Fingersmith (30 page)

'Indeed, Mr Lilly, she does not,' says Mr Huss, gazing at my uncovered hands.

I place the book upon a stand and carefully weight its pages. I turn a lamp so that its light falls bright upon the print.

'How long shall I read for, Uncle?'

He puts his watch against his ear. He says, 'Until the next o'clock. Now, note this, Rivers, and tell me if you suppose its like may be encountered in any other English drawing-room!'

The book is filled, as I have said, with common enough obscenities; but my uncle is right, I have been trained too well, my voice is clear and true and makes the words seem almost sweet. When I have finished, Mr Hawtrey claps, and Mr Huss's pink face is pinker, his look rather troubled. My uncle sits with his spectacles removed, his head at an angle, his eyes screwed tight.

'Poor words enough,' he says. 'But I have a home for you, upon my shelves. A home, and brothers, too. Tomorrow we shall see you placed there. The fieu-ron: I am certain we have not thought of that.—Maud, the covers are closed, and quite unbent?'

'Yes, sir.'

He draws on his eye-glasses, working the wires about his ears. Mr Huss pours brandy. I button up my gloves, smooth creases from my skirt. I turn the lamp, and dim it. But I am conscious of myself. I am conscious of Mr Rivers. He has heard me read, apparently without excitement, his eyes upon the floor; but his hands are clasped and one thumb beats a little nervously upon the other. Presently he rises. He says the fire is hot and scorches him. He walks a minute about the room, leaning rigidly
to gaze
into my uncle's book-presses—now his hands are behind his back; his thumb still twitches, however. I think he knows I watch. In time he comes close, catches my eye, makes a careful bow. He says, 'It is rather chill, so far from the fire. Shouldn't you like, Miss Lilly, to sit closer to the flames?'

I answer: 'Thank you, Mr Rivers, I prefer this spot.'

'You like to be cool,' he says.

'I like the shadows.'

When I smile again he takes it as a kind of invitation, lifts his coat, twitches at his trousers and sits beside me, not too close, still with his eyes upon my uncle's shelves, as if distracted by the books. But when he speaks, he speaks in a murmur. He says, 'You see, I also like the shadows.'

Mr Huss glances once our way. Mr Hawtrey stands at the fire and lifts a glass. My uncle has settled into his chair and its wings obscure his eyes; I see only his dry mouth, puckered at the lip. The greatest phase of eros?' he is saying. 'We have missed it, sir, by seventy years! The cynical, improbable fictions which pass for voluptuous literature nowadays I should be ashamed to show to the man that shoes my horse…'

I stifle a yawn, and Mr Rivers turns to me. I say, 'Forgive me, Mr Rivers.'

He bows his head. 'Perhaps, you don't care for your uncle's subject.'

He still speaks in a murmur; and I am obliged to make my own voice rather low, by way of answer. 'I am my uncle's secretary,' I say. 'The appeal of the subject is nothing to me.'

Again he bows. 'Well, perhaps,' he says, while my uncle talks on. 'It is only curious, to see a lady left cool and unmoved, by that which is designed to provoke heat, and motion.'

'But there are many ladies, I think, unmoved by that you speak of; and aren't those who know the matter best, moved least?' I catch his eye. 'I speak not from experience of the world, of course, but from my reading merely. But I should have said that—oh, even a priest would note a palling in his passion for the mysteries of his church, if put too often to the scrutiny of wafer and wine.'

He does not blink. At last he almost laughs.

'You are very uncommon, Miss Lilly.'

I look away. 'So I understand.'

'Ah. Now your tone is a bitter one. Perhaps you think your education a sort of misfortune.'

'On the contrary. How could it be a misfortune, to be wise? I can never be deceived, for instance, in the matter of a gentleman's attentions. I am a connoisseur of all the varieties of methods by which a gentleman might seek to compliment a lady.'

He puts his white hand to his breast. 'Then I should be daunted indeed,' he says, 'did I want only to compliment you.'

'I was not aware that gentlemen had any other wants, than that one.'

'Perhaps not in the books that you are used to. But in life—a great many; and one that is chief.'

'I supposed,' I say, 'that that was the one the books were written for.'

'Oh no.' He smiles. His voice dips even lower. 'They are read for that, but written for something keener. I mean, of course, the want of—money. Every gentleman minds that. And those of us who are not quite so gentlemanly as we would like, mind it most of all.—I am sorry to embarrass you.'

I have coloured, or flinched. Now, recovering, I say, 'You forget, I have been bred to be quite beyond embarrassment. I am only surprised.'

Then I must take a satisfaction from the knowledge that I have surprised you.' He lifts his hand to his beard. 'It is something to me,' he goes on, 'to have made a small impression upon the evenness and regularity of your days.'

He speaks so insinuatingly, my cheek grows warmer still.

'What do you know,' I say, 'of those?'

'Why, only what I surmise, from my observation of the house…'

Now his voice and his face are grown bland again. I see Mr Huss tilt his head and observe him. Then he calls, pointedly: 'What do you think, Rivers, of this?'

'Of what, sir?'

'Of Hawtrey's championing, now, of photography.'

'Photography?'

'Rivers,' says Mr Hawtrey. 'You are a young man. I appeal to you. Can there be any more perfect record of the amatory act—'

'Record!' says my uncle, peevishly. 'Documentary! The curses of the age!'

'—of the amatory act, than a photograph? Mr Lilly will have it that the science of photography runs counter to the spirit of the Paphian life. I say it is an image of life, and has this advantage over it: that it endures, where life— the Paphian life, the Paphian moment, in especial—must finish and fade.'

'Doth not a book endure?' asks my uncle, plucking at the arm of his chair.

'It endureth, so long as words do. But, in a photograph you have a thing beyond words, and beyond the mouths that speak them. A photograph will provoke heat in an Englishman, a Frenchman, a savage. It will outlast us all, and provoke heat in our grandsons. It is a thing apart from history.'

'It is gripped by history!' answers my uncle. 'It is corrupted by it! Its history hangs about it like so much smoke!—you may see it, in the fitting of a slipper, a gown, the dressing of a head. Give photographs to your grandson: he will study them and think them quaint. He will laugh at the wax tips of your moustaches! But words, Hawtrey, words—hmm? They seduce us in darkness, and the mind clothes and fleshes them to fashions of its own. Don't you think so, Rivers?'

'I do, sir.'

'You know I won't allow daguerreotypes and nonsense like that into my collection?'

'I think you are right not to, sir.'

Mr Hawtrey shakes his head. He says, to my uncle: 'You still believe photography a fashion, that will pass? You must come to Holy well Street, and spend an hour in my shop. We have albums made up, now, for men to choose from. It is all our buyers come for.'

'Your buyers are brutes. What business have I with them? Rivers, you have seen them. What is your opinion as to the quality of Hawtrey's trade… ?'

The debate will go on, he cannot escape. He answers, then catches my eye as if in apology, rises, goes to my uncle's side. They talk until the striking of ten o'clock—which is when I leave them.

That is the Thursday night. Mr Rivers is due to remain at Briar until Sunday. Next day I am kept from the library while the men look over the books; at supper he watches me, and afterwards hears me read, but then is obliged to sit again with my uncle and cannot come to my side. Saturday I walk in the park with Agnes, and do not see him; Saturday night, however, my uncle has me read from an antique book, one of his finest—and then, when I have finished, Mr Rivers comes and sits beside me, to study its singular covers.

'You like it, Rivers?' asks my uncle as he does so. 'You know it is very rare?'

'I should say it must be, sir.'

'And you think I mean by that, that there are few other copies?'

'I had supposed that, yes.'

'So you might. But we collectors, we gauge rarity by other means. You think a unique item rare, if no-one wants it? We call that a dead book. But, say a score of identical copies are sought by a thousand men: each of those single books is rarer than the unique one. You understand me?'

Mr Rivers nods. 'I do. The rareness of the article is relative to the desire of the heart which seeks it.' He glances at me. 'That is very quaint. And how many men seek this book, that we have just heard?'

My uncle grows coy. 'How many indeed, sir? I'll answer you like this: put it up for auction, and see! Ha?'

Mr Rivers laughs. 'To be sure, yes…'

But beyond the film of his politeness, he looks thoughtful. He bites his lip— his teeth showing yellow, wolfish, against the dark of his beard, but his mouth a soft and surprising pink. He says nothing while my uncle sips at his drink and Mr Hawtrey fusses with the fire. Then he speaks again.

'And what of a pair of books, Mr Lilly,' he says, 'sought by a single buyer? How are they to be valued?'

'A pair?' My uncle puts down his glass. 'A set, of two volumes?'

'A pair of complementary titles. A man has one, and seeks to secure the other. The second will greatly add to the value of the first?'

'Of course, sir!'

'I thought it.'

'Men pay absurdly for such things,' says Mr Huss.

'They do,' says my uncle. They do. You will find a reference to such matters, of course, in my Index…'

'The Index,' says Mr Rivers softly; and the others talk on. We sit and listen—or pretend to—and soon he turns and studies my face. 'May I ask you something, Miss Lilly?' he says. And then, when I nod: 'What do you see, for yourself, after the completion of your uncle's work?—Now, why do you do that?'

I have given him what I suppose must be a bitter sort of smile. I say, 'Your question means nothing, I can hardly answer it. My uncle's work will never be finished. There are too many new books written that must be added to the old; too many lost books to be rediscovered; too much uncertainty. He and Mr Hawtrey will debate it for ever. Look at them now. Should he publish the Index as he intends, he will only at once begin its supplements.'

'You mean to keep beside him, then, for all that time?'—I will not answer.—'You are as dedicated as he?'

'I have no choice,' I say at last. 'My skills are few and, as you have already noted, quite uncommon.'

'You are a lady,' he says softly, 'and young, and handsome.—I don't speak from gallantry now, you know that. I say only what is true. You might do anything.'

'You are a man,' I answer. 'Men's truths are different from ladies'. I may do nothing, I assure you.'

He hesitates—perhaps, catches his breath. Then: 'You might—marry,' he says. 'That is something.'

He says it, with his eyes upon the book that I have read from; and I hear him, and laugh aloud. My uncle supposing I have laughed at some parched joke of his, looks over and nods. 'You think so, Maud? You see, Huss, even my niece believes it so…'

I wait until his face is turned from me again, his attention captured. Then I reach for the book on its stand and gently lift its cover. 'Look here, Mr Rivers,' I say. 'This is my uncle's plate, that is attached to all his books. Do you see the device of it?'

The plate bears his emblem, a clever thing of his own design—a lily, drawn strangely, to resemble a phallus; and wound about with a stem of briar at the root. Mr Rivers tilts his head to study it, and nods. I let the cover close.

'Sometimes,' I say, not looking up, 'I suppose such a plate must be pasted upon my own flesh—that I have been ticketed, and noted and shelved—so nearly do I resemble one of my uncle's books.' I raise my eyes to his. My face is warm, but I am speaking coolly, still. 'You said, two nights ago, that you have studied the ways of this house. Surely, then, you have understood. We are not meant for common usage, my fellow books and I. My uncle keeps us separate from the world. He will call us poisons; he says we will hurt unguarded eyes. Then again, he names us his children, his foundlings, that have come to him, from every corner of the world—some rich and handsomely provided for, some shabby, some injured, some broken about the spine, some gaudy, some gross. For all that he speaks against them, I believe he likes the gross ones best; for they are the ones that other parents—other bookmen and collectors, I mean—cast out. I was like them, and had a home, and lost it—'

Now I do not speak coolly. I have been overtaken by my own words. Mr Rivers watches, then leans to take my uncle's book very gently from its stand.

'Your home,' he murmurs, as his face comes close to mine. 'The madhouse. Do you think very often of your time there ? Do you think of your mother, and feel her madness in you?—Mr Lilly, your book.' My uncle has looked over. 'Do you mind my handling it? Won't you show me, sir, the features that mark it
as
rare… ?'

He has spoken very swiftly; and has startled me, horribly. I don't like to be startled. I don't like to lose my place. But now, as he rises and returns, with the book, to the fire, a second or two passes that I cannot account for. I discover at last that I have put my hand to my breast. That I am breathing quickly. That the shadows in which I sit are all at once denser than before— so dense, my skirt seems bleeding into the fabric of the sofa and my hand, rising and falling above my heart, is pale as a leaf upon a swelling pool of darkness.

I will not swoon. Only girls in books do that, for the convenience of gentlemen. But I suppose I whiten and look strange, for when Mr Hawtrey gazes my way, smiling, his smile quite falls. 'Miss Lilly!' he says. He comes and takes my hand.

Mr Huss comes also. 'Dear child, what is it?' He holds me close, about the armpit.

Mr Rivers hangs back. My uncle looks peevish. 'Well, well,' he says. 'What now?' He shuts his book, but keeps his finger, carefully, between the pages.