We leave, just as lanned, on the last day of April. /y 1/ Richards stay is plete. My uncles prints are mounted and bound: he takes me to view them, as a sort of treat.
Fine work, he says. You think, Maud? Hmm?
Yes, sir.
Do you look?
Yes, Uncle.
Yes. Fine work. I believe I shall send for Hawtrey and Huss. I shall have them e— week? What do you say? Shall we make an occasion of it?
I do not answer. I am thinking of the dining-room, the drawing-room—and me, in some other shadowy place, far off. He turns to Richard.
Rivers, he says, should you like to e back, as a guest, with Hawtrey?
Richard bows, looks sorry. I fear, sir, I shall be occupied elsewhere.
Unfortunate. You hear that, Maud? Most unfortunate . . .
He unlocks his door. Mr Way and Charles are going about the gallery with Richards bags. Charles is rubbing his eyes with his sleeve.—Get on with you! says Mr Way savagely, kig out with his foot. Charles lifts his head, sees us emerging from my uncles room—sees my uncle, I suppose—and shakes in a sort of vulsion, and runs. My uncle also shakes, then.
Do you see, Rivers, the torments to which I am exposed? Mr Way, I hope you will catch that boy and whip him!
I will, sir, says Mr Way.
Richard looks at me, and smiles. I do not smile back. And when, at the steps, he takes my hand, my fingers sit quite nervelessly against his own. Good-bye, he says. I say nothing. He turns to my uncle: Mr Lilly. Farewell to you, sir!
A handsome man, my uncle says, as the trap is drawn from sight. Hmm, Maud? What, are you silent? Shant you like it, to have to return to our solitary ways?
We go bato the house. Mr ulls closed the swollen door, and the hall grows dark. I climb the stairs at my uncles side, as I once, as a girl, climbed them with Mrs Stiles. How many times, I think, have I mouhem, sihen? How many times has my heel struck this spot, that spot? How many slippers, how many strait gowns, how many gloves, have I outgrown or outworn? How many voluptuous words have I silently read?—how many mouthed, fentlemen?
The stairs, the slippers and gloves, the words, the gentlemen, will all remain, though I escape. Will they? I think again of the rooms of my uncles house: the dining- and drawing-room, the library. I think of the little crest I once picked out in the paint that covers the library windows: I try to imagi, eyeless. I remember how once I woke and watched my room seem to gather itself together out of the dark, and thought, / shall never escape! Now I know that I shall. But I think that Briar will hauoo.— Or else, I will haunt it, while living out some dim and partial life beyond its walls.
I think of the ghost I shall make: a , monotonous ghost,
walking for ever on soft-soled feet, through a broken house, to the pattern of a carpets.
But perhaps, after all, I am a ghost already. Fo to Sue and she shows me the gowns and linens she means for us to take, the jewels she means to shihe bags she will fill; but she does it all without meeting my gaze; and I watch, and say nothing. I am more aware of her hands than of the objects she takes up; feel the stir of her breath, see the movement of her lip, but her words slip from my memory the moment she has said them. At last she has nothing more to show. We must only wait. We take our lunch. We walk to my mrave. I stare at the stone, feeling nothing. The day is mild, and damp: our shoes, as we wa