Kissing Maud, however, was not like kissing her. It was like kissing the darkness. As if the darkness had life, had a shape, had taste, was warm and glib. Her mouth was still, at first. Then it moved against mine. Then it opened. I felt her tongue. I felt her swallow. I felt—I had done it, only to show her. But I lay with my mouth on hers and felt, starting up in me, everything I had said would start in her, when Gentleman kissed her. It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My mouth was wet, from hers. I said, in a whisper,
'Do you feel it?'
The words sounded queer; as if the kiss had done something to my tongue.
I kissed her again. Then I touched her. I touched her... (查看原文)
But the more I think it, the more I want her,the more my desire rises and swells. I have come to terrible life-or else, the things about me have come to life, their colours grown too vivid, their surfaces too harsh. ...Even my uncle's books are changed to me; and this is worse, this is worst of all. I have supposed them dead. Now the words-like the figures in the wall-start up, are filled with meaning. (查看原文)
That is when I am still yooung, and given to fancies. When I am olderI do not walk by the river so much as I stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncle's library I one day, with my finger-nail, make a small and perfect crescent, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye---like a curious wife at the keyhole of a cabinet of secrets.
But I am inside the cabinet, and long to get out...
I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it. (查看原文)
I am beaten very often, I believe in my first days there. How could it be otherwise? I have known lively habits, the clamour of the wards, the doting of twenty women; now the hush and regularity of my uncle's house drives me to fits and foaming tempers. I am an amiable child, I think, made wilfull by restraint. I dash cups and saucers from the table to the floor. I lie and kick my legs until the boots fly from my heels. I scream until my throat bleeds. My passions are met with punishments, each fiercer than the last. I am bound about the wrists and month. I am shut into lonely rooms, or into cupboards. One time—having overturned a candke and let the flame lap at the frienges of a chair until they smoke—I am taken by Mr Way into the park and carried, along a lonely path, to the ice house. I... (查看原文)
I felt tears rise into my throat.
'You have taken everything that was mine,'I said.'You have taken it,and made it better.'
'I took it,'she answered,'because it was yours.Because I must!'
'Why must you?Why?'
She opened her mouth to speak.Then she looked at Mrs Sucksby and her face changed.
'For villainy`s sake,'she said flatly.'For villainy`s sake.Because you were right,before:my face is a false one,my mouth is an actress mouth,my blushes tell lies,my eyes—My eyes—'She looked away.Her voice had begun to rise.She made it flat again.'Richard found that,afrer all,we must wait for our money,longer than we thought.' (查看原文)
