Fingersmith (16 page)

As for Gentleman: he rose at seven, and took his breakfast in his bed. He was served by Charles. At eight o'clock he began his work on Mr Lilly's pictures. Mr Lilly directed him. He was as mad over his pictures as he was over his books, and had fitted up a little room for Gentleman to work in, darker and closer even than his library. I suppose the pictures were old and pretty precious. I never saw them. Nobody did. Mr Lilly and Gentleman carried keys about with them, and they locked the door to that room whether they were out of it or in it.

They worked until one o'clock, then took their lunch. Maud and I took ours alone. We ate in silence. She might not eat at all, but only sit waiting. Then, at a quarter to two, she would fetch out drawing-things—pencils and paints, papers and cards, a wooden triangle—and she would set them ready, very neatly, in an order that was always the same. She would not let me help. If
a
brush fell and I caught it, she would take everything up—papers, pencils, paints, triangle—and set it out all over again.

I learned not to touch. Only to watch. And then we would both listen, as the clock struck two. And at a minute after that there would come Gentleman, to teach her her day's lesson.

At first, they kept to the parlour. He put an apple, a pear and a water-jug upon a table, and stood and nodded while she tried to paint them on a card. She was about as handy with a paint-brush as she would have been with a spade; but Gentleman would hold up the messes she made and tilt his head or screw up his eye and say,

'I declare, Miss Lilly, you are acquiring quite a method.' Or,

'What an improvement, on your sketches from last month!'

'Do you think so, Mr Rivers?' she would answer, all in a blush. 'Is not the pear a little lean? Had I not ought to practise my perspective?'

'The perspective is, perhaps, a little at fault,' he'd say. 'But you have a gift, Miss Lilly, which surpasses mere technique. You have an eye for an essence. I am almost afraid to stand before you! I am afraid of what might be uncovered, were you to turn that eye upon
me
.'

He would say something like that, in a voice that would start off strong and then grow sweet, and breathless, and hesitating; and she would look as though she were a girl of wax and had moved too near to a fire. She would try the fruit again. This time the pear would come out like a banana. Then Gentleman would say that the light was poor, or the brush a bad one. 'If I might only take you to London, Miss Lilly, to my own studio there!'

That was the life he had faked up for himself—an artist's life, in a house at Chelsea. He said he had many fascinating artist friends. Maud said, 'Lady artist friends, too?'

'Of course,' he answered then. 'For I think that'—then he shook his head—'well, my opinions are irregular, and not to everyone's taste. See here, try this line a little firmer.'

He went to her, and put his hand upon hers. She turned her face to his and said,

'Won't you tell me what it is you think? You might speak plainly. I am not a child, Mr Rivers!'

'You are not,' he said softly, gazing into her eyes. Then he gave a start. 'After all,' he went on, 'my opinion is mild enough. It concerns your—your sex, and matters of creation. There is something, Miss Lilly, I think your sex must have.'

She swallowed. 'What is that, Mr Rivers?'

'Why, the liberty,' he answered gently, 'of mine.'

She sat still, then gave a wriggle. Her chair creaked, the sound seemed to startle her, and she drew her hand away. She looked up, to the glass, and found my eyes on her, and blushed; then Gentleman looked up too, and watched her—that made her colour still harder and lower her gaze. He looked from her to me, then back to her again. He lifted his hands to his whiskers and gave them a stroke.

Then she put her brush to the picture of the fruit, and—'Oh!' she cried. The paint ran like a tear-drop. Gentleman said she must not mind it, that he had worked her quite enough. He went to the table, took up the pear and rubbed the bloom from it. Maud kept a little pen-knife with her brushes and leads, and he got this out and cut the pear into three wet slices. He gave one to her, kept one for himself, and the last he shook free of its juice and brought to me.

'Almost ripe, I think,' he said, with a wink.

He put his slice of pear to his mouth and ate it in two sharp bites. It left beads of cloudy juice on his beard. He licked his fingers, thoughtfully; and I licked mine; and Maud, for once, let her gloves grow stained, and sat with the fruit against her lip and nibbled at it, her look a dark one.

We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.

At last he said she might try painting from nature. I guessed at once what that meant. It meant that he could take her wandering about the park, into all the shady, lonely places, and call it instruction. I think she guessed it, too. 'Will it rain today, do you think?' she asked in a worried sort of way, her face at the window, her eyes on the clouds. This was the end of February, and still cold as anything; but just as everyone in that house perked up a bit to see Mr Rivers come back to it again, so now even the weather seemed to lift and grow sweet. The wind fell off, and the windows stopped rattling. The sky turned pearly instead of grey. The lawns grew green as billiard tables.

In the mornings, when I walked with Maud, just the two of us, I walked at her side. Now, of course, she walked with Gentleman: he would offer her his arm and, after a show of hesitation, she would take it; I think she held it more easily, through having grown used to holding mine. She walked pretty stiffly, though; but then, he would find little artful ways to pull her closer. He would bend his head until it was near hers. He would pretend to brush dust from her collar. There would start off space between them, but steadily the space would close—at last, there would only be the rub of his sleeve upon hers, the buckling of her skirt about his trousers. I saw it all; for I walked behind them. I carried her satchel of paints and brushes, her wooden triangle, and a stool. Sometimes they would draw away from me, and seem quite to forget me. Then Maud would remember, and turn, and say,

'How good you are, Sue! You do not mind the walk? Mr Rivers thinks another quarter of a mile will do it.'

Mr Rivers always thought that. He kept her slowly walking about the park, saying he was looking for scenes for her to paint, but really keeping her close and talking in murmurs; and I had to follow, with all their gear.

Of course, I was the reason they were able to walk at all. I was meant to watch and see that Gentleman was proper.

I watched him hard. I also watched her. She would look sometimes at his face; more often at the ground; now and then at some flower or leaf or fluttering bird that took her fancy. And when she did that he would half turn, and catch my eye, and give a devilish kind of smile; but by the time she gazed at him again his face would be smooth.

You would swear, seeing him then, that he loved her.

You would swear, seeing her, that she loved him.

But you could see that she was fearful, of her own fluttering heart. He could not go too fast. He never touched her, except to let her lean upon his arm, and to guide her hand as she painted. He would bend close to her, to watch her as she dabbled in the colours, and then their breaths would come together and his hair would mix with hers; but if he went a little nearer she would flinch. She kept her gloves on.

At last he found out that spot beside the river, and she began a painting of the scenery there, adding more dark rushes each day. In the evening she sat reading in the drawing-room, for him and Mr Lilly. At night she went fretfully to her bed, and sometimes took more sleeping-drops, and sometimes shivered in her sleep.

I put my hands upon her, when she did that, till she was still again.

I was keeping her calm, for Gentleman's sake. Later on he would want me to make her nervous; but for now I kept her calm, I kept her neat, I kept her dressed very handsome. I washed her hair in vinegar, and brushed it till it shone. Gentleman would come to her parlour and study her, and bow. And when he said, 'Miss Lilly, I believe you grow sweeter in the face with every day that passes!', I knew he meant it. But I knew, too, that he meant it as a compliment not to her—who had done nothing—but to me, who did it all.

I guessed little things like that. He couldn't speak plainly, but made great play with his eyes and with his smiles, as I have said. We waited out our chance for a talk in private; and just as it began to look as though that chance would never come, it did—and it was Maud, in her innocent way, who let us have it.

For she saw him one morning, very early, from the window of her room. She stood at the glass and put her head against it, and said,

'There is Mr Rivers, look, walking on the lawn.'

I went and stood beside her and, sure enough, there he was, strolling about the grass, smoking a cigarette. The sun, being still rather low, made his shadow very long.

'Ain't he tall?' I said, gazing sideways at Maud. She nodded. Her breath made the glass mist, and she wiped it away. Then she said, 'Oh!'—as if he might have fallen over—'Oh! I think his cigarette has gone out. Poor Mr Rivers!'

He was studying the dark tip of his cigarette, and blowing at it; now he was putting his hand to his trouser pocket, searching for a match. Maud made another swipe at the window-glass.

'Now,' she said, 'can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don't believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets…'

She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking.

I said, 'It won't kill him, miss.'

'But poor Mr Rivers,' she said again. 'Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!'

We didn't have any matches. Margaret kept them in her apron. When I told Maud that she said,

'Then take a candle! Take anything! Take a coal from the fire! Oh, can't you be quicker?—Don't say I sent you, mind!'

Can you believe she had me doing that?—tripping down two sets of stairs, with a lighted coal in a pair of fire-tongs, just so a man might have his morning smoke? Can you believe I did it? Well, I was a servant now, and must. Gentleman saw me stepping across the grass to him, saw what I carried, and laughed.

I said, 'All right. She has sent me down with it for you to light your cigarette from. Look glad, she is watching. But make a business of it, if you want.'

He did not move his head, but raised his eyes to her window.

'What a good girl she is,' he said.

'She is too good for you, that I do know.'

He smiled. But only as a gentleman should smile to a servant; and his face he made kind. I imagined Maud, looking down, breathing quicker upon the glass. He said quietly,

'How do we do, Sue?'

'Pretty well,'I answered.

'You think she loves me?'

'I do. Oh, yes.'

He drew out a silver case and lifted free a cigarette. 'But she hasn't told you so?'

'She don't have to.'

He leaned close to the coal. 'Does she trust you?'

'I think she must. She has nobody else.'

He drew on the cigarette, then breathed out in a sigh. The smoke stained the cold air blue. He said, 'She's ours.'

He stepped back a little way, then gestured with his eyes; I saw what he wanted, let the coal fall to the lawn, and he stooped to help me get it. 'What else?' he said. I told him, in a murmur, about the sleeping-drops, and about her being afraid of her own dreams. He listened, smiling, all the time fumbling with the fire-tongs over the piece of coal, and finally catching it up and rising, and placing my hands upon the handle of the tongs and pressing them tight.

'The drops and the dreams are good,' he said quietly. 'They'll help us, later. But you know, for now, what you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She's our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.—Keep it like this,' he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. 'Like this, so the coal won't fall and scorch Miss Lilly's carpets…'

I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:

'They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.'

He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.

From his place on the step, I saw Mr Way studying him rather as the hard boys of the Borough did—as if not quite sure what he wanted to do most: laugh at him, or punch his lights out. But Gentleman kept his eyes very innocent. He only lifted his face to the sun, and stretched, so that Maud might see him better from the shadows of her room.

She stood and watched him walk and smoke his cigarette, every morning after that. She would stand at the window with her face pressed to the glass, and the glass would mark her brow with a circle of red—a perfect circle of crimson in her pale face. It was like the spot upon the cheek of a girl with a fever. I thought I saw it growing darker and fiercer with every day that passed.

Now she watched Gentleman, and I watched them both; and the three of us waited for the fever to break.

I had thought it might take two weeks, or three. But two weeks had gone by already, and we had got nowhere. Then another two passed, and it was all just the same. She was too good at waiting, and the house was too smooth. She would give a little jump out of her groove, to be nearer to Gentleman; and he would sneak a little way out of his, to be closer to her; but that would only make new grooves for them to glide in. We needed the whole show to go bust.