Fingersmith (11 page)

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-and-coo. 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.

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.

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 fairy-sips, 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.'

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!'

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.

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.

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.

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,

'What is it?'

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?'

Maud worked at the buttons at her wrist.

'This is my new maid, Uncle,' she said quietly. 'Miss Smith.'

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 pa-Pist, like the last one?'

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

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

Mr Lilly at once put his hand across his ear.

'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.

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

'She has come to fetch me.'

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

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.

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

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.

'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.

'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.'

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

'Does she see it?' said her uncle.

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

Then I made a curtsey. Mr Lilly snorted, looking hard at me through his green glasses. Maud fastened her glove, and we turned to leave him.

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

'I will, Uncle,' she murmured.

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.

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

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

'He is.'

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

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

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

'Astonishing,' I said.

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.'

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!'

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.

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?'

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. 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.

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

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.