her smile fell.

"Now," she said, turning away, "I must go to Mr Lilly; and when the clock strikes one I shall be free again."

She said that -- sounding, I thought, just like a girl in a story. Aren't there stories, with girls with magic uncles -- wizards, beasts, and whatnots? She said, "Come to me, Susan, at my uncle's chamber, at one."

"Shall I go, miss?" I said.

She was looking about her, now, in a distracted kind of way. There was a glass above the fire and she went to it, and put her gloved hands to her face, and then to her collar. I watched her lean. Her short gown lifted at the back and showed her calves.

She caught my eye in the glass. I made another curtsey.

She stepped back. "Stay," she said, waving her hand, "and put my rooms in order, will you?"

"I will, miss," I said.

She went to the door. At the handle, however, she stopped. She said, "I hope you will be happy here, Susan." Now she was blushing again. My own cheek cooled, when I saw that. "I hope your aunt, in London, will not miss you too greatly. It was an aunt, I think, that Mr Rivers mentioned?"

She lowered her eyes. "I hope you found Mr Rivers quite well, when you saw him?"

She let the question fall, like it was nothing to her; and I knew confidence men who did the same, dropping one good shilling among a pile of snide, to make all the coins seem honest. As if she gave a fig, for me and my old aunty!

Then, from somewhere in the house there came the quick, peevish tinkling of a little hand-bell, and, "There's Uncle!" she cried, gazing over her shoulder. She turned and ran, leaving the door half-closed. I heard the slap of her slippers and the creaking of the stairs as she went down.

She put her brow against the wood. "I think he is kind," she said softly. I remembered him squatting at the side of that kitchen chair, his hand reaching high beneath the layers of petticoat, saying, You sweet bitch.

I said, "He was very well, miss. And sent his compliments."

"I'm sure he's very kind, miss," I said.

I waited a second, then stepped to the door, put my foot to it, and kicked it shut. I went to the fire and warmed my hands. I do not think I had been quite warm since leaving Lant Street. I lifted my head and, seeing the glass that Maud had looked in, rose and gazed at my own face -- at my freckled cheek and my teeth. I showed myself my tongue. Then I rubbed my hands and chuckled: for she was just as Gentleman had promised, and clearly tit over heels in love with him already; and that three thousand pounds might as well have been counted and wrapped and had my name put on it, and the doctor be standing ready with a strait-coat at the madhouse door.

She had opened the door now, and half-hid herself behind it. "Did he truly?" she said.

"Truly, miss."

I wished hard to hear an infant cry, or Mr Ibbs's sister. I would have given five pounds for a parcel of poke or a few bad coins to tarnish.

But I thought it in a discontented sort of way; and the chuckle, I have to admit, was rather forced. I could not have said quite why, though. I supposed it was the gloom -- for the house seemed darker and stiller than ever, now that she had gone. There was only the dropping of ash in the grate, the bumping and rattling of panes of glass. I went to the window. The draught was awful. There had been little red sand-bags laid upon the sills to keep it out, but they didn't work; and they had all got wet, and were mouldy. I put my hand to one, and my finger came away green. I stood and shivered, and looked at the view -- if you could call it a view, that was just plain grass and trees. A few black birds pulled worms from the lawn. I wondered which way London was.

Then I thought of something else. Put my rooms in order, Maud had said; and here was only one room, that I supposed must be her parlour; so somewhere else must be another, where she slept in her bed. Now, the walls in that house were all of dark oak panelling, very gloomy on the eye and very baffling, for the doors were set so pat in their frames, you could not spot them. But I looked hard and, in the wall across from where I stood, I saw a crack, and then a handle; and then the shape of the door sprung at me, plain as daylight.

That's what I thought, after seeing her then.

It was the door to her bedroom, just as I had supposed; and of course, this room had another door in it, that was the door to my own room, where I had stood the night before and listened for her breaths. That seemed a very foolish thing to have done, now that I saw what was on the other side of it. For it was only an ordinary lady's room -- not very grand, but grand enough, with a faint, sweet smell to it, and a high four-posted bed with curtains and a canopy of old moreen. I was not sure that sleeping in a bed like that wouldn't make me sneeze: I thought of all the dust and dead flies and spiders that must be gathered in the canopy, that looked as though it hadn't been taken down in ninety years. The bed had been made, but a night-dress lay upon it -- I folded this up and put it beneath the pillow; and there were one or two fair hairs there that I caught up and took to the grate. So much for maiding. Upon the chimney-breast there was a great aged looking-glass, shot through like marble, with silver and grey. Beyond it was a small old-fashioned press, that was carved all over with flowers and grapes, quite black with polish, and here and there split. I should say that ladies wore nothing but leaves in the day it was built, for it had six or seven slight gowns laid carelessly in it now, that made the shelves groan, and a crinoline cage, against which the doors could not be fastened. Seeing that, I thought again what a shame it was that Maud had no mother: for she would certainly have got rid of ancient stuff like this and found her daughter something more up to the minute and dainty.

But one thing a business like ours at Lant Street teaches you is, the proper handling of quality goods. I got hold of the gowns -- they were all as odd and short and girlish as each other -- and shook them out, then laid them nicely back on their shelf. Then I wedged a shoe against the crinoline to hold it flat; after that, the doors closed as they were meant to. This press was in one alcove. In another was a dressing-table. That was strewn about with brushes and bottles and pins -- I tidied those, too -- and fitted beneath with a set of fancy drawers. I opened them up. They held -- well, here was a thing. They all held gloves. More gloves than a milliner's. White ones, in the top drawer; black silk ones in the middle; and buff mittens in the lowest.

They were each of them marked on the inside at the wrist with a crimson thread that I guessed spelled out Maud's name. I should have liked to have a go at that, with scissors and a pin.

I did no such thing, of course, but left the gloves all lying neatly, and I went about the room again until I had touched and studied it all. There was not much more to look at; but there was one more curious thing, and that was a little wooden box, inlaid with ivory, that sat upon a table beside her bed.

The box was locked, and when I took it up it gave a dull sort of rattle. There was no key handy: I guessed she kept it somewhere about her, perhaps on a string. The lock was a simple one, however, and with locks like that, you only have to show them the wire and they open themselves, it's like giving brine to an oyster. I used one of her hairpins.

The wood turned out to be lined with plush. The hinge was of silver, and oiled not to squeak. I am not sure what I thought to find in there -- perhaps, something from Gentleman, some keepsake, some letter, some little bill-andcoo. But what there was, was a miniature portrait, in a frame of gold hung on a faded ribbon, of a handsome, fair-haired lady. Her eyes were kind. She was dressed in a style from twenty years before, and the frame was an old one: she did not look much like Maud, but I thought it a pretty safe bet that she was her mother. -- Though I also thought that, if she was, then it was queer that Maud kept her picture locked up in a box, and did not wear it.

There was nothing to do, after I had done that. I stood some more at the window. At eleven o'clock a maid brought up a tray. "Miss Maud isn't here," I said, when I saw the silver tea-pot; but the tea was for me. I drank it in fairysips, to make it last the longer. Then I took the tray back down, thinking to save the maid another journey. When they saw me carrying it into the kitchen, however, the girls there stared and the cook said, "Well, I never! If you think Margaret ain't quick enough coming, you must speak to Mrs Stiles. But I'm sure, Miss Fee never called anyone idle."

I puzzled so long over this, turning the picture, looking for marks, that the frame -- which had been cold when I took it up, like everything there -- grew warm. But then there came a sound, from somewhere in the house, and I thought how it would be, if Maud -- or Margaret, or Mrs Stiles -- should come to the room and catch me standing by the open box, the portrait in my hand. I quickly laid it back in its place, and made it fast again.

The hairpin I had bent to make a pick-lock with, I kept. I shouldn't have liked Maud to have found it and thought me a thief.

Miss Fee was the Irish maid who had got sick with the scarlatina. It seemed very cruel to be supposed prouder than her, when I was only trying to be kind. But I said nothing. I thought, "Miss Maud likes me, if you don't!"

At least at Briar you always knew what hour it was. The twelve struck, and then the half, and I made my way to the back-stairs and hung about there until one of the parlourmaids went by, and she showed me the way to the library. It was a room on the first floor, that you reached from a gallery overlooking a great wood staircase and a hall; but it was all dark and dim and shabby, as it was everywhere in that house -- you would never have thought, looking about you there, that you were right in the home of a tremendous scholar. By the door to the library, on a wooden shield, hung some creature's head with one glass eye: I stood and put my fingers to its little white teeth, waiting to hear the clock sound one. Through the door came Maud's voice -- very faint, but slow and level, as though she might be reading to her uncle from a book.

For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for the time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.

Then the hour sounded, and I lifted my hand and knocked. A man's thin voice called out for me to enter.

I saw Maud first: she was sitting at a desk with a book before her, her hands upon the covers. Her hands were bare, she had her little white gloves laid neatly by, but she sat beside a shaded lamp, that threw all its light upon her fingers, and they seemed pale as ashes upon the page of print. Above her was a window. Its glass had yellow paint upon it. All about her, over all the walls of the room, were shelves; and the shelves had books on -- you never saw so many. A stunning amount. How many stories does one man need? I looked at them and shuddered. Maud rose, closing the book that was before her. She took up the white gloves and drew them back on.

"What is it?"

She looked to her right, to the end of the room that, because of the open door, I could not see. A cross voice said,

I pushed the door further, and saw another painted window, more shelves, more books, and a second great desk. This one was piled with papers, and had another shaded lamp. Behind it sat Mr Lilly, Maud's old uncle; and to describe him as I saw him then, is to tell everything.

He wore a velvet coat, and a velvet cap, that had a stub of red wool jutting from it where a tassel might once have hung. In his hand there was a pen, that he held clear of the paper; and the hand itself was dark, as Maud's was fair -- for it was stained all over with India ink, like a regular man's might be stained with tobacco. His hair, however, was white. His chin was shaved bare. His mouth was small and had no colour, but his tongue -- that was hard and pointed -- was almost black, from where he must have given a lick to his finger and thumb, when turning pages.

His eyes were damp and feeble. Before them he had a pair of glasses, shaded green. He saw me and said, "Who the devil are you?"

Behind Mr Lilly's green glasses, I saw his eyes screw themselves up and grow damper.

Miss Smith," he said, looking at me but talking to his niece. "Is she a papist, like the last one?"

"I don't know," said Maud. "I have not asked her. Are you a papist, Susan?"

Maud worked at the buttons at her wrist. "This is my new maid, Uncle," she said quietly. "Miss Smith."

I didn't know what that was. But I said, "No, miss. I don't think so."

"I don't care for her voice," he said. "Can't she be silent? Can't she be soft?"

Maud smiled. "She can, Uncle," she said.

Mr Lilly at once put his hand across his ear.

"The finger, girl!" he cried. "The finger! The finger!"

"Then why is she here, disturbing me now?"

"To fetch you?" he said. "Did the clock sound?"

He held his own dark finger to me, and shook his pen until the ink flew: I saw later that the piece of carpet underneath his desk was quite black, and so guessed he shook his pen rather often. But at that moment he looked so strange, and spoke so shrilly, my heart quite failed me. I thought he must be prone to fits. I took another step, and that made him shriek still harder -- at last Maud came to me and touched my arm.

"She has come to fetch me."

He put his hand to the fob of his waistcoat and drew out an ancient great gold repeater, tilting his head to catch the chime, and opening his mouth. I looked at Maud, who stood, still fumbling with the fastening of her glove; and I took a step, meaning to help her. But when he saw me do that, the old man jerked like Mr Punch in the puppet-show, and out came his black tongue.

"Yes," she answered, drawing back her toe. "She sees it very well. She will know next time -- shan't you, Susan?"

"Yes, miss," I said -- hardly knowing what I should say, or how or who I should look at; for it was certainly news to me, that gazing at a line of print could spoil it. But what did I know, about that? Besides which, the old man was so queer, and had given me such a turn, I thought that anything might have been true.

"Uncle does not care to have servants' eyes upon his books," she said, "for fear of spoiling them. Uncle asks that no servant advance further into the room than this mark here."

"Does she see it?" said her uncle.

She placed the toe of her slipper upon the brass. Her face was smooth as wax, her voice like water.

"Don't be afraid," she said softly. "He means only this, look." And she showed me how, at my feet, there was set into the dark floorboards, in the space between the doorway and the edge of the carpet, a flat brass hand with a pointing finger.

"Yes, miss," I said, a second time; and then: "Yes, sir."

"Make her soft, Maud," he said, as she pulled the door behind us.

Then I made a curtsey. Mr Lilly snorted, looking hard at me through his green glasses.

"Astonishing," I said.

"And writing, I believe, a great big dictionary?"

Maud fastened her glove, and we turned to leave him.

Now the passage seemed dimmer than ever. She took me round the gallery and up the staircase to the second floor, where her rooms were. Here there was a bit of lunch laid out, and coffee in another silver pot; but when she saw what Cook had sent up, she made a face.

I said, "I'm sure he's very clever, miss."

"I will, Uncle," she murmured.

She blinked, then nodded. "A dictionary, yes. A great many years' labour. We are presently at F."

"Eggs," she said. "Done soft, like you must be. What did you think of my uncle, Susan?"

She blinked again, then put a spoon to the side of the first of the eggs and took its head off. Then she looked at the white and yellow mess inside it and made another face, and put it from her. "You must eat this for me," she said. "You must eat them all. And I shall have the bread-and-butter."

"He is."

She held my gaze, as if to see what I thought of that.

She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored -- as who wouldn't be, in a house like that? When we had finished our lunch she went to the window: the sky was grey and threatening rain, but she said she had a fancy to go out walking. She said, "Now, what shall I wear for it?", and we stood at the door of her little black press, looking over her coats, her bonnets and her boots. That killed nearly an hour. I think that's why she did it. When I was clumsy over the lacing of her shoe, she put her hands upon mine and said, "Be slower. Why should we hurry? There is no-one to hurry for, is there?"

I saw her frowning at that mark, then, until the meal was finished. When Margaret came to take the tray away, she rose and went into her bedroom; and when she came back her gloves were white again -- she had been to her drawer and got a new pair. The old ones I found later, as I put coal on her bedroom fire: she had cast them there, at the back of the grate, and the flames had made the kid shrink, they looked like gloves for a doll.

There were three eggs there. I don't know what she saw in them, to be so choosy over. She passed them to me and, as I ate them, she sat watching me, taking bites of bread and sips of coffee, and once rubbing for a minute at a spot upon her glove, saying, "Here is a drop of yolk, look, come upon my finger. Oh, how horrid the yellow is, against the white!"

She smiled, but her eyes were sad. I said, "No, miss."

In the end she put on a pale grey cloak, and over her gloves she drew mittens. She had a little leather bag kept ready, that held a handkerchief, a bottle of water, and scissors: she had me carry this, not saying what the scissors were for -- I supposed she meant to cut flowers. She took me down the great staircase to the door, and Mr Way heard us and came running to throw back the bolts. "How do you do, Miss Maud?" he said, making a bow; and then: "And you, Miss Smith." The hall was dark. When we went outside we stood blinking, our hands at our eyes against the sky and the watery sun.

The house had seemed grim when I first saw it, at night, in the fog, and I should like to say it seemed less grim when you saw it by daylight; but it seemed worse. I suppose it had been grand enough once, but now its chimneys were leaning like drunks, and its roof was green with moss and birds' nests. It was covered all over with a dead kind of creeper, or with the stains where a creeper had long ago crept; and all about the foot of the walls were the chopped-off trunks of ivy. It had a great front door, split down the middle; but rain had made the wood swell, they only ever opened up one half.

It was odder to watch her going back in, and see the oyster shell open, then shut at her back.

Maud had to press her crinoline flat, and walk quite sideways, in order to leave the house at all. It was odd to see her stepping out of that gloomy place, like a pearl coming out of an oyster.

But there was not much to stay for, out in the park. There was that avenue of trees, that led up to the house. There was the bare bit of gravel that the house was set in. There was a place they called a herb-garden, that grew mostly nettles; and an overgrown wood with blocked-off paths. At the edge of the wood was a little stone windowless building Maud said was an ice-house. "Let us just cross to the door and look inside," she would say, and she'd stand and gaze at the cloudy blocks of ice until she shivered. At the back of the ice-house there started a muddy lane, that led you to a shut-up old red chapel surrounded by yews. This was the queerest, quietest place I ever saw. I never heard a bird sing there. I didn't like to go to it, but Maud took that way often. For at the chapel there were graves, of all the Lillys that had come before her; and one of these was a plain stone tomb, that was the grave of her mother.

She would rub until her hand shook and her breath came quick. She would never let me help her. That first day, when I tried, she said, "It is a daughter's duty, to tend to the grave of her mother. Walk off a while, and don't watch me."

She could sit and look at that for an hour at a time, hardly blinking. Her scissors she used, not for gathering flowers, but only for keeping down the grass that grew about it; and where her mother's name was picked out in letters of lead she would rub with her wet handkerchief to take off stains.

So I left her to it, and wandered among the tombs. The ground was hard as iron and my boots made it ring. I walked and thought of my own mother. She didn't have a grave, they don't give graves to murderesses. They put their bodies in quicklime.

Did you ever pour salt on the back of a slug? John Vroom used to do it, and then laugh to see the slug fizz. He said to me once, "Your mother fizzed like that. She fizzed, and ten men died that smelt it!"

He never said it again. I took up a pair of kitchen shears and put them to his neck. I said, "Bad blood carries. Bad blood comes out." And the look on his face was something!

"This is a melancholy place," she said. "Let's walk a little further."

I wondered how Maud would look, if she knew what bad blood flowed in me.

But she never thought to ask. She only sat, gazing hard at her mother's name, while I wandered and stamped my feet. Then at last she sighed and looked about her, passed her hand across her eyes, and drew up her hood.

She led me away from the circle of yews, back down the lane between the hedges, then away from the wood and the ice-house, to the edge of the park. Here, if you followed a path that ran alongside a wall, you reached a gate. She had a key for it. It took you to the bank of a river. You could not see the river from the house. There was an ancient landing-place there, half rotted away, and a little upturned punt that made a kind of seat. The river was narrow, its water very quiet and muddy and filled with darting fish. All along the bank there grew rushes. They grew thick and high. Maud walked slowly beside them, gazing nervously into the darkness they made where they met the water. I supposed she was frightened of snakes. Then she plucked up a reed and broke it, and sat with the tip of it pressed against her plump mouth.

"London?"

"Pretty stretch of water," I said, for politeness' sake.

She nodded. I didn't then know -- for, who would have guessed it? -- that that trifling bit of water was the Thames. I thought she meant the boat would join a bigger river further on. Still, the idea that it would reach the city -- maybe sail under London Bridge -- made me sigh. I turned to watch it follow a bend in the water; then it passed from sight. The sound of its engine faded, the smoke from its chimney joined the grey of the sky and was lost. The air was thin again. Maud still sat with the tip of the broken reed against her lip, her gaze very vague. I took up stones and began to throw them into the water. She watched me do it, winking at every splash. Then she led me back up to the house.

I sat beside her. The day was windless, but cold, and so quiet it hurt the ears. The air smelled thin.

A barge went by. The men saw us and touched their hats. I waved.

"Bound for London," said Maud, looking after them.

We went back to her room. She got out a bit of sewing -- a colourless, shapeless thing, I don't know if it was meant to be a tablecloth, or what. I never saw her working on anything else. She sewed in her gloves, very badly -- making crooked stitches and then ripping half of them out. It made me nervous. We sat together before the spluttering fire, and talked in a weak kind of way -- I forget what of -- and then it grew dark, and a maid brought lights; and then the wind picked up and the windows began to rattle worse than ever. I said to myself, "Dear God, let Gentleman come soon! I think a week of this will kill me"; and I yawned. Maud caught my eye. Then she also yawned. That made me yawn harder. At last she put her work aside and tucked up her feet and laid her head upon the arm of the sofa, and seemed to sleep.

She was two hours with him. I saw nothing of that of course, but took my dinner in the kitchen, with the servants. They told me that, when he had eaten, Mr Lilly liked his niece to sit and read to him in the drawing-room. That was his idea of fun, I suppose, for they said he hardly ever had guests, and if he did then they were always other bookish gentlemen, from Oxford and London; and it was his pleasure, then, to have Maud read books to them all.

"That's enough!" said Mrs Stiles. "What would Miss Maud say?"

That's all there was to do there, until the clock struck seven. When she heard that she gave a bigger yawn than ever, put her fingers to her eyes, and rose. Seven o'clock was when she must change her dress again -- and change her gloves, for ones of silk -- to have supper with her uncle.

"Does she do nothing, poor girl, but read?" I asked.

"Her uncle won't let her," said a parlourmaid. "That's how much he prizes her. Won't hardly let her out -- fears she'll break in two. It's him, you know, that keeps her all the time in gloves."

Then the parlourmaid fell silent. I sat and thought about Mr Lilly, with his red cap and his gold repeater, his green eye-glasses, his black finger and tongue; and then about Maud, frowning over her eggs, rubbing hard at her mother's grave. It seemed a queer kind of prizing, that would make a girl like her, like that.

Above his voice came the faint sound of laughter and scraping chairs, that was Cook and the scullery-maids and William Inker and the knife-boy, enjoying themselves in the kitchen.

I thought I knew all about her. Of course, I knew nothing. I had my dinner, listening to the servants talk, not saying much; and then Mrs Stiles asked me, Should I like to come and take my pudding with her and Mr Way, in her own pantry? I supposed I ought to. I sat gazing at the picture made all of hair. Mr Way read us pieces from the Maidenhead paper, and at every story -- that were all about bulls breaking fences, or parsons making interesting sermons in church -- Mrs Stiles shook her head, saying, "Well, did you ever hear the like?" and Mr Way would chuckle and say, "You'll see, Miss Smith, that we are quite a match for London, news-wise!"

I almost lost my way again, on my way back up; but even so, when she saw me she said, "Is that you, Susan? You are quicker than Agnes." She smiled. "I think you are handsomer, too. I don't think a girl can be handsome -- do you? -- with red hair. But nor with fair hair, either. I should like to be dark, Susan!"

Then the great house clock struck, and immediately after it the servants' bell sounded; and that meant that Mr Lilly was ready to be seen by Mr Way into his bed, and that Maud was ready to be put by me into hers.

Then she moved away from the fire, for me to put her into her nightgown. It was not much like undressing the chair in our old kitchen, after all. She stood shivering, saying, "Quick! I shall freeze! Oh, heavens!" -- for her bedroom was as draughty as everywhere else there, and my fingers were cold and made her jump. They grew warm, though, after a minute. Stripping a lady is heavy work. Her corset was long, with a busk of steel; her waist, as I think I have said, was narrow: the kind of waist the doctors speak against, that gives a girl an illness. Her crinoline was made of watchspring. Her hair, inside its net, was fixed with half a pound of pins, and a comb of silver. Her petticoats and shimmy were calico. Underneath it all, however, she was soft and smooth as butter. Too soft, I thought her. I imagined her bruising. She was like a lobster without its shell. She stood in her stockings while I fetched her nightgown, her arms above her head, her eyes shut tight; and for a second I turned, and looked at her. My gaze was nothing to her. I saw her bosom, her bottom, her feather and everything and -- apart from the feather, which was brown as a duck's -- she was as pale as a statue on a pillar in a park. So pale she was, she seemed to shine. But again, it was a troubling kind of paleness, and I was glad to cover her up. I tidied her gown back into the press and jammed closed the door. She sat and waited, yawning, for me to come and brush her hair.

She had had wine with her supper, and I had had beer. I should say we were both, in our own ways, rather tipsy. She had me stand beside her at the great silvery glass above her fireplace, and drew my head to hers, to compare the colours of our hair. "Yours is the darker," she said.

"Her hair was very poor," I said. And then, feeling sorry for Lady Alice: "But she walked well."

Her hair was good, and very long let down. I brushed it, and held it, and thought what it might fetch.

"You do, miss."

She got into her bed. She said she didn't care to lie in darkness. She had a rush-light in a tin shade kept beside her pillow, the kind old misers use, and she made me light it from the flame of my candle; and she wouldn't let me tie the curtains of her bed, but had me pull them only a little way shut, so that she might see into the room beyond.

"Do I walk well?"

She did. Her feet were small, her ankles slender like her waist. She smiled. As she had with our heads, she made me put my foot beside hers, to compare them.

"Yours is almost as neat," she said kindly.

"And you will not, will you, quite close your door?" she said. "Agnes never used to. I didn't like it, before you came, having Margaret in a chair. I was afraid I would dream and have to call her. When Margaret touches, she pinches. Your hands, Susan, are hard as hers; and yet your touch is gentle."

"What are you thinking of?" she said, her eyes on mine in the glass. "Of your old mistress? Was her hair handsomer?"

"Yes, Susan," she answered. She moved her cheek upon her pillow. She didn't like the prickling of her hair against her neck: she had put it back, and it snaked away into shadow, straight and dark and slender as a rope.

She reached and put her fingers quickly upon mine, as she said this; and I rather shuddered to feel the kid-skin on them -- for she had changed out of her silk gloves, only to button another white pair back on. Then she took her hands away and tucked her arms beneath the blanket. I pulled the blanket perfectly smooth. I said, "Shall that be all, miss?"

When I took my candle off, the shadow spread across her like a wave. Her room was dimly lit by the lamp, but her bed was in darkness. I half-closed my door, and heard her lift her head. "A little wider," she called softly, so I opened it further. Then I stood and rubbed my face. I had been at Briar only a day; but it was the longest day of my life. My hands were sore from pulling laces. When I closed my eyes, I saw hooks. Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.

I grew too tired to watch her, then. I moved back, too. My room was dark as ink. I reached with my hands and found the blanket and sheets, and pulled them down. I got beneath them; and lay cold as a frog in my own narrow lady's maid's bed.

At last I sat and blew out my candle; and heard her move. There wasn't a sound in the house: I heard her, very clearly, rise from her pillow and twist in her bed. I heard her reach and draw out her key, then put it to the little wooden box. At the click of the lock, I got up. I thought, "Well, I can be silent, if you can't. I am softer than you or your uncle know"; and I made my way to the crack of the door and peeped through. She had leaned out of the curtained bed, and had the portrait of the handsome lady -- her mother -- in her hand. As I watched, she raised the portrait to her mouth, kissed it, and spoke soft, sad words to it. Then she put it from her with a sigh. She kept the key in a book beside her bed. I hadn't thought to look in there. She locked the box back up, set it neatly on the table -- touched it once, touched it twice -- and then moved back behind the curtain and was still.

I cannot say how long I slept for then. I could not say, when I woke up, what awful sound it was that had woken me. I did not know, for a minute or two, whether my eyes were open or closed -- for the darkness was so deep, there was no difference -- it was only when I gazed at the open door to Maud's room and saw the faint light there, that I knew I was awake and not dreaming. What I had heard, I thought, was some great crash or thud, and then perhaps a cry. Now, in the instant of my opening my eyes, there was a silence; but as I lifted my head and felt my heart beat hard, the cry came again. It was Maud, calling out in a high, frightened voice. She was calling on her old maid: "Agnes! Oh! Oh! Agnes!"

I didn't know what I would see when I went in to her -- perhaps, a busted window and a burglar, pulling at her head, cutting the hair off. But the window, though it still rattled, was quite unbroken; and there was no-one there with her, she had come to the gap in her bed-curtains with the blankets all bunched beneath her chin and her hair flung about, half covering her face. Her face was pale and strange. Her eyes, that I knew were only brown, seemed black. Black, like Polly Perkins's, as the pips in a pear.

"At the door? Don't go, Agnes! I'm afraid he'll harm you!"

I said, "You must be quiet, miss. There's no man; and if there is, then I shall call for Mr Way to come and catch him."

"The door?" The door was closed. "Is someone there?"

"A man? A burglar?"

She said again, "Agnes!"

I said, "It's Sue, miss."

But have you ever tried to light a candle from a rush-light in a tin shade? I could not get the wick to catch; and she kept on, weeping and calling me Agnes, until my hand shook so much I could not hold the candle steady.

She was afraid. She was so frightened, she began to frighten me. I said, "I don't think there's a man, miss." I said, "Let me try and light a candle."

"A man?" she said.

She said, "Agnes, did you hear that sound? Is the door shut?"

I took up the rush-light. "Don't take the light!" she cried at once. "I beg you, don't!"

I said I would only take it to the door, to show her there was no-one there; and while she wept and clutched at the bed-clothes I went with the light to the door to her parlour and -- all in a flinching, winking kind of way -- I pulled it open.

The room beyond was very dark. The few great bits of furniture sat humped about, like the baskets with the thieves in, in the play of Ali Baba. I thought now dismal it would be if I had come all the way to Briar, from the Borough, to be murdered by burglars. And what if the burglar proved to be a man I knew -- say, one of Mr Ibbs's nephews? Queer things like that do happen.

So I stood gazing fearfully at the dark room, thinking all this, half-inclined to call out -- in case there were burglars there -- that they should hold their hands, that I was family; but of course, there was no-one, it was quiet as a church. I saw that, and then went quickly to the parlour door, and looked into the passage; and that was dark and quiet, too -- there was only the ticking of some clock, faroff, and more rattling windows. But after all it was not quite pleasant, standing in a night-dress, with a rush-light, in a great dark silent house that, though it didn't have thieves in, might certainly have ghosts. I closed the door quick, and went back to Maud's room and closed that door, and stepped to the side of her bed and put the light down.

I was about to answer, but then I stopped. For I had looked towards the corner of the room, where the black press was; and there was something strange there. There was something long and white and gleaming, that was moving against the wood… Well, I have said, haven't I, that I've a warm imagination? I was certain that the thing was Maud's dead mother, come back as a ghost to haunt me. My heart leapt so hard into my mouth, I seemed to taste it. I screamed, and Maud screamed, then clutched at me and wept harder. "Don't look at me!" she cried. And then: "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!"

She said, "Did you see him? Oh, Agnes, is he there?"

And then I saw what the white thing really was, and hopped from foot to foot and almost laughed.

For it was only the cage of her crinoline, sprung out from where I had jammed it on the shelf with one of her shoes. The door of the press had swung open and hit the wall: that was the noise that had woken us. The crinoline was hanging from a hook, and quivering. My footsteps had made the springs bounce. I saw it, as I say, and almost laughed; but when I looked again at Maud, her eyes were still so black and wild and her face so pale, and she clutched at me so hard, I thought it would be cruel to let her see me smile.

I put my hands across my mouth, and the breath came out between my jumping fingers, and my teeth began to chatter. I was colder than ever.

She put her head against my bosom, and shook. I smoothed her hair back from her cheek, and held her until she grew calm.

I said, "It's nothing, miss. After all, it's nothing. You was only dreaming."

But when I made to lay her down, she gripped me harder. "Don't leave me, Agnes!" she said again.

"Dreaming, Agnes?"

"Don't leave me, Sue!" she whispered. "I'm afraid, of my own dreaming!"

I said, "It's Sue, miss. Agnes had the scarlatina, and is gone back to Cork. Remember? You must lie down now, or the cold will make you ill, too."

"There," I said then. "Shall you sleep again now? Let me put the blanket about you, look."

She looked at me then, and her gaze, that was still so dark, seemed yet a little clearer.

Her breath was sweet. Her hands and arms were warm. Her face was smooth as ivory or alabaster. In a few weeks' time, I thought -- if our plot worked -- she would be lying in the bed of a madhouse. Who would there be to be kind to her, then?

Next morning I woke a minute before she did. She opened her eyes, saw me, looked troubled, and tried to hide it.

So I put her from me, but only for a moment; and I clambered over her and got beneath the blankets at her side. I put my arm about her, and at once she sank against me. It seemed the least that I could do. I pulled her closer. She was slender as anything. Not like Mrs Sucksby. Not like Mrs Sucksby, at all. She was more like a child. She still shivered a little, and when she blinked I felt the sweep of her lashes against my throat, like feathers. In time, however, the shivering stopped, and her lashes swept again and then were still. She grew heavy, and warm.

"Did my dreams wake me in the night?" she said, not meeting my gaze. "Did I say foolish things? They say I speak nonsense, in my sleep, as other girls snore."

She blushed, and laughed. "But how good you were, to come and keep me company!"

"Good girl," I said, too softly to wake her.

I didn't tell her about the crinoline. At eight o'clock she went off to her uncle, and at one I went to fetch her -- taking care, this time, to mind the Pointing finger on the floor.

She said the same thing the next night; and the night after that.

She said she could not sleep. She said she was cold. She said she would like to keep me close to her again, in case she woke up frightened.

Then we walked in the park, to the graves and the river; she sewed, and dozed, and was rung to her supper; and I sat with Mrs Stiles until half-past nine, when it was time to go back up and put her to bed. It was all just the first day, over again. She said, "Good-night," and laid her head upon her pillow; then I stood in my room and heard her little box unlocked, and peeped through the door to watch her take up the portrait, kiss it, then put it away.

"You don't mind?" she asked me. She said Agnes never minded. "Did you never," she said, "sleep with Lady Alice, at Mayfair?"

And then, I had not put out my candle two minutes, before her voice came calling softly: "Sue --!"

It was ordinary at first, with Maud and me. Her dreams never bothered her. We slept, quite like sisters. Quite like sisters, indeed. I always wanted a sister.

What could I tell her? For all I knew, it might have been an ordinary thing, for a mistress and her maid to double up like girls.

Then Gentleman came.