Isis - Douglas Clegg [10]
I felt completely as if I were her prisoner if my brother Harvey wasn’t nearby to rescue me. Spence sometimes looked in on my lessons, but without the intention of rescuing me. Spence watched my governess at times, and when she went to her bed at night, he often asked me what kinds of music she liked, or if she had a favorite flower.
Once, when she was prickly with me, I told her that she was a servant of our house and to show respect. She reached for my shoulder and pinched me very hard and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Someday, you might be where I am and I might be where you are. Someday, I might call you ‘servant.’”
It wasn’t until the winter of my fifteenth year, near the holidays—when I found her with my brother Spence, on the great oriental rug in our grandfather’s library— that I grew to truly hate her. Edyth lay in Spense’s arms; her blouse unbuttoned too far; her hair wild like briars; an animal heat in her eyes.
Sprawled on the sofa and floor beside them were the pictures of the nude women. In an instant I realized that the pictures had incited their lusts.
In the next moment, I knew that I finally could destroy Edyth and make her pay for her cruelty to me.
6
I stood in the doorway and said, “Disgusting! Look at you, Edyth Blight. You shan’t last long in this house now. No one in all of Cornwall will ever employ you again! No one in the entire country! You will be turned out into the street!”
She glanced up at me, her face turning bright red—first with shame, and then with fury. “You little witch!” she cried out, while Spence, covering himself up, laughed and rolled to the side as if disinterested in my anger.
I turned away haughtily, for I had won in the battle to rid myself of Edyth. I stomped my way along the corridor, heading straight to the West Wing, where my mother spent her days and nights in bed. Harvey had taken his books to her room that day to study and spend time with her. I would tell them about Edyth and Spence, and how they both needed to be thrown out of the house immediately. I knew that once my mother heard this, she would not let Edyth live under our roof one more day, nor would she hesitate to let others know of Edyth’s behavior. And Harvey would help, too. He could scold Spence and send him packing back to university again, and then everything would be good. And perhaps my father would come home to take care of us again.
Edyth raced after me along the hallway, catching up too quickly. She pulled me aside into the alcove beneath a red velvet curtain. I could just see, through the glass of the window, the shape of someone in the garden below.
The gardener’s son was out in the sunken garden, plucking at dried branches even while a drizzle of rain came down. I wanted to shout for him to come help me, but I struggled against Edyth’s hold.
Out of breath, she warned me, “You cannot understand this. What men and women do. You do not know what you saw.” She tightened her grip on my wrists. “I will thrash you, Iris Catherine Villiers. I will thrash you but good. You cannot understand this. You think you do, but you cannot, you little witch.”
“I understand perfectly,” I said, tears in my eyes. “Pretending to be above me. Pretending to have ideals and to talk about great art and literature. Cutting my hair because of vanity. Slapping me whenever the mood takes you. You are sloth and lust and vanity and all the sins combined. Let me go, I say.” My words had some effect on her, and she loosened her grip slightly. I shook myself free of her and turned toward the window.
I pushed up the latch on the window, thinking that if Percy looked up at me and