Fingersmith (31 page)

They ring for Agnes. She comes, blinking at the gentlemen, curtseying at my uncle, a look of terror on her face. It is not yet ten o'clock. 'I am perfectly well,' I say. 'You must not trouble. I am only tired, suddenly. I am sorry.'

'Sorry? Pooh!' says Mr Hawtrey. 'It is we who should be sorry. Mr Lilly, you are a tyrant, and overtask your niece most miserably. I always said it, and here is the proof. Agnes, take your mistress's arm. Go steadily, now.'

'Shall you manage the stairs?' Mr Huss asks anxiously. He stands in the hall as we prepare to mount them. Behind him I see Mr Rivers; but I do not catch his eye.

When the drawing-room door is closed I push Agnes away, and in my own room I look about me for some cool thing to put upon my face. I finally go to the mantel, and lean my cheek against the looking-glass.

'Your skirts, miss!' says Agnes. She draws them from the fire.

I feel queer, dislocated. The house clock has not chimed. When it sounds, I will feel better. I will not think of Mr Rivers—of what he must know of me, how he might know it, what he means by seeking me out. Agnes stands awkwardly, half-crouched, my skirts still gathered in her hands.

The clock strikes. I step back, then let her undress me. My heart beats a little smoother. She puts me in my bed, unlooses the curtains—now the night might be any night, any at all. I hear her in her own room, unfastening her gown: if I lift my head and look through the gap in my curtains I will see her upon her knees with her eyes hard shut, her hands pressed together like a child's, her lips moving. She prays every night to be taken home; and for safety as she slumbers.

While she does it, I unlock my little wooden box and whisper cruel words to my mother's portrait. I close my eyes. I think,
I shall not study your face
!— but, once having thought it, I know I must do it or lie sleepless and grow ill. I look hard into her pale eyes.
Do you think of your mother
, he said,
and feel her madness in you
?

Do I?

I put the portrait away, and call for Agnes to bring me a tumbler of water. I take a drop of my old medicine—then, unsure that that will calm me, I take another. Then I lie still, my hair put back. My hands, inside their gloves, begin to tingle. Agnes stands and waits. Her own hair is let down—coarse hair, red hair, coarser and redder than ever against the fine white stuff of her nightdress. One slender collar-bone is marked a delicate blue with what is perhaps only a shadow, but might—I cannot remember—be a bruise.

I feel the drops at last, sour in my stomach.

'That's all,' I say. 'Go on.'

I hear her climb into her bed, draw up her blankets. There is a silence. After a little time there comes a creak, a whisper, the faint groan of machinery: my uncle's clock, shifting its gears. I lie and wait for sleep. It does not come. Instead, my limbs grow restless and begin to twitch. I feel, too hard, my blood—I feel the bafflement of it, at the dead points of my fingers and my toes. I raise my head, call softly: 'Agnes!' She does not hear; or hears, but fears to answer. '
Agnes
!'—At last, the sound of my own voice unnerves me. I give it up,'lie still. The clock groans again, then strikes. Then come other sounds, far-off. My uncle keeps early hours. Closing doors, lowered voices, shoes upon the stairs: the gentlemen are leaving the drawing-room and going each to their separate chambers.

Perhaps I sleep, then—but if I do, it is only for a moment. For suddenly I give a start, and am wide awake; and I know that what has roused me is not sound, but movement. Movement, and light. Beyond the bed-curtain the rush-lamp's wick has flared suddenly bright, and the doors and the window-glasses are straining against their frames.

The house has opened its mouth, and is breathing.

Then I know that, after all, this night is not like any other. As if summoned to it by a calling voice, I rise. I stand at the doorway to Agnes's room until I am sure, from the evenness of her breaths, that she is sleeping; then I take up my lamp and go, on naked feet, to my drawing-room. I go to the window and stand at the glass, cup my hands against their own feeble reflection, peer through the darkness at the sweep of gravel, the edge of lawn, that I know lie below. For a time I see nothing. Then I hear the soft fall of a shoe, and then another, still softer. Then comes the single noiseless flaring of a match between slender fingers; and a face, made hollow-eyed and garish as it tilts towards the flame.

Richard Rivers keeps restless as I; and walks upon the lawns of Briar, perhaps hoping for sleep.

Cold weather for walking. About the tip of his cigarette, his breath shows whiter than the smoke of his tobacco. He gathers his collar about his throat. Then he looks up. He seems to know what he will see. He does not nod, or make any gesture; only holds my gaze. The cigarette fades, glows bright, fades again. His stance grows more deliberate.

He moves his head; and all at once I understand what he is doing, He is surveying the face of the house. He is counting the windows.

He is calculating his way to my room!—and when he is certain of his route he lets his cigarette fall and crushes the glowing point of it beneath his heel. He comes back across the gravel-walk and someone—Mr Way, I suppose— admits him. I cannot see that. I only hear the front door open, feel the movement of the air. Again my lamp flares, and the window-glass bulges. This time, however, the house seems holding its breath.

I step back with my hands before my mouth, my eyes on my own soft face: it has started back into the darkness beyond the glass, and seems to swim, or hang, in space. I think,
He won't do it! He dare not do it
! Then I think:
He will
. I go to the door and put my ear against the wood. I hear a voice, and then a tread. The tread grows soft, another door closes—of course, he will wait for Mr Way to go to his bed. He will wait for that.

I take up my lamp and go quickly, quickly: the shade throws crescents of light upon the walls. I have not time to dress—cannot dress, without Agnes to help me—but know I must not see him in my nightgown. I find stockings, garters, slippers, a cloak. My hair, that is loose, I try to fasten; but I am clumsy with the pins, and my gloves—and the medicine I have swallowed—make me clumsier. I grow afraid. My heart beats quick again, but now it beats against the drops, it is like a vessel beating hard against the pull of a sluggish river. I put my hand to it, and feel the yielding of my breast—unlaced, it feels; unguarded, unsafe.

But the tug of the drops is greater than the resistance of my fear. That is the point of them, after all. For
restlessness
. When at length he comes, tapping at my door with his fingernail, I think I seem calm to him. I say at once, 'You know my maid is very close—asleep, but close. One cry will wake her.' He bows and says nothing.

Do I suppose he will try to kiss me? He does not do that. He only comes very stealthily into the room and gazes about him in the same cool, thoughtful way in which I saw him take his measure of the house. He says, 'Let us keep from the window, the light shows plainly from the lawn.' Then, nodding to the inner door: 'Is that where she lies? She won't hear us? You are sure?'

Do I think he will embrace me? He never once steps close. But I feel the cool of the night, still clinging to his coat. I smell the tobacco on his hair, his whiskers, his mouth. I do not remember him so tall. I move to one side of the sofa and stand tensely, gripping the back of it. He keeps at the other, leans into the space between us, and speaks in whispers.

He says, 'Forgive me, Miss Lilly. This is not how I would have met you. But I have come to Briar, after so much careful labour; and tomorrow I may be obliged to leave without seeing you. You understand me. I make no judgement on your receiving me like this. If your girl stirs, you are to say that you were wakeful; that I found out your room and came, without invitation. I've been guilty of as much, in other men's houses.—It's as well you know at once, what manner of fellow I am. But here, Miss Lilly, tonight, I mean you no sort of harm. I think you
do
understand me? I think you
did
wish me to come?'

I say, 'I understand that you have found out something you think perhaps a secret: that my mother was a lunatic; that my uncle had me from a ward of the place she died in. But that is no secret, anyone might know it; the very servants here know it. I am forbidden to forget it. I am sorry for you, if you meant to profit by it.'

'I am sorry,' he says, 'to have been obliged to remind you of it again. It means nothing to me, except as it has led to your coming to Briar and being kept by your uncle in such a curious way. It is he, I think, who has profited from your mother's misfortune.—You'll forgive my speaking plainly. I am a sort of villain, and know other villains best. Your uncle is the worst kind, for he keeps to his own house, where his villainy passes as an old man's quirk. Don't tell me you love him,' he adds quickly, seeing my face, 'for manners' sake. I know you are above them. That is why I have come like this. We make our own manners, you and I; or take the ones that suit us. But for now, will you sit and let me speak with you, as a gentleman to a lady?'

He gestures and, after a second—as if we might be awaiting the maid and the tea-tray—we take our places on the sofa. My dark cloak gapes and shows my nightgown. He turns his eyes while I draw close the folds.

'Now, to tell you what I know,' he says.

'I know you gain nothing unless you marry. I first had it from Hawtrey. They speak about you—perhaps you know—in the shady bookshops and publishers' houses of London and Paris. They speak about you, as of some fabulous creature: the handsome girl at Briar, whom Lilly has trained, like a chattering monkey, to recite voluptuous texts for gentlemen—perhaps to do worse. I needn't tell you all they say, I suppose you can guess it. That's nothing to me.' He holds my gaze, then looks away. 'Hawtrey, at least, is a little kinder; and thinks me honest, which is more to our point. He told me, in a pitying sort of way, a little of your life—your unfortunate mother—your expectations, the conditions attached. Well, one hears of such girls, when one is a bachelor; perhaps not one in a hundred is worth the pursuit… But Hawtrey was right. I have made enquiries into your mother's fortune, and you are worth—well, do you know what you are worth, Miss Lilly?'

I hesitate, then shake my head. He names the figure. It is several hundred times the value of the costliest book upon my uncle's shelves; and many thousand times the price of the cheapest. This is the only measure of value I know.

It is a great sum,' says Mr Rivers, watching my face.

I nod.

It shall be ours,' he says, 'if we marry.'

I say nothing.

'Let me be honest,' he goes on. 'I came to Briar, meaning to get you in the ordinary way—I mean, seduce you from your uncle's house, secure your fortune, perhaps dispose of you after. I saw in ten minutes what your life has made of you, and knew I should never achieve it. More, I understood that to seduce you would be to insult you—to make you only a different kind of captive. I don't wish to do that. I wish rather to free you.'

'You are very gallant,' I say. 'Suppose I don't care to be freed?'

He answers simply: 'I think you long for it.'

Then I turn my face—afraid that the beating of blood, across my cheek, will betray me to him. My voice I make steady. I say, 'You forget, my longings count for nothing here. As well might my uncle's books long to leap from their presses. He has made me like them—'

'Yes, yes,' he says, in impatience. 'You have said as much to me already. I think perhaps you say it often. But, what can such a phrase mean? You are seventeen. I am twenty-eight, and believed for many years I should be rich now, and idle. Instead I am what you see me: a scoundrel, not too poor in pocket, but nor too easy in it that I shan't be scrambling to line it for a little time to come. Do you think yourself weary? Think how weary am I! I have done many gross deeds, and thought each one the last. Believe me: I have some knowledge of the time that may be misspent, clinging to fictions and supposing them truths.'

He has lifted his hand to his head, and now puts back his hair from his brow; and his pallor, and the dark about his eye, seem suddenly to age him. His collar is soft, and creased from the grip of his neck-tie. His beard has a single strand of grey. His throat bulges queerly, as men's throats do: as if inviting the blow that will crush it.

I say, 'This is madness. I think you are mad—to come here, to confess yourself a villain, to suppose me willing to receive you.'

'And yet you have received me. You receive me still. You have not called for your maid.'

'You intrigue me. You have seen for yourself, the evenness of my days here.

'You seek a distraction from those? Why not give them up, for ever? So you shall—like that, in a moment! gone!—when you marry me.'

I shake my head. 'I think you cannot be serious.'

'I am, however.'

'You know my age. You know my uncle would never permit you to take me.'

He shrugs, speaks lightly. 'We shall resort, of course, to devious methods.'

'You wish to make a villain of me, too?'

He nods. 'I do. But then, I think you are half a villain already.—Don't look like that. Don't suppose I am joking. You don't know all.' He has grown serious. 'I am offering you something very great and strange. Not the commonplace subjection of a wife to her husband—that servitude, to lawful ravishment and theft, that the world terms
wedlock
. I shan't ask you for that, that is not what I mean. I am speaking, rather, of liberty. A liberty of a kind not often granted to the members of your sex.'

'Yet to be achieved'—I almost laugh—'by a marriage?'

'To be achieved by a ceremony of marriage, performed under certain unusual conditions.' Again he smooths his hair, and swallows; and I see at last that he is nervous—more nervous than I. He leans closer. He says, 'I suppose you're not squeamish, or soft about the heart, as another girl might be? I suppose your maid is really sleeping, and not listening at the door?'