Fingersmith

No-one speaks. No-one moves, save Richard as he rows. We glide, softly, in silence, into our dark and separate hells.

What follows? I know that the journey upon the river is a smooth one: that I should like to keep upon the boat, but am made to leave it and mount a horse. I should be afraid of the horse, at any other time; but I sit lifelessly upon it now, letting it bear me— as, I think, I would let it throw me, if it chose to. I remember the church of flint, the stalks of honesty, my own white gloves— my hand, that is bared then passed from one set of fingers to another, then bruised by the thrusting of a ring. I am made to say certain words, that I have now forgotten. I remember the minister, in a surplice smudged with grey. I do not recall his face. I know that Richard kisses me. I remember a book, the handling of a pen, the writing of my name. I do not remember the walk from the church: what I recall next is a room, Sue loosening my gown; and then a pillow, coarse against my

cheek; a blanket, coarser; and weeping. My hand is bare and has that ring upon it, still.

Sue's fingers slip from mine.

'You must be different now,' she says, and I turn my face.

When I look again, she has left me. In her place stands Richard. He keeps for a second before the door, his eyes on mine; then he lets out his breath, puts the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle laughter.

'Oh, Maud,' he says quietly, shaking his head. He wipes his beard and lips. 'Our wedding- night,' he says; and laughs again.

I watch him and do not speak, the blankets pulled high before my breast. I am sober, 186

now. I am quite awake. When he falls quiet, I hear the house beyond him: the stairs expand, throw off the pressure of his step. A mouse, or bird, moves in the space above the rafters. The sounds are wrong. The thought must show in my face.

'It's queer for you, here,' he says, coming closer to me. 'Don't mind it. You shall be at London soon. There's more life there. Think of that.' I say nothing. 'Will you speak?

Hmm, Maud? Come, you needn't be fey; not now, with me. Our wedding- night, Maud!' He has come to my side. He raises his hand and grips the head-board above my pillow and shakes it, hard, until the legs of the bed lurch and grind against the floor.

I close my eyes. The shuddering continues another moment, then the bed grows still.

But he keeps his arm above me, and I feel him watching. I feel the bulk of him— seem to see the darkness of him, even through my eyelids. I sense him change. The mouse or bird still moves in the ceiling of the room, and I think he puts back his head, to follow its path. Then the house falls quiet, and he studies me again.

And then his breath comes, quick, against my cheek. He has blown in my face. I open my eyes. 'Hey,' he says softly. His look is strange. 'Don't say you're afraid.' He swallows. Then he brings back his arm from the head-board, slowly. I flinch, thinking he might strike me. But he does not do that. His gaze moves over my face, then settles at the hollow of my throat. He looks, as if fascinated. 'How fast your heart beats,' he whispers. He lowers his hand, as if he means to test, with his finger, the racing of my blood.

'Touch it,' I say. 'Touch it, and die. I have poison in me.'

His hand stops, an inch from my throat. I hold his gaze, not blinking. He straightens.

His mouth gives a twitch, then curls in scorn.

'Did you think I wanted you?' he says. 'Did you?' He almost hisses the words— for of course, he cannot speak too loudly, in case Sue should hear. He moves away, agitatedly smoothing his hair behind his ears. A bag lies in his path, and he kicks it.

'God damn it,' he says. He takes off his coat, then tugs at the link in a cuff, begins to work savagely at one of his sleeves. 'Must you stare so?' he says, as he bares his arm.

'Haven't I already told you, you are safe? If you think I am any gladder than you, to be married— ' He comes back to the bed. 'I must act glad, however,' he says moodily.

'And this is a part of what passes for gladness, in marriage. Had you forgotten?'

He has drawn back the blanket, exposing the sheet that covers the mattress, at the level of my hips. 'Move over,' he says. I do. He sits, and awkwardly turns. He reaches into the pocket of his trousers and draws something out. A pen-knife.

I see it, and think at once of my uncle's razor. It was in a different life, however, that I went stealthily through that sleeping house, cut the pages of books. Now I watch as Richard puts his nail to the groove of the knife and eases free the blade. It is spotted black. He looks distastefully at it, then lays it against his arm. But he does it uncertainly, flinching when the metal touches. Then he lowers the knife.

'God damn it,' he says again. He smooths his whiskers, his hair. He catches my eye.

'Don't look, so uselessly. Have you no blood about you, to save me the pain? None of those— courses, that women suffer?' I say nothing. His mouth twists again. 'Well, that is like you. I should have thought that, being obliged to bleed, you might as well bleed 187

to some advantage; but, no . . .'

'Do you mean,' I say, 'to insult me, in every possible way?'

'Be quiet,' he answers. We are still speaking in whispers. 'This is for both our good. I don't see you offering up your arm to the knife.' At once, I offer it. He waves it away.

'No, no,' he says. 'I shall do it,

in a moment.' He draws in his breath, moves the blade further down his arm, rests it in one of the creases at the base of his palm, where the flesh is hairless. He pauses again, takes another breath; slices, quickly. 'Good Christ!' he says, wincing. A little blood springs to the cut— it seems dark, in the candle- light, upon the white heel of his hand.

He lets it fall to the bed. There is not much of it. He presses with his thumb at the skin of his wrist and palm, and then it falls faster. He does not catch my eye.

After a moment, however, he says quietly: 'Do you suppose that enough?'

I study his face. 'Don't you know?' 'No, I do not know.' 'But— '

'But what?' He blinks. 'You mean Agnes, I suppose. Don't flatter her. There are more ways of shaming a virtuous girl, than that one. You ought to know.'

The blood still feebly runs. He curses. I think of Agnes, showing me her red and swollen mouth. I turn away from him, in a sort of sickness. 'Come, Maud,' he says then, 'tell me before I fall in a swoon. You must have read of such things. I am sure your uncle must have some entry on it in his damn Index— doesn't he? Maud?' I look again, reluctantly, at the spreading drops of blood; and I nod. As a final gesture he puts his wrist to them, and smears them. Then he frowns at his cut. His cheek is quite white. He makes a face. 'How ill a man may grow,' he says, 'from the sight of the spilling of a little of his own blood. What monsters you females must be, to endure this, month upon month. No wonder you are prone to madness. See how the flesh parts?' He shows me his hand. 'I think after all I cut too deep. That was your fault, provoking me. Have you brandy? I think a little brandy would restore me.'

He has drawn out his handkerchief, and now presses it to his arm. I say, 'I have no brandy.'

'No brandy. What have you, then? Some draught or other? Come, I see by your face that you do.' He looks about him. 'Where is it kept?'

I hesitate; but now he has named it, the desire for drops begins to rnake its creeping way about my heart and limbs. 'In my leather bag,' I say. He brings the bottle to me, draws out its stopper, puts his nose to it, grimaces. 'Bring me a glass, also,' I say. He finds a cup, adds a little dusty water.

'Not like that, for me,' he says, as I let the medicine slip. 'That will serve for you. I want it quicker.' He takes the bottle from me, uncovers his cut, lets a single drop fall into the parted flesh. It stings. He winces. Where it runs, he licks it. Then he sighs, half closing his eyes, watching me as I drink then shiver then lean back upon my pillow, the cup at my breast.

At length, he smiles. He laughs. '"The Fashionable Couple on their Wedding-Night,'"

he says. 'They would write a column on us, in the London papers.'

I shiver again, draw the blankets higher; the sheet falls, covering the smears of blood.

I reach for the bottle. He reaches it first, however, and puts it out of my grasp.

'No, no,' he says. 'Not while you keep so contrary. I shall have it, tonight.' He puts it in 188

his pocket, and I am too weary to try to take it from him. He stands and yawns, wipes his face, rubs hard at his eyes. 'How tired I am!' he says. 'It is past three o'clock, do you know?' I say nothing, and he shrugs. But he lingers at the foot of the bed, looking down, in a hesitating manner, at the place at my side; then he sees my face, and pretends to shudder.

'I should not be astonished, after all,' he says, 'to wake to the grip of your fingers at my throat. No, I shall not risk it.'

He steps to the fire, wets his thumb and finger upon his tongue, puts out the candle; then he sits in a huddle in the arm-chair and makes a blanket of his coat. He swears against the cold, the pose, the angles of the chair, for perhaps a minute. But he sleeps, sooner than I do.

And when he does, I rise, go quickly to the window, put the curtain back. The moon is still bright, and I don't want to lie in darkness. But after all, every surface that takes up the silver light is strange to me; and when once I reach, to put my fingers to some mark upon the wall, the mark and the wall in taking my touch seem only to grow stranger. My cloak and gown and linen are closed in

the press. My bags are shut. I look, and look, for something of mine; and see only at last, in the shadow of the wash- hand stand, my shoes. I go to them, and stoop, and place my hands upon them. Then I draw back and almost straighten; then touch them again.

Then I lie in the bed, and listen hard for the sounds I am used to— for bells and growling levers. There are only those meaningless noises— the yawning boards, the creeping bird or mouse. I put back my head and gaze at the wall behind me. Beyond it lies Sue. If she turned in her bed, if she said my name, I think I would hear it. She might make any sound, any at all— I would catch it, I am certain I would.

She makes no sound. Richard shifts in his chair. The moonlight creeps across the floor.

In time, I sleep. I sleep and dream of Briar. But the passages of the house are not as I recall them. I am late for my uncle, and lost.

She comes each morning, after that, to wash me, to dress me, to set food before me, to take away my untouched plate; but, as in the last of our days at Briar, she never meets my gaze. The room is small. She sits near me, but rarely do we speak. She sews. I play at cards— the two of hearts with the crease of my heel upon it, rough beneath my naked finger. Richard keeps all day from the room. At night, he curses. He curses the f i l t h y l a n e s o f t h e c o u n t r y , t h a t m u d d y h i s b o o t s . H e c u r s e s m y s i l e n c e , m y strangeness. He curses the wait. Above all, he curses the angular arm-chair.

'See here,' he says, 'my shoulder. You see it? It is rising from its socket— it is quite thrown out. I shall be deformed, in a week. As for these creases— ' He angrily smooths his trousers. 'I should have brought Charles, after all. At this rate I shall arrive at London only to be laughed off its streets.'

London, I think. The word means nothing to me now.

He rides out, every other day, for news of my uncle. He smokes so many cigarettes the stain on his scorched forefinger spreads to the finger beside it. Now and then he lets me take a dose of my draught; but he always keeps hold of the bottle.

'Very good,' he says, watching me drink. 'Not much longer, now.

189

Why, how thin and pale you've grown!— and Sue grows sleeker by the hour, like one of Mother Cream's black-faced sows. Get her into your best gown tomorrow, will you?'

I do. I will do anything, now, to bring an end to our long wait. I will pretend fear, and nervousness, and weeping, while he leans to caress or chide me. I will do it, not looking at Sue— or else, looking at her slyly, desperately, to see if she colours or seems ashamed. She never does. Her hands, that I remember sliding upon me, pressing, turning, opening me up— her hands, when they touch me now, are perfectly lifeless and white. Her face is closed. She only waits, as we do, for the coming of the doctors.

We wait— I cannot say how long. Two weeks, or three. At last: 'They come tomorrow,'

R i c h a r d t e l l s m e o n e n i g h t ; a n d t h e n , n e x t m o r n i n g : ' T h e y c o m e t o d a y . Y o u remember?'

I have woken from terrible dreams.

'I cannot see them,' I say. 'You must send them back. They must come another time.'

'Don't be tiresome, Maud.'

He stands and dresses, fastening his collar, his neck-tie. His coat lies neatly on the bed.

'I won't see them!' I say.

'You will,' he answers; 'for in seeing them you bring this thing to completion. You hate it here. Now is our time to leave.'

'I am too nervous.'

He does not answer. He turns, to raise a brush to his head. I lean and seize his coat— find the pocket, the bottle of drops— but he sees, comes quickly to me and plucks it from my hand.

'Oh, no,' he says, as he does it. 'I won't have you half in a dream— or risk you muddling the dose, and so spoiling everything! Oh, no. You must be quite clear in your mind.'

He returns the bottle to the pocket. When I reach again, he dodges.

'Let me have it,' I say. 'Richard, let me have it. One drop only, I swear.' My lips jump about the words. He shakes his head, wipes at the nap of the coat to remove the impression of my fingers.

'Not yet,' he says. 'Be good. Work for it.'

'I cannot! I shan't be calm, without a dose of it.'

'You shall try, for my sake. For our sake, Maud.'

'Damn you!'

'Yes, yes, damn us all, damn us all.' He sighs; then returns to the brushing of his hair. When after a moment I sink back, he catches my eye.

'Why throw such a tantrum, hey?' he says, almost kindly. And then: 'You are calmer, now? Very good. You know what to do, when they see you? Have Sue make you neat, no more than that. Be modest. Weep if you must, a little. You are sure what to say?'

I am, despite myself; for we have planned this, many times. I wait, then nod. 'Of course,' he says. He pats at his pocket, at the bottle of drops. 'Think of London,' he 190

says. 'There are druggists on every street corner, there.'

My mouth trembles in scorn. 'You think,' I say, 'I shall still want my medicine, in London?'

The words sound weak, even to my ears. He turns his head, saying nothing, perhaps suppressing a smile. Then he takes up his pen-knife and stands at the fire and cleans his nails— now and then giving a flick of the blade, to cast slivers of dirt, fastidiously, into the flames.

He takes them first to talk with Sue. Of course, they suppose her his wife, turned mad, thinking herself a servant, speaking in the manner of a maid, keeping to a maid's room.

I hear the creaking of the stairs and floorboards beneath their boots. I hear their voices— low, monotonous— but not their words. Sue's voice I do not hear at all. I sit upon the bed until they come, and then I stand and curtsey. 'Susan,' says Richard quietly. 'My wife's maid.' They nod. I say nothing, yet. But I think my look must be strange. I see them studying me. Richard also watches. Then he comes close.

'A faithful girl,' he says to the doctors. 'Her strength has been sadly over- taxed, these past two weeks.' He makes me walk from the bed to the arm-chair, puts me in the light of the window. 'Sit here,'

he says gently, 'in your mistress's chair. Be calm, now. These gentlemen only wish to ask you a number of trifling questions. You must answer them honestly.'

He presses my hand. I think he does it to reassure or to warn me; then I feel his fingers close about one of mine. I still wear my wedding- ring. He draws it free and holds it, hidden, against his palm.

'Very good,' says one of the doctors, more satisfied now. The other makes notes in a book. I watch him turn a page and, suddenly, long for paper. 'Very good. We have seen your mistress. You do well to think of her comfort and health for— I am sorry to tell you this— we fear she is ill. Very ill indeed. You know she believes her name to be your name, her history one that resembles yours? You know that?'

Richard watches.

'Yes, sir,' I say, in a whisper.

And your name is Susan Smith?'

'Yes, sir.'

And you were maid to Mrs Rivers— Miss Lilly, as was— in her uncle's house, of Briar, before her marriage?'

I nod.

And before that— where was your place? Not with a family named Dunraven, at the supposed address of Whelk Street, Mayfair?'

'No, sir. I never heard of them. They are all Mrs Rivers's fancy.'

I s p e a k , a s a s e r v a n t m i g h t . A n d I n a m e , r e l u c t a n t l y , s o m e o t h e r h o u s e a n d family— some family of Richard's acquaintance, who might be relied on to provide the history we need, if the doctors think to seek them out. We do not think they will, however.

The doctor nods again. And Mrs Rivers,' he says. 'You speak of her "fancy". When did such fancies begin?'

I swallow. 'Mrs Rivers has often seemed strange,' I say quietly. 'The servants at Briar 191

would speak of her as of a lady not quite right, in the brain. I believe her mother was mad, sir.'

'Now, now,' says Richard smoothly, interrupting. 'The doctors don't want to hear the gossip of servants. Go on with your observations, only.'

'Yes, sir,' I say. I gaze at the floor. The boards are scuffed, there are splinters rising from the wood, thick as needles.

'And Mrs Rivers's marriage,' says the doctor. 'How did that affect her?'

'It was that, sir,' I say, 'which made the change in her. Before that time, she had seemed to love Mr Rivers; and we had all at Briar supposed his care, which was'— I catch Richard's eye— 'so good, sir!— we had all supposed it would lift her out of herself. Then, since her wedding- night, she has started up very queer ..."

The doctor looks at his colleague. 'You hear,' he says, 'how well the account matches Mrs Rivers's own? It is quite remarkable!— as if, in making a burden of her life, she seeks to hand that burden to another, better able to bear it. She has made a fiction of herself!' He returns to me. 'A fiction, indeed,' he says thoughtfully. 'Tell me this, Miss Smith: does your mistress care for books? for reading?'

I meet his gaze, but my throat seems to close, or be splintered, like the boards on the floor. I cannot answer. Richard speaks in my behalf. 'My wife,' he says, 'was born to a literary life. Her uncle, who raised her, is a man dedicated to the pursuit of learning, and saw to her education as he might have seen to a son's. Mrs Rivers's first passion was books.'

'There you have it!' says the doctor. 'Her uncle, an admirable gentleman I don't doubt.

But the over-exposure of girls to literature— The founding of women's colleges— '

His brow is sleek with sweat. 'We are raising a nation of brain-cultured women. Your wife's distress, I'm afraid to say, is part of a wider malaise. I fear for the future of our race, Mr Rivers, I may tell you now. And her wedding- night, you say, the start of this most recent bout of insanity? Could that'— he drops his voice meaningfully, and exchanges a glance with the doctor who writes— 'be plainer?' He taps at his lip. 'I saw how she shrank from my touch, when I felt for the pulse at her wrist. I noted, too, that she wears no marriage ring.'

Richard starts into life at the words, and pretends to draw something from his pocket.

They say fortune favours villains.

'Here it is,' he says gravely, holding out the yellow band. 'She put it from her, with a curse.— For she speaks like a servant now, and thinks nothing of mouthing filthy words. God knows where she learned them!' He bites at his lip. 'You might imagine the sensations that produced, sir, in my breast.' He puts his hand to his eyes, and sits heavily upon the bed; then rises, as if in horror. 'This bed!' he says hoarsely. 'Our marriage-bed, I thought it. To think my wife would rather the room of a servant, a pallet of straw— !' He shudders. That's enough, I think. No more. But he is a man in love with his own roguery.

'A wretched case,' says the doctor. 'But we will work on your wife, you may be sure, to shake her of her unnatural fancy— '

'Unnatural?' says Richard. He shudders again. His look grows strange. 'Ah, sir,' he says, 'you don't know all. There is something else. I had hoped to keep it from you. I 192

feel now, I cannot.'

'Indeed?' says the doctor. The other pauses, his pencil raised.

Richard wets his mouth; and all at once I know what he means to say, and quickly turn my face to his. He marks it. He speaks, before I can.

'Susan,' he says, 'you do well to feel shame in behalf of your mistress. You need feel none, however, in behalf of yourself. No guilt attaches to you. You did nothing to invite or encourage the gross attentions my wife, in her madness, attempted to force on you— '

He bites at his hand. The doctors stare, then turn to gaze at me.

'Miss Smith,' says the first, leaning closer, 'is this true?'

I think of Sue. I think of her, not as she must be now, in the room beyond the wall— satisfied to have betrayed me, glad to suppose herself about to return at last to her home, the dark thieves' den, in London. I think of her holding herself above me, her hair let down, You pearl. . .

'Miss Smith?'

I have begun to weep.

'Surely,' says Richard, coming to me, putting his hand heavily upon my shoulder,

'surely these tears speak for themselves? Do we need to name the unhappy passion?

Must we oblige Miss Smith to rehearse the words, the artful poses— the caresses— to which my distracted wife has made her subject? Aren't we gentlemen?'

'Of course,' says the doctor quickly, moving back. 'Of course. Miss Smith, your grief does you credit. You need not fear for your safety, now. You need not fear for the safety of your mistress. Her care will soon be our concern, not yours. Then we shall keep her, and cure her of all her ills. Mr Rivers, you understand— a case such as this— the treatment may well be a lengthy one . . .?'

They rise. They have brought papers, and look for a surface on which to put them out.

Richard clears the dressing- table of brushes and pins and they lay them there, then sign: a paper each. I don't watch them do it, but hear the grinding of the pen. I hear them moving together, to shake each other's hands. The staircase thunders as they go down. I keep in my seat beside the window. Richard stands in the path to the house while they drive off.

Then he comes back. He closes the door. He steps to me and tosses the wedding-ring into my lap. He rubs his hands together and almost capers.

'You devil,' I say, without passion, wiping the tears from my cheek.

He snorts. He moves to the back of my chair and puts his hands to my head, one hand to either side of my face; then tilts it back until our gazes meet. 'Look at me,' he says,

'and tell me, honestly, that you don't admire me.'

'I hate you.'

'Hate yourself, then. We're alike, you and I. More alike than you know. You think the world ought to love us, for the kinks in the fibres of our hearts? The world scorns us.

Thank God it does! There was never a profit to be got from love; from scorn, however, you may twist riches, as filthy water may be wrung from a cloth. You know it is true.

You are like me. I say it again: hate me, hate yourself.'

His hands are warm upon my face, at least. I close my eyes.

193

I say, 'I do.'

Then Sue comes from her room, to knock upon our door. He keeps his pose, but calls for her to enter.

'Look here,' he says when she does, his voice quite changed, 'at your mistress. Don't you think her eyes a little brighter . . .?' We leave next day, for the madhouse.

She comes to dress me, for the final time.

'Thank you, Sue,' I say, in the old soft way, each time she hooks a button or draws a lace. I wear, still, the gown in which I left Briar, that is spotted with mud and river-water. She wears my gown of silk— blue silk, against which the white of her wrists and throat is turned to the colour of cream, and the browns of her hair and eyes are made rich. She has grown handsome. She moves about the room, taking up my linen, my shoes, my brushes and pins, and putting them carefully in bags. Two bags, there are: one destined for London, the other for the madhouse— the first, as she supposes, for herself; the second for me. It is hard to watch her make her choices— to see her frown over a petticoat, a pair of stockings or shoes, to know she is thinking, These will surely be good enough for mad people and doctors. This she ought to take, in case the nights are cool. Now, that and those (the bottle of drops, my gloves) she must have.— I move them, when she leaves me, and place them deep in the other bag.

And one other thing I put with them, that she does not know I keep: the silver thimble, from the sewing-box at Briar, with which she smoothed my pointed tooth.

The coach comes, sooner than I think it will. 'Thank God,' says Richard. He carries his hat. He is too tall for this low and tilting house: when we step outside, he stretches. I have kept to my room so long, however, the day feels vast to me. I walk with Sue's arm gripped in mine, and at the door of the coach, when I must give it up— give it up, for ever!— I think I hesitate.

'Now, now,' says Richard, taking my hand from her. 'No time for sentiment.'

Then we drive. I feel it, as more than a matter of galloping horses and turning wheels.

It is like an undoing of my first journey, with Mrs Stiles, from the madhouse to Briar: I put my face to the window

as the carriage slows, and almost expect to see the house and the mothers I was snatched from. I should remember them still, I know it. But, that house was large.

This one is smaller, and lighter. It has rooms for female lunatics, only. That house was set in bare earth. This one has a bed of flowers beside its door— tall flowers, with tips like spikes.

I fall back in my seat. Richard catches my eye.

'Don't be afraid,' he says.

T hen they take her. He helps her into their hands, and stands before me at the door, looking out.

'Wait,' I hear her say. 'What are you doing?' Then: 'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!'— an odd and formal phrase.

The doctors speak in soothing tones, until she begins to curse; then their voices grow hard. Richard draws back. The floor of the carriage tilts, the doorway rises, and I see her— the two men's hands upon her arms, a nurse gripping her waist. Her cloak is falling from her shoulders, her hat is tilted, her hair is tearing from its pins. Her face is 194

red and white. Her look is wild, already.

Her eyes are fixed on mine. I sit like a stone, until Richard takes my arm and presses, hard, upon my wrist.

'Speak,' he whispers, 'damn you.' Then I sing out, clear, mechanically:

'Oh! My own poor mistress!' Her brown eyes— wide— with that darker fleck. Her tumbling hair. 'Oh! Oh! My heart is breaking!'

The cry seems to ring about the coach, even after Richard has swung closed the door and the driver whipped the horse into life and turned us. We do not speak. Beside Richard's head is a lozenge-shaped window of milky glass, and for a moment I see her again: still struggling, lifting her arm to point or reach— Then the road makes a dip.

There come trees. I take off my wedding-ring and throw it to the floor. I find, in my bag, a pair of gloves, and draw them on. Richard watches my trembling hands.

'Well— ' he says.

'Don't speak to me,' I say, almost spitting the words. 'If you speak to me, I shall kill you.'

He blinks, and attempts to smile. But his mouth moves strangely and his face, behind his beard, is perfectly white. He folds his arms. He sits, first one way and then another.

He crosses and uncrosses his legs. At length he takes a cigarette from his pocket, and a match, and tries to draw down the carriage window. It will not come. His hands are damp, grow damper, and finally slide upon the glass. 'Damn this!' he cries then. He rises, staggers, beats upon the ceiling for the driver to stop the horse, then fumbles with the key. We have gone no more than a mile or two, but he jumps to the ground and paces, coughs. He puts his hand to the lock of springing hair at his brow, many times. I watch him.

'How like a villain,' I say, when he takes his seat again, 'you are now.'

'And how like a lady, you!' he answers, with a sneer.

Then he turns his face from me, rests his head against the jolting cushion; and pretends, with twitching eye- lids, to sleep.

My own eyes stay open. I gaze through the lozenge of glass at the road we have travelled— a winding red road, made cloudy by dust, like a thread of blood escaping from my heart.

We make part of our journey like this, but then must give up the asylum carriage and take a train. I have never ridden a train before. We wait at a country station. We wait at an inn, since Richard is still afraid that my uncle will have sent out men to watch f o r u s . H e h a s t h e l a n d l o r d p u t u s i n a p r i v a t e r o o m a n d b r i n g m e t e a a n d bread-and-butter. I will not look at the tray. The tea grows brown and cool, the bread curls. He stands at the fire and rattles the coins in his pocket, then bursts out: 'God damn you, do you think I take food for you, for free?' He eats the bread-and-butter himself. 'I hope I see my money soon,' he says. 'God knows I need it, after three months with you and your uncle, doing what he calls a gentleman's labour, receiving wages that would barely keep a proper gentleman in cuffs. Where's that damn porter?

How much do they mean to swindle me of for our tickets, I wonder?'

At last a boy appears to fetch us and take our bags. We stand on the station platform and study the rails. They shine, as if polished.

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In time they begin to purr, and then— unpleasantly, like nerves in failing teeth— to hum. The hum becomes a shriek. Then the train comes hurtling about the track, a plume of smoke at its head, its many doors unfolding. I keep my veil about my face.

Richard hands a coin to the guard, saying easily: 'You'll see to it, perhaps, that my wife and I are kept quite private, till London?' The guard says he will; and when Richard comes and takes his place in the coach across from me he is more peevish than ever.

'That I must pay a man to think me lewd, so I may sit chastely, with my own little virgin of a wife! Let me tell you now, I am keeping a separate account of the costs of this journey, to charge against your share.'

I say nothing. The train has shuddered, as if beaten with hammers, and now begins to roll upon its tracks. I feel the growing speed of it, and grip the hanging strap of leather until my hand cramps and blisters in its glove.

So the journey proceeds. It seems to me that we must cross vast distances of space.— For you will understand that my sense of distance and space is rather strange.

We stop at a village of red-bricked houses, and then at another, very similar; and then at a third, rather larger. At every station there is what seems to me a press of people clamouring to board, the thud and shake of slamming doors. I am afraid the crowds will overburden the train— perhaps overturn it.

I think, I deserve to be crushed in the wreck of a train; and almost hope they do.

They do not. The engine speeds us onward, then slows, and again there are streets and the spires of churches— more streets and spires than I have yet seen; more houses, and between them a steady traffic of cattle and vehicles and people. London! I think, with a lurch of my heart. But Richard studies me as I gaze, and smiles unpleasantly. 'Your n a t u r a l h o m e , ' h e s a y s . W e s t o p a t t h e s t a t i o n a n d I s e e t h e n a m e o f i t : MAIDENHEAD.

Though we have come so swiftly we have travelled no more than twenty miles, and have another thirty to go. I sit, still gripping the strap, leaning close to the glass; but the station is filled with men and women— the women in groups, the men idly walking; and from

them I shrink. Soon the train gives a hiss, and gathers its bulk, and shudders back into terrible life. We leave the streets of Maidenhead. We pass through trees. Beyond the trees there are open parklands, and houses— some as great as my uncle's, some greater.

Here and there are cottages with pens of pigs, with gardens set with broken sticks for climbing beans, and hung with lines of laundry. Where the lines are full there is laundry hung from windows, from trees, on bushes, on chairs, between the shafts of broken carts— laundry everywhere, drooping and yellow.

I keep my pose and watch it all. Look, Maud, I think. Here is your future. Here's all your liberty, unfolding like a bolt of cloth . . .

I wonder if Sue is very much injured. I wonder what kind of place they have her in, now.

Richard tries to see beyond my veil. 'You're not weeping, are you?' he says. 'Come on, don't trouble over it still.'

I say, 'Don't look at me.'

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'Should you rather be back at Briar, with the books? You know you should not. You know you have wanted this. You'll forget, soon, the manner in which you got it.

Believe me, I know these things. You must only be patient. We must both be patient now. We have many weeks to pass together, before the fortune becomes ours. I am sorry I spoke harshly, before. Come, Maud. We shall be at London, soon. Things will seem different to you there, I assure you ..."

I do not answer. At last, with a curse, he gives it up. The day is darkening now— or rather, the sky is darkening, as we draw close to the city. There come streaks of soot upon the glass. The landscape is slowly growing meaner. The cottages have begun to be replaced by wooden dwellings, some with broken windows and boards. The gardens are giving way to patches of weed; soon the weed gives way to ditches, the ditches to dark canals, to dreary wastes of road, to mounds of stones or soil or ashes.

Still, Even ashes, I think, are a part of your freedom— and I feel, despite myself, the kindling in me of a sort of excitement. But then, the excitement becomes unease. I have always supposed London a place, like a house in a park, with walls: I've imagined it rising, straight and clean and solid. I have not

supposed it would sprawl so brokenly, through villages and suburbs. I've believed it complete: but now, as I watch, there come stretches of wet red land, and gaping trenches; now come half-built houses, and half-built churches, with glassless windows and slateless roofs and jutting spars of wood, naked as bones.

Now there are so many smuts upon the glass they show like faults in the fabric of my v e i l . T h e t r a i n b e g i n s t o r i s e . I d o n ' t l i k e t h e s e n s a t i o n . W e b e g i n t o c r o s s streets— grey streets, black streets— so many monotonous streets, I think I shall never be able to tell them apart! Such a chaos of doors and windows, of roofs and chimneys, of horses and coaches and men and women! Such a muddle of hoardings and garish signs: Spanish blinds.— Lead Coffins.— O i l T a l l o w & C o t t o n W a s t e . W o r d s , everywhere. Words, six- feet high. Words, shrieking and bellowing: Leather and Grindery.— S h o p T o L e t . — B r o u g h a m s & N e a t Carriages.— Paper-Stainers.— Supported Entirely.— To Let!— To Let!— By Voluntary Subscription.—

There are words, all over the face of London. I see them, and cover my eyes. When I look again we have sunk: brick walls, thick with soot, have risen about the train and cast the coach in gloom. Then comes a great, vast, vaulting roof of tarnished glass, hung about with threads of smoke and steam and fluttering birds. We shudder to a frightful halt. There is the shrieking of other engines, a thudding of doors, the pressing passage— it seems to me— of a thousand, thousand people.

'Paddington terminus,' says Richard. 'Come on.'

He moves and speaks more quickly here. He is changed. He does not look at me— I wish he would, now. He finds a man to take our bags. We stand in a line of people— a queue, I know the word— and wait for a carriage— a hackney, I know that word also, from my uncle's books. One may kiss in a hackney; one may take any kind of liberty with one's lover; one tells one's driver to go about the Regent's Park. I know London.

London is a city of opportunities fulfilled. This place, of jostling and clamour, I do not know. It is thick with purposes I do not understand. It is marked with words, but I 197

cannot read it. The regularity, the numberless repetition, of

brick, of house, of street, of person— of dress, and feature, and expression— stuns and exhausts me. I stand at Richard's side and keep my arm in his. If he should leave me— ! A whistle is blown and men, in dark suits— ordinary men, gentlemen— pass by us, running-We take our place in the hackney at last, and are jerked out of the terminus into choked and filthy roads. Richard feels me tense. 'Are you startled, by the streets?' he says. 'We must pass through worse, I'm afraid. What did you expect? This is the city, where respectable men live side by side with squalor. Don't mind it. Don't mind it at all. We are going to your new home.'

'To our house,' I say. I think: There, with the doors and windows shut, I will grow calm. I will bathe, I will rest, I will sleep.

'To our house,' he answers. And he studies me a moment longer, then reaches across me. 'Here, if the sight troubles you— ' He pulls down the blind.

And so once again we sit, and sway to the motion of a coach, in a kind of twilight; but we are pressed about, this time, by all the roar of London. I do not see it when we go about the park. I do not see what route the driver takes, at all: perhaps I should not know it, if I did, though I have studied maps of the city, and know the placing of the Thames. I cannot say, when we stop, how long we have driven for— so preoccupied am I with the desperate stir of my senses and heart. Be bold, I am thinking. God damn you, Maud! You have longed for this. You have given up Sue, you have given up everything, for this. Be bold!

Richard pays the man, then returns for our bags. 'From here we must walk,' he says. I climb out, unassisted, and blink at the light— though the light here is dim enough: we have lost the sun, and the sky is anyway thick with cloud— brown cloud, like the dirty fleece of a sheep. I have expected to find myself at the door to his house, but there are no houses here: we have entered streets that appear to me unspeakably shabby and mean— are hedged on one side by a great, dead wall, on the other by the lime-stained arches of a bridge. Richard moves off. I catch at his arm.

'Is this right?' I say.

'Quite right,' he answers. 'Come, don't be alarmed. We cannot live grandly, yet. And we must make our entrance the quiet way, that's all.'

'You are still afraid that my uncle may have sent men, to watch usr

He again moves off. 'Come. We can talk soon, indoors. Not here. Come on, this way.

Pick up your skirts.'

He walks quicker than ever now, and I am slow to follow. When he sees me hanging back he holds our bags in one hand and, with the other, takes my wrist. 'Not far, now,'

he says, kindly enough; his grip is tight, however. We leave that road and turn into another: here I can see the stained and broken face of what I take to be a single great house, but which is in fact the rear of a terrace of narrow dwellings. The air smells riverish, rank. People watch us, curiously. That makes me walk faster. Soon we turn again, into a lane of crunching cinders. Here there are children, in a group: they are standing idly about a bird, which lurches and hops. They have tied its wings with 198

twine. When they see us, they come and press close. They want money, or to tug at my sleeve, my cloak, my veil. Richard kicks them away. They swear for a minute, then return to the bird. We take another, dirtier, path— Richard all the time gripping me harder, walking faster, faster, certain of his way. 'We are very close now,' he says.

'Don't mind this filth, this is nothing. All London is filthy like this. Just a little further, I promise. And then you may rest.'

And at last, he slows. We have reached a court, with a thick mud floor and nettles.

The walls are high, and running with damp. There is no open route from here, only two or three narrow covered passages, filled with darkness. Into one of these he makes to draw me, now; but, so black and foul is it, I suddenly hesitate, and pull against his grip.

'Come on,' he says, turning round, not smiling.

'Come to where?' I ask him.

'To your new life, that has waited for you to start it, too long. To our house. Our housekeeper expects us. Come, now.— Or shall I leave you here?'

His voice is tired, hard. I look behind me. I see the other passages, but the muddy path he has led me down is hidden— as if the glistening walls have parted to let us come, then closed to trap me.

What can I do? I cannot go back, alone, to the children, the labyrinth of lanes, the street, the city. I cannot go back to Sue. I am not meant to. Everything has been impelling me here, to this dark point. I must go forward, or cease to exist. I think again of the room that is waiting for me: of the door, with its key that will turn; of the bed, on which I shall lie and sleep, and sleep—

I hesitate, one second more; then let him draw me into the passage. It is short, and ends with a flight of shallow stairs, leading downwards; and these, in turn, end at a door, on which he knocks. From beyond the door there comes at once the barking of a dog, then soft, quick footsteps, a grinding bolt. The dog falls silent. The door is opened, by a fair- haired boy— I suppose, the housekeeper's boy. He looks at Richard and nods.

'All right?' he says.

'All right,' answers Richard. 'Is Aunty home? Here's a lady, look, come to stay.'

The boy surveys me, I see him squinting to make out the features behind my veil.

Then he smiles, nods again, draws back the door to let us pass him; closes it tightly at our backs.

The room beyond is a kind of kitchen— I suppose, a servants' kitchen, for it is small, and windowless, dark and unwholesome, and chokingly hot: there is a good fire lit, and one or two smoking lamps upon a table and— perhaps, after all, these are the grooms' quarters— a brazier in a cage, with tools about it. Beside the brazier is a pale man in an apron who, on seeing us come, sets down some fork or file and wipes his hands and looks me over, frankly. Before the fire sit a young woman and a boy: the girl fat- faced, red-haired, also watching me freely; the boy sallow and scowling, chewing with broken teeth on a strip of dry meat, and dressed— I notice this, even in my confusion— in an extraordinary coat, that seems pieced together from many varieties of fur. He holds, between his knees, a squirming dog, his hand about its jaws 199

to keep it from barking. He looks at Richard and then at me. He surveys my coat and gloves and bonnet. He whistles.

'What price them togs,' he says.

Then he flinches as, from another chair— a rocking chair, that creaks as it tilts— a white- haired woman leans to strike him. I suppose her the housekeeper. She has watched me, more closely and more eagerly than any of the others. She holds a bundle: now she puts it down and struggles from her seat, and the bundle gives a shudder. This is more astonishing than the lighted brazier, the coat of fur— it is a sleeping, swollen- headed baby in a blanket.

I look at Richard. I think he will speak, or lead me on. But he has taken his hand from me and stands with folded arms, very leisurely. He is smiling, but smiling oddly.

Everyone is silent. No-one moves save the white- haired woman. She has left her chair and comes about the table. She is dressed in taffeta, that rustles. Her face has a blush, and shines. She comes to me, she stands before me, her head weaves as she tries to catch the line of my features. She moves her mouth, wets her lips. Her gaze is still c l o s e a n d t e r r i b l y e a g e r . W h e n s h e r a i s e s h e r b l u n t r e d h a n d s t o m e , I flinch.— 'Richard,' I say. But he still does nothing, and the woman's look, that is so awful and so strange, compels me. I stand and let her fumble for my veil. She puts it back. And then her gaze changes, grows stranger still, when she sees my face. She touches my cheek, as if uncertain it will remain beneath her fingers.

She keeps her eyes on mine, but speaks to Richard. Her voice is thick with the tears of age, or of emotion.

'Good boy,' she says.

C h a p t e r T w e lve

Then there comes a kind of chaos.

The dog barks and leaps, the baby in its blanket gives a cry; another baby, that I have not noticed— it lies in a tin box, beneath the table— begins to cry also. Richard takes off his hat and his coat, sets down our bags, and stretches. The scowling boy drops open his mouth and shows the meat within.

'It ain't Sue,' he says.

'Miss Lilly,' says the woman before me, quietly. 'Ain't you just the darling. Are you very tired, dear? You have come quite a journey'

'It ain't Sue,' says the boy again, a little louder.

'Change of plan,' says Richard, not catching my eye. 'Sue stays °n behind, to take care of a few last points.— Mr Ibbs, how are you, sir?'

'Sweet, son,' the pale man answers. He has taken off his apron and is quieting the dog.

The boy who opened the door to us has

gone. The little brazier is cooling and ticking and growing grey. The red-haired girl 200

bends over the screaming babies with a bottle and a spoon, but is still stealing looks at me.

The scowling boy says, 'Change of plan? I don't get it.' 'You will,' answers Richard.

'Unless— ' He puts his finger against his mouth, and winks.

The woman, meanwhile, is still before me, still describing my face with her hands, telling off my features as if they were beads upon a string. 'Brown eyes,' she says, beneath her breath; her breath is sweet as sugar. 'Pink lips, two pouters. Nice and dainty at the chin. Teeth, white as china. Cheeks— rather soft, I dare say? Oh!'

I have stood, as if in a trance, and let her murmur; now, feeling her fingers flutter against my face, I start away from her.

'How dare you?' I say. 'How dare you speak to me? How dare you look at me, any of you? And you— ' I go to Richard and seize his waistcoat. 'What is this? Where have you brought me to? What do they know of Sue, here?'

'Hey, hey,' calls the pale man mildly. The boy laughs. The woman looks rueful.

'Got a voice, don't she?' says the girl.

'Like the blade on a knife,' says the man. 'That clean.'

R ichard meets my gaze, then looks away. 'What can I say?' He shrugs. 'I am a villain.'

'Damn your attitudes now!' I say. 'Tell me what this means. Whose house is this? Is it yours?'

'Is it his!' The boy laughs harder, and chokes on his meat.

'John, be quiet, or I'll thrash you,' says the woman. 'Don't mind him, Miss Lilly, I implore you now, don't!'

I can feel her wringing her hands, but do not look at her. I keep my eyes upon Richard.

'Tell me,' I say.

'Not mine,' he answers at last.

'Not ours?' He shakes his head. 'Whose, then? Where, then?'

He rubs at his eye. He is tired. 'It is theirs,' he says, nodding to the woman, the man.

'Their house, in the Borough.'

The Borough ... I have heard him say the name, once or twice before. I stand for a moment in silence, thinking back across his

words; then my heart drops. 'Sue's house,' I say. 'Sue's house, of thieves.'

'Honest thieves,' says the woman, creeping closer, 'to those that know us!'

I think: Sue's aunt! I was sorry for her, once. Now I turn and almost spit at her. 'Will you keep from me, you witch?' The kitchen grows silent. It seems darker, too, and close. I still have Richard gripped by the waistcoat. When he tries to pull away, I hold him tighter. My thoughts are leaping, fast as hares. I think, He has married me, and has brought me here, as a place to be rid of me. He means to keep my money for himself. He means to give them some trifling share for the killing of me, and Sue— even in the midst of my shock and confusion, my heart drops again, as I think it— Sue they will free. Sue knows it all.

'You shan't do it!' I say, my voice rising. 'You think I don't know what you mean to do?

All of you? What trick?'

'You don't know anything, Maud,' he answers. He tries to draw my hands from his coat. I will not let him. I think, if he does that, they will certainly kill me. For a second 201

we struggle. Then: 'The stitching, Maud!' he says. He plucks my fingers free. I catch at his arm instead.

'Take me back,' I say. I say it, thinking: Don't let them see you are afraid! But my voice has risen higher and I cannot make it firm. 'Take me back, at once, to the streets and hackneys.'

He shakes his head, looks away. 'I can't do it.'

'Take me now. Or I go, alone. I shall make my way— I saw the route! I studied it, hard!— and I shall find out a— a policeman!'

The boy, the pale man, the woman and girl, all flinch or wince. The dog barks.

'Now now,' says the man, stroking his moustache. 'You must be careful how you talk, dear, in a house like this.'

'It is you who must be careful!' I say. I look from one face to another. 'What is it you think you shall have from this? Money? Oh, no. It is you who must be careful. It is all of you! And you, Richard— you— who must be most careful of all, should I once find a policeman and begin to talk.'

But Richard looks and says nothing. 'Do you hear me?' I cry.

The man winces again, and puts his finger to his ear as if to clear it of wax. 'Like a blade,' he says, to no-one, to everyone. 'Ain't it?'

'Damn you!' I say. I look wildly about me for a moment, then make a sudden grab at my bag. Richard reaches it first, however, he hooks it with his long leg and kicks it across the floor, almost playfully. The boy takes it up, and holds it in his lap. He produces a knife and begins to pick at the lock. The blade flashes.

Richard folds his arms. 'You see you cannot leave, Maud,' he says simply. 'You cannot go, with nothing.'

He has moved to the door, to stand before it. There are other doors, that lead, perhaps to a street, perhaps only into other dark rooms. I shall never choose the right one. 'I am sorry,' he says.

The boy's knife flashes again. Now, I think, they will kill me. The thought itself is like a blade, and astonishingly sharp. For haven't I willed my life away, at Briar? Haven't I felt it rising from me, and been glad? Now I suppose they mean to kill me; and I am more afraid than I have imagined it possible to be, of anything, anything at all.

You fool, I say to myself. But to them I say: 'You shan't. You shan't!' I run one way, and then another; finally I dart, not for the door at Richard's back, but for the slumbering, swollen- headed baby. I seize it, and shake it, and put my hand to its neck.

'You shan't!' I say again. 'Damn you, do you think I have come so far, for this?' I look at the woman. 'I shall kill your baby first!'— I think I would do it.— 'See, here! I shall stifle it!'

The man, the girl, the boy, look interested. The woman looks sorry. 'My dear,' she says,

'I have seven babies about the place, just now. Make it six, if you want. Make it'— with a gesture to the tin box beneath the table— 'make it five. It is all the same to me. I fancy I am about to give the business up, anyway.'

The creature in my arms slumbers on, but gives a kick. I feel the rapid palpitation of its heart beneath my fingers, and there is a

202

fluttering at the top of its swollen head. The woman still watches. The girl Puts ^er hand to her neck, and rubs. Richard searches in his pocket for a cigarette. He says, as he does it, 'Put the damn child down, Maud, won't you?'

He says it mildly; and I become aware of myself, my hands at a baby's throat. I set the child carefully down upon the table, among the plates and china cups. At once, the boy takes his knife from the lock of my bag and waves it over its head.

'Ha-ha!' he cries. 'The lady wouldn't do it. John Vroom shall have him— lips, nose and ears!'

The girl squeals, as if tickled. The woman says sharply, 'That's enough. Or are all my infants to be worried out of their cradles, into their graves? Fine farm I should be left with then. Dainty, see to little Sidney before he scalds himself, do. Miss Lilly will suppose herself come among savages. Miss Lilly, I can see you're a spirited girl. I expected nothing less. But you don't imagine we mean to hurt you?' She comes to me again. She cannot stand without touching me— now she puts her hand upon me and strokes my sleeve. 'You don't imagine you ain't more welcome here, than anyone?'

I still shake, a little. 'I can't imagine,' I say, pulling myself away from her hands, 'that you mean me any kind of good, since you persist in keeping me here, when I so clearly wish to leave.'

She tilts her head. 'Hear the grammar in that, Mr Ibbs?' she says. The man says he does. She strokes me again. 'Sit down, my darling. Look at this chair: got from a very grand place, it might be waiting for you. Won't you take off your cloak, and your bonnet? You shall swelter, we keep a very warm kitchen. Won't you slip off your gloves?— Well, you know best.'

I have drawn in my hands. Richard catches the woman's eye. 'Miss Lilly,' he says quietly, 'is rather particular about the fingers. Was made to wear gloves, from an early age'— he lets his voice drop still further, and mouths the last few words in an exaggerated way— 'by her uncle.'

The woman looks sage.

'Your uncle,' she says. 'Now, I know all about him. Made you look at a lot of filthy French books. And did he touch you, dear,

where he oughtn't to have? Never mind it now. Never mind it, here. Better your own uncle than a stranger, I always say.— Oh, now ain't that a shame?'

I have sat, to disguise the trembling of my legs; but have pushed her from me. My chair is close to the fire and she is right, it is hot, it is terribly hot, my cheek is burning; but I must not move, I must think. The boy still picks at the lock. 'French books,' he says, with a snigger. The red-haired girl has the fingers of the baby's hands in her mouth and is sucking on them, idly. The man has come nearer. The woman is still at my side. The light of the fire picks out her chin, her cheek, an eye, a lip. The lip is smooth. She wets it.

I turn my head, but not my gaze. 'Richard,' I say. He doesn't answer. 'Richard!' The woman reaches to me and unfastens the string of my bonnet and draws it from my head. She pats my hair, then takes up a lock of it and rubs it between her fingers.

'Quite fair,' she says, in a sort of wonder. 'Quite fair, like gold almost.'

'Do you mean to sell it?' I say then. 'Here, take it!' I snatch at the lock she has caught 203

up and rip it from its pins. 'You see,' I say, when she winces, 'you cannot hurt me as much as I can hurt myself. Now, let me go.'

She shakes her head. 'You are growing wild, my dear, and spoiling your pretty hair.

Haven't I said? We don't mean to harm you. Here is John Vroom, look; and Delia Warren, that we call Dainty: you shall think them cousins, I hope, in time. And Mr Humphry Ibbs: he has been waiting for you— haven't you, Mr Ibbs? And here am I.

I've been waiting for you, hardest of all. Dear me, how hard it has been.'

She sighs. The boy looks up at her and scowls. 'Jigger me,' he says, 'if I know which way the wind is blowing now.' He nods to me. 'Ain't she meant to be'— he hugs his arms about himself, shows his tongue, lets his eyes roll— 'on a violent ward?'

The woman lifts her arm, and he winks and draws back. 'You watch your face,' she says savagely. And then, gazing gently at me: 'Miss Lilly is throwing in her fortunes with ours. Miss Lilly

don't know her own mind just yet— as who would, in her place? Miss Lilly, I daresay you ain't had a morsel of food in hours. What we got, that will tempt you?' She rubs her hands together. 'Should you care for a mutton chop? A piece of Dutch cheese? A supper of fish? We got a stall on the corner, sells any kind of fish— you name me the breed, Dainty shall slip out, bring it back, fry it up, quick as winking. What shall it be?

We got china plates, look, fit for royalty. We got silver forks— Mr Ibbs, pass me one of them forks. See here, dear. A little rough about the handle, ain't it? Don't mind it, darling. That's where we takes the crest off. Feel the weight of it, though. Ain't them prongs very shapely? There's a Member of Parliament had his mouth about those.

Shall it be fish, dear? Or the

chop?'

She stands, bending to me, with the fork close to my face. I push it aside.

'Do you suppose,' I say, 'I mean to sit and eat a supper with you? With any of you?

Why, I should be ashamed to call you servants! Throw in my fortunes with yours? I should rather be beggared. I should rather die!'

There is a second of silence; then: 'Got a dander,' says the boy. 'Don't she?'

But the woman shakes her head, looks almost admiring. 'Dainty's got a dander,' she answers. 'Why, I've got one myself. Any ordinary girl can have one of them. What a lady has, they call something else. What do they call it, Gentleman?' She says this to Richard, who is leaning tiredly to tug upon the ears of the slavering dog.

'Hauteur,' he answers, not looking up.

'Hauteur,' she repeats.

'Mersee,' says the boy, giving me a leer. 'I should hate, after all, to have mistook it for common bad manners, and punched her.'

He returns to the clasp of my bag. The man watches, and winces. 'Ain't you learned yet,' he says, 'the handling of a lock? Don't prise it, boy, and mash the levers. That's sweet little work. You are just about to bust it.'

The boy makes a final stab with his knife, his face darkening, ruck!' he says.— The first time I have ever heard the word used as

a curse. He takes the point of the blade from the lock and puts it to the leather beneath, 204

and before I can cry out and stop him he slices it, swiftly, in one long gash.

'Well, that's like you,' says the man complacently.

He has taken out a pipe, and lights it. The boy puts his hands to the slit in the leather. I watch him do it and, though my cheek is still burning from the heat of the fire, I grow cold. The cutting of the bag has shocked me, more than I can say. I begin to tremble.

'Please,' I say. 'Please give me back my things. I shall not trouble about the policeman, if you will only give back what is mine, and let me go.'

I suppose my voice has some new, piteous note to it; for now they all turn their heads and study me, and the woman comes close again and again strokes my hair.

'Not frightened, still?' she says amazedly. 'Not frightened, of John Vroom? Why, he is just being playful.— John, how dare you? Put your knife away and pass me Miss Lilly's bag.— There. Are you sorry for it, dear? Why, it's a creased old thing, that looks like it ain't been used in fifty years. We shall get you a proper one. Shan't we, though!'

The boy makes a show of grumbling but gives up the bag; and when the woman hands it to me I take it and hug it. There are tears, rising in my throat.

'Boo-hoo,' says the boy in disgust, when he sees me swallow. He leans and leers at me again. 'I liked you better,' he says, 'when you was a chair.'

I am sure he says that. The words bewilder me, and I shrink away. I twist to look at Richard. 'Please, Richard,' I say. 'For God's sake, isn't it enough to have tricked me?

How can you stand so coolly while they torment me?'

He holds my gaze, stroking his beard. Then he says to the woman: 'Haven't you a quieter place, for her to sit in?'

'A quieter place?' she answers. 'Why, I have a room made ready. I only supposed Miss Lilly should like to warm her face first down here. Should you like to come up, dear, now? Make your hair neat? Wash your hands?'

'I should like to be shown to the street, and a hackney,' I answer. 'Only that, only that.'

'Well, we shall put you at the window; and you shall see the street from there. Come up, my darling. Let me take that old bag.— Want to keep it? All right. Ain't your grip a strong one! Gentleman, you come along, too, why don't you? You'll take your old room, at the top?'

'I will,' he answers, 'if you'll have me. For the wait.'

They exchange a glance. She has put her hands upon me and, in drawing from her grasp, I have risen. Richard comes and stands close. I shrink from him, too, and between them— as a pair of dogs might menace a sheep into a pen— they guide me from the kitchen, through one of the doors, towards a staircase. Here it is darker and cooler, and I feel the draught perhaps of a street-door, and slow my steps; but I think, too, of what the woman has said, about the window: I imagine I might call from it, or drop from it— or fling myself from it— should they try to hurt me. The staircase is narrow, and bare of carpet; here and there, on the steps, are chipped china cups half- filled with water, holding floating wicks, casting shadows.

'Lift your skirts, dear, above the flames,' says the woman, going up before me.

Richard comes, very close, behind.

At the top there are doors, all shut: the woman opens the first, and shows me through it to a small square room. A bed, a wash- hand stand, a box, a chest of drawers, a 205

horse- hair screen— and a window, to which I instantly cross. It is narrow, and has a bleached net scarf hung before it. The hasp has been broken long ago: the sashes are fixed together with nails. The view is of a slip of muddy street, a house with ointment-coloured shutters with heart-shaped holes, a wall of brick, with loops and spirals marked upon it in yellow chalks.

I stand and study it all, my bag still clutched to me, but my arms growing heavy. I hear Richard pause, then climb a second set of stairs; then he walks about the room above my head. The woman crosses to the wash- hand stand and pours a little water from the jug mto the bowl. Now I see my mistake, in coming so quickly to the window: for she stands between me and the door. She is stout, and her arms are thick. I think I might push her aside, however, if I was to surprise her.

Perhaps she is thinking the same thing. Her hands are hovering about the wash- hand stand, her head is tilted, but she is watching me, in the same close, eager, half- awed, half- admiring way as before.

'Here's scented soap,' she says. 'And here's a comb. Here's a hairbrush.' I say nothing.

'Here's a towel for your face. Here's eau-de-Cologne.' She draws the stopper from the bottle and the liquid slops. She comes to me, her wrist bared and made wet with a sickening perfume. 'Don't you care,' she says, 'for lavender?'

I have stepped away from her, and look at the door. From the kitchen, the boy's voice comes very clearly: 'You tart!' 'I don't care,' I say, taking another step, 'to be tricked.'

She steps, too. 'What trickery, darling?'

'Do you think I meant to come here? Do you think I mean to stay?'

'I think you are only startled. I think you ain't quite yourself.' 'Not quite myself?

What's myself to you? Who are you, to say how I might or might not be?'

At that, her gaze falls. She draws her sleeve over her wrist, returns to the wash- hand stand, touches again the soap, the comb, the brush and towel. Downstairs, a chair is drawn across the floor, something is thrown or falls, the dog barks. Upstairs, Richard walks, coughs, mutters. If I am to run, I must do it now. Which way shall I go? Down, down, the way I have come. Which was the door, at the bottom, that they led me through?— the second, or the first? I am not sure. Never mind, I think. Go now! But I do not. The woman lifts her face, catches my eye, I hesitate; and in the moment of that hesitation Richard crosses his floor and steps heavily down the stairs. He comes into the room. He has a cigarette behind his ear. He has rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and his beard is dark with water.

He closes the door, and locks it. 'Take your cloak off, Maud,' he says. I think: He is going to strangle me.

T keep my cloak quite fastened, and move backwards, slowly, from him and from the woman, back to the window. I will

ash it with my elbow if I must. I will shriek into the street. Richard watches me and sighs. He makes his eyes wide. 'You need

t' he says, 'look so like a rabbit. Do you think I would bring you all this way, to hurt you?'

'And do you think,' I answer, 'I will trust you not to? You told me vourself, at Briar, what lengths you will go to, for money's sake. I wish I had listened harder, then! Tell 206

me now you don't mean to cheat me of all my fortune. Tell me you shan't get it, through Sue. I suppose you will fetch her, after some slight delay. She will be cured, I suppose.' My heart contracts. 'Clever Sue. Good girl.'

'Shut up, Maud.'

'Why? So you may kill me in silence? Go on and do it. Then live with the deed upon your conscience. I suppose you have one?'

'Not one,' he says, quickly and lightly, 'that would be troubled by the murder of you, I assure you.' He presses his fingers to his eyes. 'Mrs Sucksby, however, would not like it.'

'Her,' I say, with a glance at the woman. She is still gazing at the soap, the brush, not speaking. 'You do everything, at her word?'

' E v e r y t h i n g i n t h i s c a s e . ' H e s a y s i t m e a n i n g f u l l y ; a n d w h e n I h e s i t a t e , n o t understanding, he goes on: 'Listen to me, Maud. The scheme was hers, all of it. From start to finish, hers. And, villain that I am, I am not so great a swindler that I would swindle her of that.'

His face seems honest— but then, it has seemed honest to me before. 'You are lying,' I say.

'No. This is the truth.'

'Her scheme.' I cannot believe it. 'She that sent you to Briar, to my uncle? And before that, to Paris? To Mr Hawtrey?'

'She that sent me to you. No matter all the twisting paths I took to reach you. I might have taken them anyway, and not known what lay at the end of them. I might have passed you by! Perhaps many men have. They have not had Mrs Sucksby, guiding their steps.'

I glance between them. 'She knew of my fortune, then,' I say after a moment. 'So anyone might, I suppose. She knew— who? My uncle? Some servant of the house?'

'She knew you, Maud, you; before almost anyone.'

The woman lifts her eyes to mine again at last, and nods. 'I knew your mother,' she says.

My mother! My hand goes to my throat— a curious thing, for my mother's portrait lies with my jewels, its ribbon fraying, I have not worn it in years. My mother! I came to L o n d o n t o e s c a p e h e r . N o w , a l l a t o n c e , I t h i n k o f h e r g r a v e i n t h e p a r k a t Briar— untended, untrimmed, its white stone creeping with grey.

The woman still watches. I let my hand drop.

'I don't believe you,' I say. 'My mother? What was her name?__

tell me that.'

She begins to look sly. 'I know it,' she says, 'but won't say it just yet. I'll tell you the letter that started it, though. That was a M, like what starts your name. I'll tell you the second letter. That was a I A.— Why, that's like your name, too! The next letter, though, is where they runs off different. That was aR . . .'

She knows it, I know she knows it. How can she? I study her face— her eye, her lip.

They seem familiar to me. What is it? Who is she?

'A nurse,' I say. 'You were a nurse— '

But she shakes her head, almost smiles. 'Now, why should I have been that?'

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'You don't know everything, then!' I say. 'You don't know that I was born in a madhouse!'

'Was you?' she answers quickly. 'Why do you say so?'

'You think I don't remember my own home?'

'I should say you remember the place you lived in when you was little. Why, so do we all. Don't mean we was born there.'

'I was, I know it,' I say.

'You was told it, I expect.'

'Every one of my uncle's servants knows it!'

'They was told it, too, perhaps. Does that make it true? Maybe, j Maybe not.'

As she speaks, she moves from the wash- hand stand to the bed, and sits upon it, slowly and heavily. She looks at Richard. She puts her hand to her ear, and strokes the lobe. With a show of lightness

she says, 'Find your room all right, Gentleman?'— I have guessed at last that this is some name he goes by here, among the thieves. 'Find your room all right?' He nods.

She gazes at me again. 'We keeps that room,' she goes on, in the same light, friendly, dangerous tone, 'for Gentleman to kip in when he comes. A very high, out-of- the-way sort of room it is, I can tell you. Seen all manner of business up there; all sorts of tricks. People been known to come here, rather quiet'— she pretends surprise— 'why, just as you have come!— to spend a day, two days, two weeks, who knows how long?

tucked away up there. Chaps, maybe, that the police would like a word with. Can't be found— do you see?— when they come here. Chaps, girls, kids, ladies After this last word she pauses. She pats the space at her side. 'Won't you sit, dear girl?

Don't care to? Hmm? Perhaps in a minute, then.' The bed has a blanket upon it— a quilt of coloured squares, roughly knitted, and roughly sewn together. She begins to pluck at one of its seams, as if in distraction. 'Now, what was I speaking of?' she says, her eyes on mine.

'Of ladies,' says Richard.

She moves her hand, lifts her finger. 'Of ladies,' she says. 'That's right. Of course, there come so few true ladies, you find they rather sticks in the mind. I remember one, particular, that came— oh, how long ago? Sixteen years? Seventeen? Eighteen . . .?'

She watches my face. 'Seems a long time to you, sweetheart, I dare say. Seems a lifetime, don't it? Only wait, dear girl, till you are my age. The years all run together, then. All run together, like so many tears . . .' She gives a jerk of her head, draws in her breath in a backwards sigh, quick and rueful. She waits. But I have grown still, and cold, and cautious, and say nothing. So then she goes on.

'Well, this particular lady,' she says, 'she wasn't much older than you are now. But wasn't she in a fix? She had got my name from a woman in the Borough, that did girls and their complaints. You know what I am saying, dear? Made girls be poorly, in the regular way, when their poorliness had stopped?' She moves her hand, makes a face. 'I never bothered with that. That was out of my line. My idea was, if it wasn't going to kill you on its way out, then have

it, and sell it; or what's better, give it to me and let me sell it for you!— I mean, to people that want infants, for servants or apprentices, or for regular sons and daughters.

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Did you know, dear girl, that there were people in the world, like that?— and people like me, providing the infants? No?' Again, I make no answer. Again she moves her hand. 'Well, perhaps this lady I am speaking of now didn't know it either, till she came to me. Poor thing. The Borough woman had tried to help her, but she was too far on, she had only got sick. "Where's your husband?" I said, before I took her in. "Where's your ma? Where's all your people? Won't follow you here, will they?" She said they wouldn't. She had no husband— that was her trouble, of course. Her mother was dead.

She had run away from a great, grand house, forty miles from London— up-river, she said ..." She nods, still keeping her eyes on mine. I have grown colder than ever. 'Her father and her brother were looking for her, and seemed likely to just about kill her; but would never find their way to the Borough, she swore it. As for the gentleman that had started her troubles all off, by saying he loved her— well, he had a wife and a kiddie of his own, and had given her up as ruined, and washed his hands.— As gentlemen, of course, will do.

'Which, in a line like mine, you say thank heavens for!' She smiles, almost winks.

'This lady had money. I took her, and put her upstairs. Perhaps I oughtn't to have done it. Mr Ibbs did say I oughtn't to. For I had five or six babies in the house already, and was worn out and fretful— more fretful, through having just borne a little infant of my own, that had died— ' Here her look changes, and she waves a hand before her eyes. 'I won't talk of that, however. I won't talk of that.'

She swallows and looks about her for a moment, as if in search of the fallen threads of her story. Then she seems to find them. The confusion passes from her face, she catches my eye again, then gestures upwards. I glance, with her, at the ceiling. It is a dirty yellow, marked grey with the smoke of lamps.

'Up there we put her,' she says, 'in Gentleman's room. And all day long I would sit beside her and hold her hand, and every night I would hear her turning in her bed, and crying. Nearly broke your

heart. She had no more harm in her than milk does. I supposed she might die. Mr Ibbs supposed it. I think even she supposed it, for she was meant to go another two months, and anyone could see that she wouldn't have the strength to go half that time. But maybe the baby knew it, too— they do know, sometimes. For we only have her here a week, before her water busts and it starts coming. Takes a day and a night. Means to come, all right! Even so, it's a shrimp of a thing, but the lady— being so poorly already— is quite made rags of. Then she hears her baby cry, and picks up her head from her pillow. "What's that, Mrs Sucksby?" she says. "That's your baby, my dear!" I tell her. "My baby?" says she. "Is my baby a boy, or a girl?" "It's a girl," I say. And when she hears that she cries out with all her lungs: "Then God help her! For the world is cruel to girls. I wish she had died, and me with her!'"

She shakes her head, lifts her hands, lets them fall upon her knees. Richard leans against the door. The door has a hook, with a silk dressing- gown hanging from it: he has taken up the belt of the gown and is idly passing it across his mouth. His eyes are on mine, their lids a little lowered; his look is unreadable. From the kitchen below us there comes laughter and a ragged shrieking. The woman listens, gives another of those backwards, rueful sighs.

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'There's Dainty, crying again . . .' She rolls her eyes. 'But how I have run on!— haven't I, Miss Lilly? Not finding me tiresome, dear? Ain't much to hold the interest, perhaps, in these old tales ..."

'Go on,' I say. My mouth is dry, and sticks. 'Go on, about the woman.'

'The lady, what had the little girl? Such a slight little scrap of a girl, she was: fair- haired, blue-eyed— well, they all come out blue, of course; and brown up, later . . .'

She looks, meaningfully, into my own brown eyes. I blink, and colour. But my voice I make flat. 'Go on,' I say again. 'I know you mean to tell me. Tell me now. The woman wished her daughter dead. What then?'

'Wished her dead?' She moves her head. 'So she said. So women do say, sometimes.

And sometimes they mean it. Not her, though. That child was everything to her, and when I said she had much

better give her up to me, than keep her, she grew quite wild. "What, you don't mean to raise her yourself?" I said. "You, a lady, without a husband?" She said she would pass herself off as a widow— meant to go abroad, where no-one knew her, and make her living as a seamstress. "I'll see my daughter married to a poor man before she knows my shame," she said. "I'm through with the quality life." That was her one thought, poor thing, that no amount of sensible talking from me could shake her of: that she would sooner see her girl live low but honest, than give her back to the world of money she come from. She meant to start for France so soon as her strength was all back— and I'll tell you this now, I thought she was a fool; but I would have cut my own arm to help her, she was that simple and good.'

She sighs. 'But it's the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world— ain't it, though! She kept very weak, and her baby hardly grew. Still she talked, all the time, of France, it was all she thought of; until one night, I was putting her into her bed when there comes a knocking on our kitchen door. It's the woman, from the Borough, what first put her on to me: I see her face, and know there's trouble. There is. What do you think? The lady's pa and brother have tracked her down after all. "They're coming," says the woman. "Lord help me, I never meant to tell them where you was; but the brother had a cane, and whipped me." She shows me her back, and it's black.

"They've gone for a coach," she says, "and a bully to help them. I should say you've an hour. Get your lady out now, if she means to go. Try to hide her and they'll pull your house apart!"

'Well! The poor lady had followed me down and heard it all, and started shrieking.

"Oh, I'm done for!" she said. "Oh, if I might only have got to France!"— but the trip downstairs had half-killed her, she was so weak. "They'll take my baby!" she said.

"They'll take her and make her theirs! They'll put her in their great house, they might as well lock her into a tomb! They'll take her, and turn her heart against me— oh! and I haven't even named her! I haven't even named her!" That's all she would say. "I haven't even named her!"— "Name her now, then!" I said, just to make her be quiet.

"Name her quick, while you still got the chance." "I will!" she said.

"But, what name shall I give her?" "Well," I said, "think on: she's to be a lady after all, there's no helping it now. Give her a name that'll fit her. What's your own name? Give 210

her that." Then she looked dark. She said, "My name's a hateful one, I'd sooner curse her before I let anyone call her Marianne— '"

She stops, seeing my face. It has jumped, or twisted— though I have known that the story must reach this point, and have stood, feeling my breath come shorter, my stomach grow sourer, as the tale proceeds. I draw in my breath. 'It's not true,' I say.

'My mother, coming here, without a husband? My mother was mad. My father was a soldier. I have his ring. Look here, look here!'

I have gone to my bag, and I stoop to it, and pull at the torn leather and find the little square of linen that holds my jewels. There is the ring that they gave me in the madhouse: I hold it up. My hand is shaking. Mrs Sucksby studies it and shrugs.

'Rings may be got,' she says, 'from just about anywhere.'

'From him,' I say.

'From anywhere. I could get you ten like that, have them stamped V.R.— Would that make them the Queen's?'

I cannot answer. For what do I know about where rings come from and how they may be stamped? I say again, more weakly, 'My mother coming here, without a husband.

Ill, and coming here. My father— My uncle— ' I look up. 'My uncle. Why should my uncle lie?'

'Why should he tell the truth?' says Richard, coming forward, speaking at last. 'I dare swear his sister was honest enough, before her ruin, and only unlucky; but that's the sort of unluckiness— well, that a man doesn't care to talk about too freely . . .'

I gaze again at the ring. There is a cut upon it I liked, as a girl, to suppose made by a bayonet. Now the gold feels light, as if pierced and made hollow.

'My mother,' I say, doggedly, 'was mad. She bore me, strapped to a table.— No.' I put my hands to my eyes. 'That part, perhaps, was my own fancy. But not the rest. My mother was mad— was kept in the cell of a madhouse; and I was made to be mindful of her example, lest I should follow it.'

'She was certainly, once they had got her, put in a cell,' says Richard; 'as we know girls are, from time to time, for the satisfaction of gentlemen.— Well, no more of that, just yet.' He has caught Mrs Sucksby's eye. 'And you were certainly kept in fear of following her, Maud. And what did that do to you?— save make you anxious, obedient, careless of your own comforts— in other words, exactly fit you to your uncle's fancy?

Didn't I tell you once, what a scoundrel he was?'

'You are wrong,' I say. 'You are wrong, or mistaken.'

'No mistake,' answers Mrs Sucksby.

'You may be lying, even now. Both of you!'

'We may be.' She taps her mouth. 'But you see, dear girl, we ain't.'

'My uncle,' I say again. 'My uncle's servants. Mr Way, Mrs Stiles . . .'

But I say it, and I feel— the ghost of a pressure— Mr Way's shoulder against my ribs, his finger in the crook of my knee: Fancy yourself a lady, do you?— And then, and then, Mrs Stiles's hard hands on my pimpling arms and her breath against my cheek: Why your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash— /

I know it, I know it. I still hold the ring. Now, with a cry, I throw it to the floor— as I once, as a furious child, threw cups and saucers.

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'Damn him!' I say. I think of myself at the foot of my uncle's bed, the razor in my hand, his unguarded eye. Confidence Abused. 'Damn him!' Richard nods. I turn upon him, then. And damn you, with him! You knew this, all along? Why not tell me, at Briar?

Don't you think it would have made me the likelier to go with you? Why wait, and bring me here— to this foul place!— to trick and surprise me?'

'Surprise you?' he says, with a curious laugh. 'Oh, Maud, sweet Maud, we haven't begun to do that.'

I d o n ' t u n d e r s t a n d h i m . I h a r d l y t r y t o . I a m t h i n k i n g s t i l l o f m y u n c l e , m y mother— my mother, ill, ruined, coming here . . . Richard puts his hand to his chin, works his lips. 'Mrs Sucksby,' he says, 'do you keep any drink up here? I find myself rather dry about the

mouth. It's the anticipation, I think, of sensation. I am the same at the casino, at the spinning of the wheel; and at the pantomime, when they're about to let fly the fairies.'

Mrs Sucksby hesitates, then goes to a shelf, opens a box, lifts out a bottle. She produces three short tumblers with gold about the rim- She wipes them, on a fold of her skirt.

'I hope, Miss Lilly, you won't suppose this sherry,' she says, as she pours. The scent of the liquid comes sharp and sickly upon the close air of the room. 'Sherry in a lady's chamber I could never agree to; but a bit of honest brandy, meant for use now and then as a bracer— well, you tell me, where's the harm in that?'

'No harm at all,' says Richard. He holds a glass to me and, so confused am I— so dazed and enraged— I take it at once, and sip it as if it were wine. Mrs Sucksby watches me swallow.

'Got a good mouth for spirits,' she says approvingly.

'Got a mouth for them,' says Richard, 'when they're marked up, Medicine. Hey, Maud?'

I will not answer. The brandy is hot. I sit, at last, upon the edge of the bed and unfasten the cord of my cloak. The room is darker than before: the day is turning into night. The horse- hair screen looms black, and casts shadows. The walls— that are papered here in a pattern of flowers, there in muddy diamonds— are gloomy and close.

The scarf stands out against the window: a fly is caught behind it, and buzzes in hopeless fury against the glass.

I sit with my head in my hands. My brain, like the room, seems hedged about with darkness; my thoughts run, but run uselessly. I do not ask— as I would, I think, if this were some other girl's story and I was only reading it or hearing it told— I do not ask why they have got me here; what they mean to do with me now; how they plan to profit from the cheating and stunning of me. I only rage, still, against my uncle. I only think, over and over: My mother, ruined, shamed, coming here, lying bleeding in a house of thieves. Not mad, not mad . . .

I suppose my expression is a strange one. Richard says, 'Maud, look at me. Don't think, now, of your uncle and your uncle's house. Don't think of that woman, Marianne.'

'I shall think of her,' I answer, 'I shall think of her as I always have: as a fool! But, my father— You said, a gentleman? They have made me out an orphan, all these years.

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Does my father still live? Did he never— ?'

'Maud, Maud,' he says, sighing, moving back to his place at the door. 'Look about you.

Think how you came here. Do you suppose I snatched you from Briar, did the deed I did this morning— ran the risks I have run— so that you might learn family secrets, no more than that?'

'I don't know!' I say. 'What do I know, now? If you will only give me a little time, to think in. If you will only tell me— '

But Mrs Sucksby has come to me, and lightly touches my arm.

'Wait up, dear girl,' she says, very gently. She puts a finger to her lip, half closes one eye. 'Wait up, and listen. You ain't heard all my story. The better part's to come. For there's the lady, you remember, that's been made rags of. There's the father and the brother and the bully, due in one hour's time. There's the baby, and me saying,

"What'll we name her? What about your own name, Marianne?", and the lady saying as how she'd sooner curse her, than call her that. You remember, my dear? "As for being the daughter of a lady," says the poor girl next, "you tell me this: what does being a lady do for you, except let you be ruined? I want her named plain," she says,

"like a girl of the people. I want her named plain." "You name her plain, then," I say— still meaning, as it were, to humour her. "I will," she says. "I will. There was a servant that was kind to me once— kinder than ever my father or my brother was. I want her named for her. I shall call her for her. I shall call her— '"

'Maud,' I say, wretchedly. I have lowered my face again. But when Mrs Sucksby is silent, I lift it. Her look is strange. Her silence is strange. She slowly shakes her head.

She draws in her breath— hesitates, for another second— and then says:

'Susan.'

Richard watches, his hand before his mouth. The room, the house, is still. My thoughts, that have seemed to turn like grinding wheels, now seem to stop. Susan.

Susan. I will not let them see how the word confounds me. Susan. I will not speak. I will not move, for

fear I should stumble or shake. I only keep my eyes upon Mrs Sucksby's face. She takes another, longer sip from her glass of brandy, then wipes her mouth. She comes and sits again, beside me, upon the bed.

'Susan,' she says again. 'That's what the lady named her. Seems a shame to have named that baby for a servant, don't it? So I thought, anyway. But what could I say?

Poor girl, she was quite off her head— still crying, still shrieking, still saying as how her father would come, would take the child, would make her hate her own mother's name. "Oh, how can I save her?" she said. "I would rather anyone got her, than him and my brother! Oh, what can I do? How can I save her? Oh, Mrs Sucksby, I swear to you now, I would rather they took any other poor woman's baby, than mine!'"

Her voice has risen. Her cheek is flushed. A pulse beats, briefly— very fast— in the lid of her eye. She puts her hand to it, then drinks again, and again wipes her mouth.

'That's what she said,' she says, more quietly. 'That's what she said. And as she says it, all the infants that are lying about the house seem to hear her, and all start up crying at once. They all sound the same, when you ain't their mother. They all sounded the same to her, anyway. I had got her to the stairs, just outside that door'— she tilts her 213

head, Richard shifts his pose and the door gives a creak— 'and now, she stops. She looks at me, and I see what she's thinking, and my heart goes cold. "We can't!" I say.

"Why can't we?" she answers. "You have said yourself, my daughter shall be brought up a lady. Why not let some other little motherless girl have that, in her place— poor thing, she shall have the grief of it, too! But I swear, I'll settle a half my fortune on her; and Susan shall have the rest. She shall have it, if you'll only take her for me now, and bring her up honest, and keep her from knowing about her inheritance till she has grown up poor and can feel the worth of it! Don't you have," she says, "some motherless baby we can give to my father in Susan's place? Don't you? Don't you?

For God's sake, say you do! There's fifty pounds in the pocket of my gown. You shall have it!— I shall send you more!— if you'll only do this thing for me, and not tell a living soul you've done it.'"

Perhaps there is movement in the room below, in the street— I do not know, I do not hear it if there is. I keep my gaze on Mrs Sucksby's flushed face, on her eyes, her lips.— 'Now, here was a thing,' she is saying, 'to be asked to do. Wouldn't you say, dear girl? Here was a thing, all right. I think I never thought harder or quicker before in all my life. And what I said at last was: "Keep your money. Keep your fifty pounds. I don't want it. What I want, is this: Your pa is a gentleman, and gents are tricky. I'll keep your baby, but I want for you to write me out a paper, saying all you mean to do, and signing it, and sealing it; and that makes it binding." "I'll do it!" she says, straight off. "I'll do it!" And we come in here, and I fetch her a bit of paper and ink, and she sets it all down— just as I have told you, that Susan Lilly is her own child, though left with me, and that the fortunes are to be cut, and so on— and she folds it and seals it with the ring off her finger, and puts on the front that it ain't to be opened till the day her daughter turns eighteen. Twenty-one, she wanted to make it: but my mind was running ahead, even as she was writing, and I said it must be eighteen— for we oughtn't to risk the girls taking husbands, before they knew what was what.' She smiles. 'She liked that. She thanked me for it.

And then, no sooner had she sealed it than Mr Ibbs sends up a cry: there's a coach, pulled up at his shop door, with two gents— an old one, and a younger— getting out, and with them, a bully with a club. Well! The lady runs shrieking to her room and I stand, tearing the hair out of my head. Then I go to the cribs, and I fetch up this one particular baby that is there— a girl, same size as the other, looks to turn out fair, like her— and I carry her upstairs. I said, "Here! Take her quick, and be kind to her! Her n a m e ' s M a u d ; a n d t h a t ' s a n a m e f o r a l a d y a f t e r a l l . R e m e m b e r y o u r w o r d . "

"Remember yours!" the poor girl cries; and she kisses her own baby, and I take it, and bring it down and lay it in the empty cot. . .'

She shakes her head. 'Such a trifling little thing it was to do!' she says.'— And done in a minute. Done, while the gentlemen are still hammering at the door. "Where is she?"

they're crying. "We know you've got her!" No stopping them, then. Mr Ibbs lets them in, they fly through the house like furies— see me and knock me down, next thing I know, there's the poor lady being dragged downstairs by her pa— her gown all flapping, her shoes undone, the mark of her

brother's stick on her face— and there's you, dear girl— there's you in her arms, and 214

nobody thinking you was anyone's but hers.— Why should they? Too late to change it, then. She gave me one quick look as her father took her down, and that was all; I fancy she watched me, though, from the window of the coach. But if she was ever sorry she done it, I can't tell you. I dare say she thought often of Sue; but no more than— Well, no more than she ought.'

She blinks and turns her head. She has placed her glass of brandy upon the bed between us; the seams in the quilt keep it from spilling. Her hands she has clasped: she is stroking the knuckles of one with the blunt red thumb of the other. Her foot in its slipper goes tap upon the floor. She has not taken her eyes from my face, all the time she has spoken, until now.

My own eyes I close. My hands I place before them, and I gaze into the darkness that is made by my palms. There is a silence. It lengthens. Mrs Sucksby leans closer.

'Dear girl,' she murmurs. 'Won't you say a word to us?' She touches my hair. Still I will not speak or move. Her hand falls. 'I can see this news've dashed your spirits, rather,' she says. Perhaps she gestures then to Richard, for he comes and squats before me.

'You understand, Maud,' he says, trying to see about my fingers, 'what Mrs Sucksby has told you? One baby becomes another. Your mother was not your mother, your uncle not your uncle. Your life was not the life that you were meant to live, but Sue's; and Sue lived yours ..."

They say that dying men see, played before their eyes with impossible swiftness, the show of their lives. As Richard speaks, I see mine: the madhouse, my baton of wood, the gripping gowns of Briar, the string of beads, my uncle's naked eyes, the books, the books ... The show flickers and is gone, is lost and useless, like the gleam of a coin in murky water. I shudder, and Richard sighs. Mrs Sucksby shakes her head and tuts. But, when I show them my face they both start back. I am not weeping, as they suppose. I am laughing— I am gripped with a terrible laughter-— and my look must be ghastly.

'Oh, but this,' I think I say, 'is perfect! This is all I have longed for! Why do you stare?

What are you gazing at? Do you suppose a girl is sitting here? That girl is lost! She has been drowned! She is lying, fathoms deep. Do you think she has arms and legs, with flesh and cloth upon them? Do you think she has hair? She has only bones, stripped white! She is as white as a page of paper! She is a book, from which the words have peeled and drifted— '

I try to take a breath; and might as well have water in my mouth: I draw at the air, and it does not come. I gasp, and shake and gasp again. Richard stands and watches.

'No madness, Maud,' he says, with a look of distaste. 'Remember. You have no excuse for it now.' 'I have excuse,' I say, 'for anything! Anything!' 'Dear girl— ' says Mrs Sucksby. She has caught up her tumbler of liquor and is waving it close to my face.

'Dear girl— ' But I shudder with laughter still— a hideous laughter— and I jerk, as a fish might jerk on the end of a line. I hear Richard curse; then I see him go to my bag and grope inside it, bring out my bottle of medicine: he lets the liquid drop, three times, into the glass of brandy, then seizes my head and presses the glass to my lips. I taste it, then swallow and cough. I put my hands to my mouth. My mouth grows numb.

I close my eyes again. I do not know how long I sit, but at length I feel the blanket 215

that covers the bed come against my shoulder and cheek. I have sunk upon it. I lie— still twitching, from time to time, in what feels like laughter; and again Richard and Mrs Sucksby stand, in silence, and watch me.

Presently, however, they come a little nearer. 'Now,' says Mrs Sucksby softly, 'are you better, darling?' I do not answer. She looks at Richard. 'Oughtn't we to go, and let her sleep?'

'Sleep be damned,' he answers. 'I still believe she thinks we have brought her here for her own convenience.' He comes, and taps my face. 'Open your eyes,' he says.

I say, 'I have no eyes. How could I? You have taken them from me.'

He catches hold of one of my lids and pinches it hard. 'Open your damn eyes!' he says.

'That's better. Now, there is a little more

for you to know— just a little more, and then you may sleep. Listen to me. Listen!

Don't ask me, how you are meant to, I shall cut the fucking ears off the sides of your head if you do. Yes, I see you hear that. Do you feel this, also?' He strikes me. 'Very good.'

The blow is not so hard as it might have been: Mrs Sucksby has seen him lift his arm and tried to check it.

'Gentleman!' she says, her cheek growing dark. 'No call for that. No call at all. Hold your temper, can't you? I believe you've bruised her. Oh, dear girl.'

She reaches towards my face. Richard scowls. 'She ought to be grateful,' he says, straightening, putting back his hair, 'that I have not done worse, any time in the past three months. She ought to know I will do it again, and count it nothing. Do you hear me, Maud? You have seen me at Briar, a sort of gentleman. I make a holiday from gallantry, however, when I come here. Understand?'

I lie, nursing my cheek, my eyes on his, saying nothing. Mrs Sucksby wrings her hands. He takes the cigarette from behind his ear, puts it to his mouth, looks for a match.

'Go on, Mrs Sucksby,' he says as he does it. 'Tell the rest. As for you, Maud: listen hard, and know at last what your life was lived for.'

'My life was not lived,' I say in a whisper. 'You have told me, it was a fiction.'

'Well'— he finds a match, and strikes it— 'fictions must end. Hear now how yours is to.'

'It has ended already,' I answer. But his words have made me cautious. My head is thick with liquor, with medicine, with shock; but not so thick that I cannot, now, begin to be fearful of what they will tell me next, how they plan to keep me, what they mean to keep me for ...

Mrs Sucksby sees me grow thoughtful, and nods. 'Now you start to get it,' she says.

'You are starting to see. I got the lady's baby and, what's better, I got the lady's word.— The word's the thing, of course. The word's the thing with the money in— ain't it?' She smiles, touches her nose. Then she leans a little closer. 'Like to see it?' she says, in a different sort of voice. 'Like to see the lady's word?'

She waits. I do not answer, but she smiles again, moves from me, glances at Richard, then turns her back to him and fumbles for a second with the buttons of her gown. The taffeta rustles. When the bodice is part-way open she reaches inside— reaches, it 216

seems to me, into her very bosom, her very heart— and then draws out a folded paper.

'Kept this close,' she says, as she brings it to me, 'all these years. Kept this closer than gold! Look, here.'

The paper is folded like a letter, and bears a tilting instruction: To Be Opened on the Eighteenth Birthday of My Daughter, Susan Lilly.— I see that name, and shudder, and reach, but she holds it jealously and, like my uncle— not my uncle, now!— with an antique book, won't let me take it; she lets me touch it, however. The paper is warm, from the heat of her breast. The ink is brown, the folds furred and discoloured. The seal is quite unbroken. The stamp is my mother's— Sue's mother's, I mean; not mine, not mine—

M.L.

'You see it, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby says. The paper trembles. She draws it back to herself, with a miser's gesture and look— lifts it to her face and puts her lips to it, then turns her back and restores it to its place inside her gown. As she buttons her dress, she glances again at Richard. He has been watching, closely, curiously; but says nothing.

I speak, instead. 'She wrote it,' I say. My voice is thick, I am giddy. 'She wrote it. They took her. What then?'

Mrs Sucksby turns. Her gown is closed and perfectly smooth again, but she has her h a n d u p o n t h e b o d i c e , a s i f n u r s i n g t h e w o r d s b e n e a th. 'The lady?' she says, distractedly. 'The lady died, dear girl.' She sniffs, and her tone changes. 'Bust me, however, if she didn't linger on another month before she done it! Who would have thought? That month was against us. For now her pa and her brother, having got her home, made her change her will.— You can guess what to. No penny to go to the daughter— meaning you, dear girl, so far as they knew— till the daughter marries.

There's gentlemen for you— ain't it? She sent me a note to tell me, by a nurse. They'd got her into the madhouse by then, and you alongside her— well, that soon finished her off. It was a puzzle to her, she said, how things might turn out now; but she took her consolation from the

thought of my honesty. Poor girl!' She seems almost sorry.'— That was her slip.'

Richard laughs. Mrs Sucksby smooths her mouth, and begins to look crafty. 'As for me,' she says, '— well, I had seen from the first that the only puzzle was, how to get the whole of the fortune when I was only due to have half. My comfort must be, that I had eighteen years for figuring it out in. I thought many times of you.'

I turn my face. 'I never asked for your thoughts,' I say. 'I don't want them now.'

'Ungrateful, Maud!' says Richard. 'Here has Mrs Sucksby been, plotting so hard in your behalf, so long. Another girl— don't girls seek only to be the heroines of romance?— another girl might fancy herself distinguished.'

I look from him back to Mrs Sucksby, saying nothing. She nods. 'I thought often of you,' she says again, 'and wondered how you got on. I supposed you handsome. Dear girl, you are!' She swallows. 'I had two fears, only. The first was, that you might die.

The second was, that your grand-dad and uncle should take you away from England and have you married before the lady's secret come out. Then I read in a paper that your grand-dad died. Then I heard how your uncle lived quietly, in the country; and 217

had you with him, and kept you in a quiet way, too. There's my two fears both gone!'

She smiles. 'Meanwhile,' she says— and now her eyelids flutter— 'Meanwhile, here's Sue. You have seen, dear girl, how close and quiet I have kept the lady's word.' She pats her gown. 'Well, what was the word to me, without Sue to pin it to? Think how close and quiet I have kept her. Think how safe. Think how sharp such a girl might have grown, in a house like this one, in a street like ours; then think how hard Mr Ibbs and me have worked to keep her blunt. Think how deep I puzzled it over— knowing I must use her at the last, but never quite knowing how. Think how it begins to come clear, when I meets Gentleman— think how quick my fear that you might be secretly married, turns into my knowing that he is the chap that must secretly marry you . . .

It's the work of another minute, then, to look at Sue and know what ought to be done with her.' She shrugs. 'Well, and

now we've done it. Sue's you, dear girl. And what we brought you here for is— '

'Listen, Maud!' says Richard. I have closed my eyes and turned my head. Mrs Sucksby comes to me, lifts her hand, begins to stroke my hair.

'What we brought you here for,' she goes on, more gently, 'is for you to start being Sue.

Only that, dear girl! Only that.'

I open my eyes, and suppose look stupid.

'Do you see?' says Richard. 'We keep Sue as my wife in the madhouse, and with the opening of her mother's statement, her share of the fortune— Maud's share, I mean— comes to me. I should like to say I will keep every cent of it; but the scheme was Mrs Sucksby's after all, and half goes to her.' He makes a bow.

'That's fair, ain't it?' says Mrs Sucksby, still stroking my hair.

'But the other share,' Richard goes on, '— which is to say, Sue's real share— Mrs Sucksby stands also to get. The statement names her Sue's guardian; and guardians, I am afraid, are often less than scrupulous in the handling of their wards' fortunes . . .

That all means nothing, of course, if Sue herself has vanished. But then, it's Maud Lilly— the true Maud Lilly'— he blinks— 'by which I mean of course, the false Maud Lilly— who has vanished. Isn't that what you wanted? To vanish? You said, a minute ago, that you have excuse for anything now. What will it hurt you, then, to be passed off as Sue, and so make Mrs Sucksby rich?'

'Make us both rich, darling,' Mrs Sucksby says quickly. 'I ain't so heartless, dear, as to rob you quite of everything! You're a lady, ain't you, and handsome? Why, I shall need a handsome lady, to show me what's what when I comes into my fortune. I got plans for us both, sweetheart, that grand!'— She taps her nose.

I push myself up, away from her; but am too giddy, still, to stand. 'You are mad,' I say to them both. 'You are mad! I— Pass me off as Sue?'

'Why not?' says Richard. 'We need only convince a lawyer. I think we shall.'

'Convince him, how?'

'How? Why, here are Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs— that have been

like parents to you, and so might be supposed, I think, to know you, if anyone might.

And here are John and Dainty, too— they'll swear to any kind of mischief with money in, you may be sure. And here am I— that met you at Briar, when you were maid to Miss Maud Lilly, later my wife. You've seen, haven't you, what gentlemen's words are 218

worth?' He pretends to be struck with the thought. 'But of course you have! For in a madhouse in the country are a pair of doctors— they'll remember you, I think. For didn't you, only yesterday, give them your hand and make them a curtsey, and stand in a good light before them, for quite twenty minutes, answering questions to the name of Susan?'

He lets me consider that. Then he says, 'All we ask is that, when the moment arrives, you give the performance over again, before a lawyer. What have you to lose? Dear Maud, you have nothing: no friends in London, no money to your name— why, not so much as a name!'

I have put my fingers to my mouth. 'Suppose,' I say, 'I won't do it? Suppose, when your lawyer comes, I tell him— '

'Tell him what? Tell him how you plotted to swindle an innocent girl?— looked on, while the doctors dosed her and carried her off? Hmm? What do you think he will make of that?'

I sit and watch him speak. At last I say, in a whisper: 'Are you truly so wicked as this?'

He shrugs. I turn to Mrs Sucksby. 'And you,' I say. 'Are you so wicked? To think, of Sue— Are you so vile?'

She waves her hand before her face, says nothing. Richard snorts. 'Wickedness,' he says. 'Vileness. What terms! The terms of fiction. Do you think, that when women swap children, they do it, as nurses do it in the operettas— for comedy's sake? Look about you, Maud. Step to the window, look into the street. There is life, not fiction. It is hard, it is wretched. It would have been yours, but for Mrs Sucksby's kindness in keeping you from it.— Christ!' He moves from the door, puts his arms above his head and stretches. 'How tired I am! What a day's work I have done today— haven't I? One girl pressed into a madhouse; another— Well.' He looks me over, nudges my foot with his. 'No arguments?' he says. 'No bluster? That may come later, I suppose. No matter if it does. Sue's birthday

falls at the start of August. We have more than three months, to persuade you into our plot. I think three days— of Borough living, I mean— will do that.'

I am gazing at him, but cannot speak. I am thinking, still, of Sue. He tilts his head.

'Don't say we have broken your spirit, Maud,' he says, 'so quickly? I should be sorry to think it.' He pauses. Then: 'Your mother,' he adds, 'would have been sorry, also.'

'My mother,' I start to say.— I think of Marianne, with lunacy in her eye. Then I catch my breath. Through all of it, I have not thought of this. Richard watches, looks sly. He puts his hand to his collar and stretches his throat, and coughs, in a feeble, girlish and yet deliberate kind of way.

'Now, Gentleman,' says Mrs Sucksby anxiously as he does it, 'don't tease her.'

'Tease her?' he says. He still pulls at his collar as if it chafes him. 'I am only dry about the throat, from talking.'

'You have said too much, that's why,' she answers. 'Miss Lilly— I'll call you that, shall I, my dear? Seems natural, don't it?— Miss Lilly, don't mind him. We've plenty of time for talking of that.'

'Of my mother, you mean,' I say. 'My true mother, that you made out to be Sue's. That choked— you see, I know something!— that choked, on a pin.'

219

'On a pin!' says Richard, laughing. 'Did Sue say that?' Mrs Sucksby bites her mouth. I look from one to the other of them.

'What was she?' I ask wearily. 'For God's sake, tell me. Do you think I have it in me, now, to be astonished? Do you imagine I care? What was she? A thief, like you? Well, if I must lose the madwoman, a thief I suppose will do . . .'

Richard coughs again. Mrs Sucksby looks away from me, and joins and works her hands. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, grave. 'Gentleman,' she says, 'you ain't got nothing more to tell Miss Lilly, now. I have some words, however. The sort of words a lady likes to say to a girl in private.'

He nods. 'I know,' he says. He folds his arms. 'I am dying to hear them.'

She waits, but he will not leave. She comes and, again, sits beside me; again, I flinch away.

'Dear girl,' she says. 'The fact of it is, there ain't a pleasant way to tell it; and I ought to know, if anyone ought!— for I told it once already, to Sue. Your mother— ' She wets her lips, then looks at Richard.

'Tell her,' he says. 'Or I will.'

So then she speaks again, more quickly. 'Your mother,' she says, 'was took before the courts, not just for thieving, but for killing a man; and— oh, my dear, they hanged her for it!'

'Hanged?'

'A murderess, Maud,' says Richard, with relish. 'You may see the place they hanged her, from the window of my room— '

'Gentleman, I mean it!'

He falls silent. I say again, 'Hanged!'

'Hanged game,' says Mrs Sucksby— as if this, whatever it means, will make me bear it better. Then she studies my face. 'Dear girl, don't think of it,' she says. 'What does it matter now? You're a lady, ain't you? Who'll trouble with where you come from? Why, look about you here.'

She has risen, and lights a lamp: a score of gaudy surfaces— the silk dressing- gown, the cloudy brass of the bedstead, china ornaments upon the mantel- shelf— start out of the darkness. She goes again to the wash- hand stand, and again she says: 'Here's soap.

What soap! Got from a shop up West. Come in a year ago— I saw it come and thought,

"Now, shan't Miss Lilly like that!" Kept it wrapped in paper, all this time. And here's a towel, look— got a nap like a peach. And scent! Don't care for lavender, we'll get you one of rose. Are you looking, dear?' She moves to the chest of drawers, pulls the deepest drawer open. 'Why, what have we here!' Richard leans to see. I also look, in a kind of horrified wonder. 'Petticoats, and stockings, and stays! Bless me, here's pins for a lady's hair. Here's rouge for a lady's cheek. Here's crystal drops— one pair of blue, one red. That comes of my not knowing, darling, the shade of the eyes they was to match! Well, Dainty shall have the blue pair . . .'

She holds the gaudy beads up by their wires, and I watch the crystals turn. The colour seems to blur. I have begun, in hopelessness, to weep.

As if weeping could save me.

Mrs Sucksby sees me, and tuts. 'Oh, now,' she says, 'ain't that a shame! Crying? And 220

all these handsome things? Gentleman, you see her? Crying, and for what?'

'Crying,' I say bitterly, unsteadily, 'to find myself here, like this! Crying to think of the dream I lived in, when I supposed my mother only a fool! Crying in horror at the closeness and foulness of you!'

She has stepped back. 'Dear girl,' she says, dropping her voice, gazing quickly at Richard, 'do you despise me so, for letting them take you?'

'I despise you,' I say, 'for bringing me back!'

She stares, then almost smiles. She gestures about the room. 'Don't think,' she says, with a look of amazement, 'I mean for you to keep at Lant Street! Dear girl, dear girl, you was taken from here so they might make a lady of you. And a lady they've made you— a perfect jewel! Don't think I shall have you wasting your shine in this low place. Haven't I said? I want you by me, dear, when I am rich. Don't ladies take companions? Only wait till I have got my hands on your fortune; then see if we don't take the grandest house in London! See what carriages and footmen we'll have then!— what pearls, what dresses!'

She puts her hands on me again. She means to kiss me, to eat me. I rise and shake her off. 'You don't think,' I say, 'I shall stay with you, when your wretched scheme is done?'

'What else?' she says. 'Who ought to have you, if not me? It was fortune took you; it is me that has got you back. I been working it over for seventeen years. I been plotting and thinking on this, every minute since I first laid you in the poor lady's arms. I been looking at Sue— '

She swallows. I cry still harder. 'Sue,' I say. 'Oh, Sue . . .'

' N o w , w h y l o o k l i k e t h a t ? D i d n ' t I d o e v e r y t h i n g f o r h e r , j u s t a s h e r m o t h e r wanted?— kept her safe, kept her tidy, made a commonplace

girl of her? What have I done, but give her back the life you had from her?'

'You have killed her!' I say.

'Killed her? When there's all those doctors about her, all sup-nosing her a lady?— And that don't come cheap, I can tell you.'

'It certainly doesn't,' says Richard. 'You're paying for that, don't forget. I should have had her in the county asylum, were it down to

me.'

'You see, dear girl? Killed her! Why, she might have been killed any day of her life, but for me! Who was it nursed her, when she took sick? Who kept the boys off her? I should have given my hands, my legs, my lungs, for the saving of hers. But do you think, that when I did those things I was doing them for her? What use will a commonplace girl be to me, when I am rich? I was doing them for you! Don't think of her. She was water, she was coal, she was dust, in comparison with what's been made of you.'

I stare at her. 'My God!' I say. 'How could you? How could you?'

Again, she looks amazed. 'How could I not?'

'But, to cheat her! To leave her, there— !'

She reaches, and pats my sleeve. 'You let them take her,' she says. Then her look 221

changes. She almost winks. 'And oh, dear girl, don't you think you was your mother's daughter, then?'

From the rooms below there come again shrieks, and blows, and laughter. Richard stands watching, with folded arms. The fly at the window still buzzes, still beats against the glass. Then the buzzing stops. As if it is a signal, I turn, and sink out of Mrs Sucksby's grasp. I sink to my knees at the side of the bed, and hide my face in the seams of the quilt. I have been bold and determined. I have bitten down rage, insanity, desire, love, for the sake of freedom. Now, that freedom being taken from me utterly, is it to be wondered at if I fancy myself defeated?

I give myself up to darkness; and wish I may never again be required to lift my head to the light.

C h a p t e r T h i r t e e n

The night which follows I remember brokenly. I remember that I keep at the side of the bed with my eyes quite hidden, and will not rise and go down to the kitchen, as Mrs Sucksby wishes. I remember that Richard comes to me, and again puts his shoe to my skirts, to nudge me, then stands and laughs when I will not stir, then leaves me.

I remember that someone brings me soup, which I will not eat. That the lamp is taken away and the room made dark. That I must rise at last, to visit the privy; and that the red-haired, fat- faced girl— Dainty— is made to show me to it, then stands at the door to keep me from running from it into the night. I remember that I weep again, and am given more of my drops in brandy. That I am undressed and put in a night- gown not my own. That I sleep, perhaps for an hour— that I am woken by the rustling of taffeta— that I look in horror to see Mrs Sucksby with her hair let down, shrugging off her gown, uncovering flesh and dirty linen, snuffing out her candle, then climbing into the bed beside me. I remember

that she lies, thinking me sleeping— p u t s h e r h a n d s t o m e , t h e n d r a w s t h e m back— finally, like a miser with a piece of gold, catches up a lock of my hair and presses it to her mouth.

I know that I am conscious of the heat of her, the unfamiliar bulk and sour scents of her. I know that she falls swiftly into an even sleep, and snores, while I start in and out of slumber. The fitful sleeping makes the hours pass slowly: it seems to me the night has many nights in it— has years of nights!— through which, as if through drifts of smoke, I am compelled to stumble. I wake now, believing I am in my dressing-room at Briar; now, in my room at Mrs Cream's; now, in a madhouse bed, with a nurse vast and comfortable beside me. I wake, a hundred times. I wake to moan and long for slumber— for always, at the last, comes the remembrance, sharp and fearful, of where I truly lie, how I arrived there, who and what I am.

At last I wake and do not sleep again. The dark has eased a little. There has been a 222

street- lamp burning, that has lit the threads of the bleached net scarf hung at the window; now it is put out. The light turns filthy pink. The pink gives way, in time, to a sickly yellow. It creeps, and with it creeps sound— softly at first, then rising in a staggering crescendo: crowing cocks, whistles and bells, dogs, shrieking babies, violent calling, coughing, spitting, the tramp of feet, the endless hollow beating of hooves and the grinding of wheels. Up, up it comes, out of the throat of London. It is six or seven o'clock. Mrs Sucksby sleeps on at my side, but I am wide awake now, and wretched, and sick at my stomach. I rise, and— though it is May, and milder here than at Briar— I shiver. I still wear my gloves, but my clothes and shoes and leather bag Mrs Sucksby has locked in a box— 'In case you should wake bewildered, darling, and, thinking you was at home, get dressed, walk off and be lost.'— I remember her saying it, now, as I stood dosed and dazed before her. Where did she put the key?— and the key to the door of the room? I shiver again, more violently, and grow sicker than ever; but my thoughts are horribly clear. I must get out. I must get out! I must get out of London— go anywhere— back to Briar. I must get money. / must, I think— this is the clearest thought of all— / must get

Sue! Mrs Sucksby breathes heavily, evenly. Where might she have put the keys? Her taffeta gown is hanging from the horse- hair screen: I go silently to it and pat the pockets of its skirt. Empty. I stand and study the shelves, the chest of drawers, the mantelpiece— no keys; but many places, I suppose, where they might be concealed.

Then she stirs— does not wake, but moves her head; and I think I know— think I begin to remember . . . She has the keys beneath her pillow: I recall the crafty movement of her hand, the muffled ringing of the metal. I take a step. Her lips are parted, her white hair loose upon her cheek. I step again, and the floorboards creak. I stand at her side— wait a moment, uncertain; then put my fingers beneath the edge of pillow and slowly, slowly, reach.

She opens her eyes. She takes my wrist, and smiles. She coughs.

'My dear, I loves you for trying,' she says, wiping her mouth. 'But the girl ain't been born that's got the touch that will get past me, when I've a mind to something.' Her grip is strong about my arm; though turns to a caress. I shudder. 'Lord, ain't you cold!'

she says then. 'Here, sweetheart, let us cover you up.' She pulls the knitted quilt from the bed and puts it about me. 'Better, dear girl?'

My hair is tangled, and has fallen before my face. I regard her through it.

'I wish I were dead,' I say.

'Oh, now,' she answers, rising. 'What kind of talk is that?'

'I wish you were dead, then.'

She shakes her head, still smiles. 'Wild words, dear girl!' She sniffs. There has come, from the kitchen, a terrible odour. 'Smell that? That's Mr Ibbs, a-cooking up our breakfasts. Let's see who wishes she was dead, now, that's got a plate of bloaters before her!'

She rubs her hands again. Her hands are red, but the sagging flesh upon her arms has the hue and polish of ivory. She has slept in her chemise and petticoat; now she hooks on a pair of stays, climbs into her taffeta gown, then comes to dip her comb in water and brush her hair. 'Tra la, hee hee,' she sings brokenly, as she 223

does it. I keep my own tangled hair before my eyes, and watch her. Her naked feet are cracked, and bulge at the toe. Her legs are almost hairless. When she bends to her stockings, she groans. Her thighs are fat and permanently marked by the pinch of her garters.

'There, now,' she says, when she is dressed. A baby has started crying. 'That will set my others all off. Come down, dear girl— will you?— while I give 'em their pap.'

'Come down?' I say. I must go down, if I am to escape. But I look at myself. 'Like this?

Won't you give me back my gown, my shoes?'

Perhaps I say it too keenly, however; or else my look has something of cunning, or desperation, in it. She hesitates, then says, 'That dusty old frock? Them boots? Why, that's walking- gear. Look here, at this silken wrapper.' She takes up the dressing- gown from the hook on the back of the door. 'Here's what ladies wear, for their mornings at home. Here's silken slippers, too. Shan't you look well, in these? Slip 'em on, dear girl, and come down for your breakfast. No need to be shy. John Vroom don't rise before twelve, there's only me, and Gentleman— he's seen you in a state of dishabilly, I suppose!— and Mr Ibbs. And him, dear girl, you might consider now in the light of— well, let's say an uncle. Eh?'

I turn away. The room is hateful to me; but I will not go with her, undressed, down to that dark kitchen. She pleads and coaxes a little longer; then gives me up, and goes.

The key turns in the lock.

I step at once to the box that holds my clothes, to try the lid. It is shut up tight, and is stout.

So then I go to the window, to push at the sashes. They will lift, by an inch or two, and the rusting nails that keep them shut I think might give, if I pushed harder. But then, the window frame is narrow, the drop is great; and I am still undressed. Worse than that, the street has people in it; and though at first I think to call to them— to break the glass, to signal and shriek— after a second I begin to look more closely at them, and I see their faces, their dusty clothes, the packets they carry, the children and dogs that run and tumble at their sides. There is life, said Richard, twelve hours ago. It is hard, it is wretched. It would have been yours, but for Mrs Sucksby's kindness in keeping you from it. . .

At the door to the house with the shutters with the heart-shaped holes, a girl in a dirty bandage sits and feeds her baby. She lifts her head, catches my gaze; and shakes her fist at me.

I start back from the glass, and cover my face up with my hands.

When Mrs Sucksby comes again, however, I am ready.

'Listen to me,' I say, going to her. 'You know that Richard took me away from my uncle's house? You know my uncle is rich, and will seek me out?'

'Your uncle?' she says. She has brought me a tray, but stands in the door-place until I move back.

'Mr Lilly,' I say, as I do it. 'You know who I mean. He still thinks me his niece, at least.

Don't you suppose he will send a man, and find me? Do you think he will thank you, for keeping me like this?'

'I should say he will-— if he cares so much about it. Ain't we made you cosy, dear?'

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'You know you have not. You know you are keeping me here against my will. For God's sake, give me my gown, won't you?'

All right, Mrs Sucksby?'— It is Mr Ibbs. My voice has risen, and has brought him out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. Richard, too, has stirred in his bed: I hear him cross his floor, draw open his door, and listen.

All right!' calls Mrs Sucksby lightly. 'There, now,' she says to me. And here's your breakfast, look, growing chilly.'

She sets the tray upon the bed. The door is open; but I know that Mr Ibbs still stands at the foot of the stairs, that Richard waits and listens at the top. 'There, now,' she says again. The tray has a plate and a fork upon it, and a linen napkin. Upon the plate there are two or three amber-coloured fish in a juice of butter and water. They have fins, and faces. About the napkin there is a ring of polished silver, a little like the one that was kept for my especial use at Briar; but without the initial.

'Please let me go,' I say.

Mrs Sucksby shakes her head. 'Dear girl,' she says, 'go where?'

She waits and, when I do not answer, leaves me. Richard closes his door and goes back to his bed. I hear him humming.

I think of taking up the plate, hurling it against the ceiling, the window, the wall. Then I think: You must be strong. You must be strong and ready to run. And so I sit and eat— slowly, wretchedly, carefully picking out the bones from the amber flesh. My gloves grow damp and stained; and I have none with which to replace them.

After an hour, Mrs Sucksby comes back, to take the empty plate. Another hour, and she brings me coffee. While she is gone I stand, again, at the window, or press my ear to the door. I pace, and sit, and pace again. I pass from fury to maudlin grief, to stupor.

But then Richard comes. 'Well, Maud— ' is all he says. I see him, and am filled with a blistering rage. I make a run at him, meaning to strike his face: he wards off the blows and knocks me down, and I lie upon the floor and kick, and kick—

Then they dose me again with medicine and brandy; and a day or two passes in darkness.

When I wake next, it is again unnaturally early. There has appeared in the room a little basket chair, painted gold, with a scarlet cushion on it. I take it to the window and sit with the dressing- gown about me, until Mrs Sucksby yawns and opens her eyes.

'Dear girl, all right?' she says, as she will say every day, every day; and the idiocy or perversity of the question— when all is so far from being right, as to be so wrong I would almost rather die than endure it— prompts me to grind my teeth or pull at my hair, and gaze at her in loathing. 'Good girl,' she says then, and, 'Like your chair, do you, dear? I supposed you would.' She yawns again, and looks about her. 'Got the po?'

she says. I am used in my modesty to taking the chamber-pot behind the horse- hair screen. 'Pass it over, will you, sweetheart? I'm ready to bust.'

I do not move. After a second she rises and fetches it herself. It is a thing of white china, dark inside with what, when I saw it first, in the half- light of morning, I queasily took to be clumps of hair; but

which proved to be decoration merely— a great eye with lashes, and about it, in a 225

plain black fount, a motto:

use me well and keep me clean and i'll not tell of what i've seen!

a present from wales

The eye gives me, always, a moment or two of uneasiness; but Mrs Sucksby sets the pot down and carelessly lifts her skirt, and stoops. When I shudder, she makes a face.

'Not nice, is it, dear? Never mind. We shall have you a closet, in our grand house.'

She straightens, pushes her petticoat between her legs. Then she rubs her hands.

'Now, then,' she says. She is looking me over, and her eyes are gleaming. 'What do you say to this? How about we dress you up today, make you look handsome? There's y o u r o w n g o w n i n t h e b o x . B u t , i t ' s a d u l l o l d t h i n g , a i n ' t i t ? A n d queer and old-fashioned? How about we try you in something nicer. I got dresses saved for you— got 'em wrapped in silver-paper— that fine, you won't believe it. What say we bring Dainty in and get 'em fitted up? Dainty's clever with a needle, though she seems so rough— don't she? That's just her way. She was what you would say, not brought up, but dragged up. But she is kind at her heart.'

She has my attention, now. Dresses, I think. Once I am dressed, I might escape.

She sees the change in me, and is pleased. She brings me another breakfast of fish, and again I eat it. She brings me coffee, sweet as syrup: it makes my heart beat hard.

Then she brings me a can of hot water. She wets a towel and tries to wash me. I will not let her, but take the towel from her, press it against my face, under my arms, between my legs.— The first time, in all my life, that I washed myself.

Then she goes off— locks the door, of course, behind her— comes back with Dainty.

They are carrying paper boxes. They set them

down upon the bed, untie their strings and draw out gowns. Dainty sees them, and screams. The gowns are all of silk: one of violet, with yellow ribbon trimming it, another of green with a silver stripe, and a third of crimson. Dainty takes up an edge of cloth and strokes it.

'Pongee?' she says, as if in wonder.

'Pongee, with a foulard rouche,' says Mrs Sucksby— the words coming awkwardly, fleshily out of her mouth, like cherry stones. She lifts the crimson skirt, her chin and cheeks as red in the reflected light of the silk as if stained with cochineal.

She catches my eye. 'What do you say, my dear, to these?'

I have not known such colours, such fabrics, such gowns, exist. I imagine myself in them, upon the streets of London. My heart has sunk. I say, 'They are hideous, hideous.'

She blinks, then recovers. 'You say that now. But you been kept too long in that dreary great house of your uncle's. Is it to be wondered at if you've no more idea of fashion, than a bat? When you makes your debut, dear girl, upon the town, you shall have a set of dresses so gay, you shall look back on these and laugh your head off to think you ever supposed 'em bright.' She rubs her hands. 'Now, which best takes your fancy?

The arsenic green and the silver?'

'Haven't you a grey,' I say, 'or a brown, or a black?'

Dainty looks at me in disgust.

'Grey, brown or black?' says Mrs Sucksby. 'When there's silver here, and violet?'

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'Make it the violet, then,' I say at last. I think the stripe will blind me, the crimson make me sick; though I am sick, anyway. Mrs Sucksby goes to the chest of drawers and opens it up. She brings out stockings, and stays, and coloured petticoats. The petticoats astonish me: for I have always supposed that linen must be white— just as, when I was a child, I thought that all black books must turn out Bibles.

But I must be coloured now, or go naked. They dress me, like two girls dressing a doll.

'Now, where must we nip it?' says Mrs Sucksby, studying the gown. 'Hold still, my dear, while Dainty takes her measure. Lord,

look at your waist.— Hold steady! A person don't want to wriggle while Dainty's by with a pin in her hand, I can tell you.— That's better. Too loose, is it? Well, we can't be particular about the size— ha, ha!— the way we gets 'em.'

They take away my gloves; but bring me new ones. On my feet they put white silk slippers. 'May I not wear shoes?' I say, and Mrs Sucksby answers: 'Shoes? Dear girl, shoes are for walking in. Where've you got to walk to . . .?'

She says it distractedly. She has opened up the great wooden box and brought out my leather bag. Now, as I look on, and while Dainty stitches, she goes with it to the light of the window, makes herself comfortable in the creaking basket chair, and begins to sort through the items inside. I watch as she fingers slippers, playing-cards, combs.

It's my jewels she wants, however. She finds in time the little linen packet, unwraps it and tips the contents into her lap.

'Now, what's here? A ring. A bangle. A lady's picture.' She gazes at this in an assessing way; then all at once her expression changes. I know whose features she is seeing there, upon the face where once I looked for mine. She puts it quickly aside. 'A bracelet of emeralds,' she says next, 'in fashion at the time of King George; but with handsome stones. We shall find you a nice price for those. A pearl on a chain. A ruby necklace— that's too heavy, that is, for a girl with your looks. I got you a nice set of beads— glass beads, but with such a shine, you'd swear they was sapphires!— suit you much better. And— Oh! What's this? Ain't that a beauty? Look Dainty, look at the stunning great stones in that!'

Dainty looks. 'What a spanker!' she says.

It is the brooch of brilliants I once imagined Sue breathing upon, and polishing, and gazing at with a squinting eye. Now Mrs Sucksby holds it up and studies it with her own eye narrowed. It sparkles. It sparkles, even here.

'I know the place for this,' she says. 'Dear girl, you won't mind?' She opens its clasp and pins it to the bosom of her gown. Dainty lets fall her needle and thread, to watch her.

'Oh, Mrs S!' she says. 'You looks like a regular queen.'

M y h e a r t b e a t s h a r d a g a i n . ' T h e Q u e e n o f D i a m o n d s , ' I s a y . S h e e y e s m e uncertainly— not knowing if I mean to compliment or mock. I do not know, myself.

For a time, then, we say nothing. Dainty finishes her work, then combs my hair and twists and pins it into a knot. Then they make me stand, so they might survey me.

They look expectant, tilt their heads; but their faces fall. Dainty rubs her nose. Mrs Sucksby drums her fingers across her lips, and frowns.

227

There is a square of glass upon the chimney-piece, with plaster hearts about it: I turn, and see what I can of my face and figure, in that. I barely recognise myself. My mouth is white. My eyes are swollen and red, my cheeks the texture and colour of yellowing flannel. My unwashed hair is dark with grease at the scalp. The neck of the gown is low, and shows the lines and points of the bones about my throat.

'Perhaps violet, after all,' says Mrs Sucksby, 'ain't the colour for you, dear girl. Brings out the shadows under your eyes and makes 'em seem rather too like bruises. And as for your cheek— what say you give it a bit of a pinch, put the roses back in it? No? Let Dainty try for you then. She's got a grip like thunder, she has.'

Dainty comes and seizes my cheek, and I cry out and twist from her grasp.

'All right, you cat!' she says, tossing her head and stamping. 'I'm sure, you can keep your yellow face!'

'Hi! Hi!' says Mrs Sucksby. 'Miss Lilly is a lady! I want her spoke to like one. You put that lip in.' Dainty has begun to pout. 'That's better. Miss Lilly, how about we take the gown off and try the green and silver? Only a touch of arsenic in that green— won't harm you at all, so long as you keep from sweating too hard in the bodice.'

But I cannot bear to be handled again, and will not let her unfasten the violet dress.

'You like it, dear girl?' she says then, her face and voice grown softer. 'There! I knew the silks would bring you round at last. Now, what say we go down and stun the gents?

Miss Lilly?— Dainty, you go on first. Them stairs are tricky, I should hate for Miss Lilly to take a tumble.'

She has unlocked the door. Dainty passes before me and, after a second, I follow. I still wish I had shoes, a hat, a cloak; but I will run, bare- headed, in silken slippers, if I must. I will run, all the way to Briar. Which was the door, at the foot of the stairs, that I ought to take? I am not sure. I cannot see. Dainty walks ahead of me, and Mrs Sucksby follows anxiously behind. 'Find your step, dear girl?' she says. I do not answer. For there has come, from some room close by, an extraordinary sound— a sound, like the cry of a peahen, rising, then trembling, then fading to silence. I start, and turn. Mrs Sucksby has also turned. 'Go on, you old bird!' she cries, shaking her fist. And then, to me, more sweetly: 'Not frightened, dear? Why, that's only Mr Ibbs's aged sister, that is kept to her bed, poor thing, and prone to the horrors.'

She smiles. The cry comes again, I hear it and hasten down the shadowy stairs— my limbs aching and cracking as I do it, and my breath coming quick. Dainty waits at the bottom. The hall is small, she seems to fill it. 'In here,' she says. She has opened the door to the kitchen. There is a street-door behind her, I think, with bolts across it. I slow my step. But then Mrs Sucksby comes and touches my shoulder. 'That's right, dear girl. This way.' I step again, and almost stumble.

The kitchen is warmer than I recall, and darker. Richard and the boy, John Vroom, are sitting at the table playing at dice. They both look up when I appear, and both laugh.

John says, 'Look at the face on that! Who bruised the eyes, then? Dainty, say it was you and I'll kiss you.'

'I'll bruise your eyes, get my hands on you,' says Mrs Sucksby. 'Miss Lilly is only tired.

Get out of that chair, you little waster, and let her sit down.'

She says this, locking the door at her back, pocketing the key, then crossing the 228

kitchen and trying the other two doors, making sure they are fast.— 'Keep the draughts out,' she says, when she sees me watching her.

John throws the dice again, and reckons up his score, before he rises. Richard pats the empty seat. 'Come, Maud,' he says. 'Come, sit beside me. And if you will only promise not to fly at my eyes—

as you did, you know, on Wednesday— then I shall swear, on Johnny's life! not to knock you down again.'

John scowls. 'Don't you make so free with my life,' he says; 'else, I might make free with yours— you hear me?'

Richard does not answer. He holds my gaze, and smiles. 'Come, let us be friends again, hmm?'

He puts his hand to me, and I dodge it, drawing my skirts away. The fastening of the doors, the closeness of the kitchen, has filled me with a kind of bleak bravado. 'I don't care,' I say, 'to be thought a friend of yours. I don't care to be thought a friend to any of you. I come among you because I must; because Mrs Sucksby wills it, and I haven't life left in me to thwart her. For the rest, remember this: I loathe you all.'

And I sit, not in the empty place beside him, but in the great rocking- chair, at the head of the table. I sit in it and it creaks. John and Dainty gaze quickly at Mrs Sucksby, who blinks at me, two or three times.

And why not?' she says at last, forcing a laugh. 'You make y6ur-self comfy, my dear.

I'll take this hard old chair here, do me good.' She sits and wipes her mouth. 'Mr Ibbs not about?'

'Gone off on a job,' says John. 'Took Charley Wag.'

She nods. And all my infants sleeping?'

'Gentleman give 'em a dose, half an hour ago.'

'Good boy, good boy. Keep it nice and quiet.' She gazes at me. All right, Miss Lilly?

Like a spot of tea, perhaps?' I do not answer, but rock in my chair, very slowly. 'Or, coffee?' She wets her lips. 'Make it coffee, then. Dainty, hot up some water.— Like a cake, dear girl, to chase it down with? Shall John slip out and fetch one? Don't care for cakes?'

'There's nothing,' I say slowly, 'that could be served to me here, that wouldn't be to me as ashes.'

She shakes her head. 'Why, what a mouth you've got, for poetry! As for the cake, now— ?' I look away.

Dainty sets about making the coffee. A gaudy clock ticks, and strikes the hour.

Richard rolls a cigarette. Tobacco smoke, and smoke from the lamps and spitting candles, already drifts from wall

to wall. The walls are brown, and faintly gleam, as if painted with gravy; they are pinned, here and there, with coloured pictures— of cherubs, of roses, of girls on swings— and with curling paper clippings, engravings of sportsmen, horses, dogs and thieves. Beside Mr Ibbs's brazier three portraits— of Mr Chubb, Mr Yale and Mr Bramah— have been pasted to a board of cork; and are much marked by dart- holes.

If I had a dart, I think, I might threaten them with it, make Mrs Sucksby give up her keys. If I had a broken bottle. If I had a knife.

229

Richard lights his cigarette, narrows his eyes against the smoke and looks me over.

'Pretty dress,' he says. 'Just the colour for you.' He reaches for one of the yellow ribbon trimmings, and I hit his hand away. 'Tut, tut,' he says then. 'Temper not much improved, I fear. We were in hopes that you would sweeten up in confinement. As apples do. And veal-calves.'

'Go to hell, will you?' I say.

He smiles. Mrs Sucksby colours, then laughs. 'Hark at that,' she says. 'Common girl says that, sounds awfully vulgar. Lady says it, sounds almost sweet. Still, dear'— here she leans across the table, drops her voice— 'I wish you mightn't speak so nasty.'

I hold her gaze. 'And you think,' I answer levelly, 'your wishes are something to me, do you?'

She flinches, and colours harder; her eyelids flutter and she looks away.

I drink my coffee, then, and don't speak again. Mrs Sucksby sits, softly beating her hands upon the table-top, her brows drawn together into a frown. John and Richard play again at dice, and quarrel over the game. Dainty washes napkins in a bowl of brown water, then sets them before the fire to steam and stink. I close my eyes. My stomach aches and aches. If I had a knife, I think again. Or an axe . . .

But the room is so stiflingly hot, and I am so weary and sick, my head falls back and I sleep. When I wake, it is five o'clock. The dice are put away. Mr Ibbs is returned. Mrs Sucksby is feeding babies, and Dainty is cooking a supper. Bacon, cabbage, crumbling pota-toes and bread: they give me a plate and, miserably picking free the strips of fat from the bacon, the crusts from the bread, as I pick bones from my breakfasts of fish, I eat it. Then they put out glasses. 'Care for some tipple, Miss Lilly?' Mrs Sucksby says. A stout, or a

sherry?'

A gin?' says Richard, some look of mischief in his eye.

I take a gin. The taste of it is bitter to me, but the sound of the silver spoon, striking the glass as it stirs, brings a vague and nameless comfort.

So that day passes. So pass the days that follow. I go early to bed— am undressed, every time, by Mrs Sucksby, who takes my gown and petticoats and locks them up, then locks up me. I sleep poorly, and wake, each morning, sick and clear- headed and afraid; and I sit in the little gold chair, running over the details of my confinement, working out my plan of escape. For I must escape. I will escape. I'll escape, and go to Sue. What are the names of the men who took her? I cannot remember. Where is their house? I do not know. Never mind, never mind, I shall find it out. First, though, I will go to Briar, beg money from my uncle— he'll still believe himself my uncle, of course— and if he'll give me none, I'll beg from the servants! I'll beg from Mrs Stiles!

Or, I'll steal! I'll steal a book from the library, the rarest book, and sell it— !

Or, no, I won't do that.— For the thought of returning to Briar makes me shudder, even now; and it occurs to me in time that I have friends in London, after all. I have Mr Huss and Mr Hawtrey. Mr Huss— who liked to see me climb a staircase. Could I go to him, put myself in his power? I think I could, I am desperate enough . . . Mr Hawtrey, however, was kinder; and invited me to his house, to his shop on Holywell Street.— I 230

think he'll help me. I am sure he will. And I think Holywell Street cannot be far— can it? I do not know, and there are no maps here. But I shall find out the way. Mr Hawtrey will help me, then. Mr Hawtrey will help me find Sue . . .

So my thoughts run, while the dawns of London break grubbily about me; while Mr Ibbs cooks bloaters, while his sister screams,

while Gentleman coughs in his bed, while Mrs Sucksby turns in hers, and snores, and sighs.

If only they would not keep me so close! One day, I think, each time a door is made fast at my back, one day they'll forget to lock it. Then I'll run. They'll grow tired of always watching.— But, they do not. I complain of the thick, exhausted air. I complain of the mounting heat. I ask to go, oftener than I need, to the privy: for the privy lies at the other end of that dark and dusty passage at the back of the house, and shows me daylight. I know I could run from there to freedom, if I had the chance; but the chance does not come: Dainty walks there with me every time, and waits until I come out.— Once I do try to run, and she easily catches me and brings me back; and Mrs Sucksby hits her, for letting me go.

Richard takes me upstairs, and hits me.

'I'm sorry,' he says, as he does it. 'But you know how hard we have worked for this.

All you must do is wait, for the bringing of the lawyer. You are good at waiting, you told me once. Why won't you oblige us?'

The blow makes a bruise. Every day I see how it has lightened, thinking, Before that bruise quite fades, I will escape!

I pass many hours in silence, brooding on this. I sit, in the kitchen, in the shadows at the edge of lamp- light— Perhaps they'll forget me, I think. Sometimes it almost seems that they do: the stir of the house goes on, Dainty and John will kiss and quarrel, the babies will shriek, the men will play at cards and dice. Now and then, other men will come— or boys, or else, more rarely, women and girls— with plunder, to be sold to Mr Ibbs and then sold on. They come, any hour of the day, with astonishing things— gross things, gaudy things— poor stuff, it seems to me, all of it: hats, handkerchiefs, cheap jewels, lengths of lace— once a hank of yellow hair still bound with a ribbon. A tumbling stream of things— not like the books that came to Briar, that came as if sinking to rest on the bed of a viscid sea, through dim and silent fathoms; nor like the things the books described, the things of convenience and purpose— the chairs, the pillows, the beds, the curtains, the ropes, the rods . . .

There are no books, here. There is only life in all its awful chaos. And the only purpose the things are made to serve, is the making of money.

And the greatest money- making thing of all, is me.

'Not chilly, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby will say. 'Not peckish? Why, how warm your brow is! Not taking a fever, I hope? We can't have you sick.' I do not answer. I have heard it all before. I let her tuck rugs about me, I let her sit and chafe my fingers and cheek. 'Are you rather low?' she'll say. 'Just look at them lips. They'd look handsome in a smile, they would. Not going to smile? Not even'— she swal- lows— 'for me? Only glance, dear girl, at the almanack.' She has scored through the days with crosses of black. 'There's a month nearly gone by already, and only two more to come. Then we 231

know what follows! That ain't so long, is it?'

She says it, almost pleadingly; but I gaze steadily into her face— as if to say that a day, an hour, a second, is too long, when passed with her.

'Oh, now!' Her fingers clench about my hand; then slacken, then pat. 'Still seems rather queer to you, does it, sweetheart?' she says. 'Never mind. What can we get you, that will lift your spirits? Hey? A posy of flowers? A bow, for your pretty hair? A trinket box? A singing bird, in a cage?' Perhaps I make some movement. Aha! Where's John? John, here's a shilling— it's a bad one, so hand it over fast— nip out and get Miss Lilly a bird in a cage.— Yellow bird, my dear, or blue?— No matter, John, so long as it's pretty . . .'

She winks. John goes, and returns in half an hour with a finch in a wicker basket.

They fuss about that, then. They hang it from a beam, they shake it to make it flutter; Charley Wag, the dog, leaps and whines beneath it. It will not sing, however— the room is too dark— it will only beat and pluck at its wings and bite the bars of its cage.

At last they forget it. John takes to feeding it the blue heads of matches— he says he plans, in time, to make it swallow a long wick, and then to ignite it.

Of Sue, no-one speaks at all. Once, Dainty looks at me as she puts out our suppers, and scratches her ear.

'Funny thing,' she says, 'how Sue ain't come back from the country, yet. Ain't it?'

Mrs Sucksby glances at Richard, at Mr Ibbs, and then at me. She wets her mouth.

'Look here,' she says to Dainty, 'I haven't wanted to talk about it, but you might as well know it, now. The truth is, Sue ain't coming back, not ever. That last little bit of business that Gentleman left her to see to had money in. More money than was meant for her share. She's up and cut, Dainty, with the cash.'

D a i n t y ' s m o u t h f a l l s o p e n . ' N o ! S u e T r i n d e r ? W h a t w a s l i k e y o u r o w n daughter?— Johnny!' John chooses that moment to come down, for his supper. 'Johnny, you ain't going to guess what! Sue's took all of Mrs Sucksby's money, and that's why she ain't come back. Done a flit. Just about broke Mrs Sucksby's heart. If we see her, we got to kill her.'

'Done a flit? Sue Trinder?' He snorts. 'She ain't got the nerve.'

'Well, she done it.'

'She done it,' says Mrs Sucksby, with another glance at me, 'and I don't want to hear her name said in this house. That's all.'

'Sue Trinder, turned out a sharper!' says John.

'That's bad blood for you,' says Richard. He also looks at me. 'Shows up in queer ways.'

'What did I just say?' says Mrs Sucksby hoarsely. 'I won't have her name said.' She lifts her arm, and John falls silent. But he shakes his head and gives a whistle. Then after a moment, he laughs.

'More meat for us, though, ain't it?' he says, as he fills his plate. '— Or would be, if it wasn't for the lady there.'

Mrs Sucksby sees him scowling at me; and leans and hits him.

After that, if the men and women who come to the house ask after Sue, they are taken aside and told, like John and Dainty, that she has turned out wicked, double-crossed 232

Mrs Sucksby and broken her heart. They all say the same: 'Sue Trinder? Who'd have thought her so fly? That's the mother, that is, coming out in the child . . .' They shake their heads, look sorry. But it seems to me, too, that they forget her quickly enough. It seems to me that even John and Dainty forget her. It is a short- memoried house, after all. It is a

short- memoried district. Many times I wake in the night to the sound of footsteps, the creak of wheels— a man is running, a family taking flight, quietly, in darkness. The woman with the bandaged face, who nurses her baby on the step of the house with the shutters with the heart-shaped holes, disappears; her place is taken by another— who, in her turn, moves on, to be replaced by another, who drinks. What's Sue, to them?

What's Sue, to me? I'm afraid, here, to remember the pressing of her mouth, the sliding of her hand. But I'm afraid, too, of forgetting. I wish I could dream of her. I never do. Sometimes I take out the picture of the woman I supposed my mother, and look for her features there— her eyes, her pointed chin. Mrs Sucksby sees me do it.

She watches, fretfully. Finally she takes the picture away.

'Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.'

She imagines I brood upon my past. But I am still brooding on my future. I am still watching keys as they are turned— soon one will be left in a lock, I know it. I am watching Dainty and John, Mr Ibbs— they are growing too used to me. They'll turn careless, they'll forget. Soon, I think. Soon, Maud.

So I think; until this happens.

Richard takes to leaving the house each day, not saying where he is going. He has no money, and will have none until the bringing of the lawyer: I think he goes only to walk the dusty streets, or to sit in the parks; I think the heat and the closeness of the Borough kitchen stifles him as much as it stifles me. One day, however, he goes, but returns in an hour. The house is quiet, for once: Mr Ibbs and John are out, and Dainty is sleeping in a chair. Mrs Sucksby lets him into the kitchen, and he throws off his hat and kisses her cheek. His face is flushed and his eyes are gleaming.

'Well, what do you think?' he says.

'Dear boy, I can't imagine! Have all your horses come up at once?'

'Better than that,' he says. He reaches for me. 'Maud? What do you think? Come, out of the shadows. Don't look so fierce! Save that, till you've heard my news. It concerns you, rather.'

He has seized my chair and begun to haul me closer to the table. I shake him off.

'Concerns me, how?' I say, moodily. I have been sitting, thinking over the shape of my life.

'You'll see. Look here.' He puts his hand to his waistcoat pocket and draws something out. A paper. He waves it.

'A bond, dear boy?' says Mrs Sucksby, stepping to his side.

'A letter,' he says, 'from— well, guess who? Will you guess, Maud?' I say nothing. He pulls a face. 'Won't you play? Shall I give you a clue? It is someone you know. A friend, very dear.'

My heart gives a lurch. 'Sue!' I say at once. But he jerks his head, and snorts.

233

'Not her. You think they give them paper, where she is?' He glances at Dainty; who opens and closes her eyes, and then sleeps on. 'Not her,' he says again, more quietly. 'I mean, another friend of yours. You won't guess?'

I turn my face. 'Why should I? You mean to tell me, don't you?'

He waits another moment; then: 'Mr Lilly,' he says. 'Your uncle, that was.— Aha!' I have started. 'You are interested!'

'Let me see,' I say. Perhaps my uncle is searching for me, after all.

'Now, now.' He holds the letter high. 'It has my name upon it, not yours.'

'Let me see!'

I rise, pull down his arm, see a line of ink; then push him away.

'That's not my uncle's hand,' I say— so disappointed, I could strike him.

'I never said it was,' says Richard. 'The letter's from him, but sent by another: his steward, Mr Way.'

'Mr Way?'

'More curious still, hmm? Well, you shall understand that, when you read it. Here.' He unfolds the paper and hands it to me. 'Read this side, first. It's a postscript; and explains, at least— what I've always thought so queer— why we've heard nothing from Briar, till now . . .'

The hand is cramped. The ink is smeared. I tilt the paper to catch what light I can; then read.

Dear Sir.— I found today among my master's private papers, this letter, & do suppose he meant it to be sent; only, he fell into a grave indisposition shortly after having wrote it, sir, which indisposition he continues in to this day.— Mrs Stiles & me did think at first, that this was through his niece having run off in such a scandalous manner; though we beg leave to notice, sir, that his words herein suggest him not to have been overly astonished by that deed; as, begging leave again sir, no more were we.— We send this respectfully, sir, and presume to hope it finds you cheerful.— Mr Martin Way, Steward of Briar.

I look up, but say nothing. Richard sees my expression and smiles. 'Read the rest,' he says. I turn the paper over. The letter is short, and dated 3rd of May— seven weeks ago, now. It says this.

To Mr Richard Rivers, from Christopher Lilly, Esq.— Sir. I suppose you have taken my niece, Maud Lilly. I wish you joy of her! Her mother was a strumpet, and she has all her mother's instincts, if not her face. The check to the progress of my work will be severe; but I take comfort in my loss, from this: that I fancy you, sir, a man who knows the proper treating of a whore.— C.L.

I read it, two or three times; then read it again; then let it fall. Mrs Sucksby instantly takes it up, to read herself. As she labours over the words, she grows flushed. When she has finished, she gives a cry:

'That blackguard! Oh!'

Her cry wakes Dainty. 'Who, Mrs Sucksby? Who?' she says.

'A wicked man, that's all. A wicked man, who is ill, as he ought to be. No-one you know. Go back to sleep.' She reaches for me. 'Oh, my dear— '

'Leave me alone,' I say.

234

The letter has upset me, more than I should have believed. I

don't know if it is the words that have wounded me most; or the final proof they seem to give, to Mrs Sucksby's story. But I cannot bear to be watched by her, and by Richard, with my feelings in such a stir. I walk as far from them as I may— some two or three steps-— to the brown kitchen wall; then I walk from there to another wall and from there to a door; and I seize and vainly turn the handle.

'Let me out,' I say.

Mrs Sucksby comes to me. She makes to reach, not for the door, but for my face. I push her off— go quickly, to the second door, and then the third.— 'Let me out! Let me out!' She follows.

'Dear girl,' she says, 'don't let yourself be upset by that old villain. Why, he ain't worth your tears!'

'Will you let me out?'

'Let you out, to where? Ain't everything here, that you need now? Ain't everything here, or coming? Think of them jewels, them gowns— '

She has come close again. Again, I push her away. I step back to the gravy- coloured wall, and put my hand to it— a fist— and beat and beat it. Then I look up. Before my eyes is the almanack, its pages swarming with crosses of black. I catch hold of it, and pluck it from its pin. 'Dear girl— ' Mrs Sucksby says again. I turn and throw it at her.

But afterwards, I fall weeping; and when the fit of tears has passed, I think I am changed. My spirit has gone. The letter has taken it from me. The almanack goes back upon the wall, and I let it stay there. It grows steadily blacker, as we all inch nearer to our fates. The season advances. June grows warm, then even warmer. The house begins to be filled with flies. They drive Richard to a fury: he pursues them with a slipper, red-faced and sweating.— 'You know I am a gentleman's son?' he will say.

'Would you think it, to look at me now? Would you?'

I do not answer. I have begun, like him, to long for the coming of Sue's birthday in August. I will say anything they wish, I think, to any kind of solicitor or lawyer. But I pass my days in a sort of restless lethargy; and at night— for it is too hot to sleep— at night I

d at the narrow window in Mrs Sucksby's room, gazing blankly

at the street.

Tome away from there, sweetheart,' Mrs Sucksby will murmur f he wakes. They say there is cholera in the Borough. 'Who knows but you won't take a fever, from the draught?'

May one take a fever, from a draught of foetid air? I lie down at her side until she sleeps; then go back to the window, press my face to the gap between the sashes, breathe deeper.

I almost forget that I mean to escape. Perhaps they sense it. For at last they leave me, one afternoon— at the start of July, I think— with only Dainty to guard me.

'You watch her close,' Mrs Sucksby tells her, drawing on gloves. 'Anything happen to her, I'll kill you.' Me, she kisses. All right, my dear? I shan't be gone an hour. Bring you back a present, shall I?'

I do not answer. Dainty lets her out, then pockets the key. She sits, draws a lamp 235

across the table- top, and takes up work. Not washing napkins— for there are fewer babies, now: Mrs Sucksby has begun to find homes for them, and the house is daily growing stiller— but the pulling of silk stitches from stolen handkerchiefs. She does it listlessly, however. 'Dull work,' she says, seeing me look. 'Sue used to do this. Care to try?'

I shake my head, let my eyelids fall; and presently, she yawns. I hear that; and am suddenly wide awake. If she will sleep, I think, I might try the doors— steal the key f r o m h e r p o c k e t ! S h e y a w n s a g a i n . I b e g i n t o s w e a t . T h e c l o c k t i c k s o f f t h e minutes— fifteen, twenty, twenty- five. Half an hour. I am dressed in the violet gown and white silk slippers. I have no hat, no money— never mind, never mind. Mr Hawtrey will give you that.

Sleep, Dainty. Dainty, sleep. Sleep, sleep . . . Sleep, damn you!

But she only yawns, and nods. The hour is almost up.

'Dainty,' I say.

She jumps. 'What is it?'

'I'm afraid— I'm afraid I must visit the privy.'

She puts down her work, pulls a face. 'Must you? Right now, this minute?'

Yes.' I place my hand on my stomach. 'I think I am sick.'

She rolls her eyes. 'Never knew a girl for sickness, like you. Is th what they call a lady's constitution?'

'I think it must be. I'm sorry, Dainty. Will you open the door5'

'I'll go with you, though.'

'You needn't. You might stay at your sewing, if you like ..."

'Mrs Sucksby says I must go with you, every time; else I'll catch it. Here.'

She sighs, and stretches. The silk of her gown is stained beneath the arms, the stain edged white. She takes out the key, unlocks the door, leads me into the passage. I go slowly, watching the lurching of her back. I remember having run from her before, and how she caught me: I know that, even if I might hit her aside now, she would only rise again at once and chase me. I might knock her head against the bricks . . . But I imagine doing it, and my wrists grow weak, I don't think I could.

'Go on,' she says, when I hesitate. 'Why, what's up?'

'Nothing.' I catch hold of the privy door and draw it to me, slowly. 'You needn't wait,' I say.

'No, I'll wait.' She leans against the wall. 'Do me good, take the air.'

The air is warm and foul. In the privy it is warmer, and fouler. But I step inside and close the door and bolt it; then look about me. There is a little window, no bigger than my head, its broken pane stopped up with rag. There are spiders, and flies. The privy seat is cracked and smeared. I stand and think, perhaps for a minute. All right?' calls Dainty. I do not answer. The floor is earth, stamped hard. The walls are powdery white. From a wire hang strips of news-print. Ladies' and Gentlemen's Cast-off Clothing, in Good or Inferior Condition, Wanted for— Welsh Mutton & New-laid Eggs—

Think, Maud.

I turn to face the door, put my mouth to a gap in the wood.

236

'Dainty,' I say quietly.

'What is it?'

'Dainty, I am not well. You must fetch me something.'

'What?' She tries the door. 'Come out, miss.'

I can't. I daren't. Dainty, you must go to the drawer, in the chest in my room upstairs. Will you? There is something there. Will

you? Oh, I wish you would hurry! Oh, how it rushes! I am afraid of the men coming back— '

'Oh, ' she says, understanding me at last. She drops her voice. 'Caught you out has it?'

'Will you go for me, Dainty?' 'But I'm not to leave you, miss!'

'I must keep here, then, until Mrs Sucksby comes! But say that John, or Mr Ibbs, should come first! Or say I swoon? And the door

is bolted! What will Mrs Sucksby think of us, then?' 'Oh Lord,' she mutters. And then:

'In the chest of drawers, you

say?'

'The top-most drawer, on the right. Will you hurry? If I might ust make myself neat, and then lie down. I always take it so

badly— '

All right.'

'Be quick!'

All right!'

Her voice is fading. I press my ear to the wood, hear her feet, the opening and swinging back of the kitchen door.— I slide the bolt and run. I run out of the passage and into the court— I remember this, I remember the nettles, the bricks. Which way from here? There are high walls all about me. But I run further, and the walls give way. There's a dusty path— it was slick with mud, when I came down it before; but I see it, and know it— I know it!— it leads to an alley and this, in turn, leads to another path, which crosses a street and leads me— where? To a road I do not recognise, that runs under the arches of a bridge. I recall the bridge, but remember it nearer, lower. I recall a high, dead wall. There is no wall here.

No matter. Keep going. Keep the house at your back, and run. Take wider roads now: the lanes and alleys twist, and are dark, you must not get caught in them. Run, run. No matter that the sky seems vast and awful to you. No matter that London is loud. No matter that there are people here— no matter that they stare— no matter that their clothes are worn and faded, and your gown bright;

that their heads are covered, yours bare. No matter that your slippers are silk, that your feet are cut by every stone and cinder—

So I whip myself along. Only the traffic checks me, the rushing horses and wheels: at every crossing I pause, then cast myself into the mass of cabs and waggons; and I think it is only my haste, my distraction— that, and perhaps the vividness of my dress— that makes the drivers pull at their reins and keep from running me down. On, on, I go. I think once a dog barks at me, and snaps at my skirt. I think boys run beside me, for a time— two boys, or three— shrieking to see me stagger. 'You,' I say, holding my hand against my side, 'will you tell me, where is Holywell Street? Which way, to 237

Holywell Street?'— but at the sound of my voice, they fall back.

I go more slowly then. I cross a busier road. The buildings are grander here— and yet, two streets beyond them the houses are shabby. Which way must I go? I will ask again, I will ask in a moment; for now, I will only walk, put streets and streets between myself and Mrs Sucksby, Richard, Mr Ibbs. What matter if I grow lost? I am lost already . . .

Then I cross the mouth of a rising passage of yellow brick and see at the end of it, dark and humped above the tips of broken roofs, its gold cross gleaming, the church of St Paul's. I know it, from illustrations; and I think Holywell Street is near it. I turn, pick up my skirts, make for it. The passage smells badly; but the church seems close.

So close, it seems! The brick turns green, the smell grows worse. I climb, then suddenly sink, emerge in open air and almost stumble. I have expected a street, a square. Instead, I am at the top of a set of crooked stairs, leading down to filthy water.

I have reached the shore of the river. St Paul's is close, after all; but the whole of the width of the Thames is flowing between us.

I stand and gaze at it, in a sort of horror, a sort of awe. I remember walking beside the Thames, at Briar. I remember seeing it seem to fret and worry at its banks: I thought it longed— as I did— to quicken, to spread. I did not know it would spread to this. It flows, like poison. Its surface is littered with broken matter— with hay, with wood, with weed, with paper, with tearings of cloth, with cork

and tilting bottles. It moves, not as a river moves, but as a sea: it heaves. And where it breaks, against the hulls of boats, and where it is thrown, upon the shore, and about the stairs and the walls and wooden piers that rise from it, it froths like sour milk.

It is an agony of water and of waste; but there are men upon it, confident as rats— pulling the oars of rowing-boats, tugging at sails. And here and there, at the river's edge— bare- legged, bent-backed— are women, girls and boys, picking their way through the churning litter like gleaners in a field.

They don't look up, and do not see me, though I stand for a minute and watch them wade. All along the shore I have come to, however, are warehouses, with working men about them; and presently, as I become aware of them, they also spot me— spot my gown, I suppose— first stare, then signal and call. That jerks me out of my daze. I turn— go back along the yellow passage, take up the road again. I have seen the bridge that I must cross to reach St Paul's, but it seems to me that I am lower than I ought to be, and I cannot find the road that will lead me up: the streets I am walking now are narrow, unpaved, still reeking of dirty water. There are men upon them, too— men of the boats and warehouses, who, like the others, try to catch my eye, whistle and sometimes call; though they do not touch me. I put my hand before my face, and go on faster. At last I find a boy, dressed like a servant. 'Which way is the bridge,' I say, 'to the other shore?' He points me out a flight of steps, and stares as I climb them.

Everybody stares— men, women, children— even here, where the road is busy again, they stare. I think of tearing off a fold of skirt to cover my naked head. I think of begging a coin. If I knew what coin to beg for, how much a hat would cost me, where it might be bought, I would do it. But I know nothing, nothing; and so simply walk on.

238

The soles of my slippers I think are beginning to tear. Don't mind it, Maud. If you start to mind it, you will weep. Then the road ahead of me begins to rise, and I see again the gleam of water. The bridge, at last!— that makes me walk quicker. But walking quicker makes the slippers tear more; and after a moment, I am obliged to stop. There is a break in the wall at the start of the bridge

with, set into it, a shallow stone bench. Hung up beside it is a belt of cork— meant for throwing, it says upon a sign, to those in difficulties upon the river.

I sit. The bridge is higher than I imagined it. I have never been so high! The thought makes me dizzy. I touch my broken shoe. May a woman nurse her foot on a public bridge? I do not know. The traffic passes, swift and unbroken, like roaring water.

Suppose Richard should come? Again, I cover my face. A moment, and I'll go on. The sun is hot. A moment, to find my breath. I close my eyes. Now, when people stare, I cannot see them.

Then someone comes and stands before me, and speaks. 'I'm afraid you're unwell.'

I open my eyes. A man, rather aged. A stranger to me. I let my hand fall.

'Don't be afraid,' he says. Perhaps I look bewildered. 'I didn't mean to surprise you.'

He touches his hat, makes a sort of bow. He might be a friend of my uncle's. His voice is a gentleman's voice, and his collar is white.

He smiles, then studies me closer. His face is kind. 'Are you unwell?'

'Will you help me?' I say. He hears my voice and his look

changes.

'Of course,' he says. 'What is it? Are you hurt?' 'Not hurt,' I say. 'But I have been made to suffer dreadfully. I— ' I cast a look at the coaches and waggons upon the bridge.

'I'm afraid,' I say, 'of certain people. Will you help me? Oh, I wish you would say you will!'

'I have said it, already. But, this is extraordinary! And you, a lady— Will you come with me? You must tell me all your story; I shall hear it all. Don't try to speak, just yet.

Can you rise? I'm afraid you're injured about the feet. Dear, dear! Let me look for a cab. That's right.'

He gives me his arm, and I take it and stand. Relief has made me weak. 'Thank God!' I say. 'Oh, thank God! But, listen to me.' I grip him harder. 'I have nothing— no money to pay you with— '

'Money?' He puts his hand over mine. 'I should not take it. Don't think of it!'

'— But I have a friend, who I think will help me. If you'll take me to him?'

'Of course, of course. What else? Come, look, here's what we need.' He leans into the road, raises his arm: a cab pulls out of the stream of traffic and halts before us. The gentleman seizes the door and draws it back. The cab is covered, and dark. 'Take care,'

he says. 'Can you manage? Take care. The step is rather high.'

'Thank God!' I say again, lifting my foot. He comes behind me

as I do it.

'That's right,' he says. And then: 'Why look, how prettily you climb!'

I stop, with my foot upon the step. He puts his hand upon my waist. 'Go on,' he says, 239

urging me into the coach.

I step back.

'After all,' I say quickly, 'I think I should walk. Will you tell me the way?'

'The day is too hot to walk. You are too weary. Go on.'

His hand is upon me still. He presses harder. I twist away and we almost struggle.

'Now, then!' he says, smiling.

'I have changed my mind.'

'Come, now.'

'

L

e

t

g

o

o

f

m

e

.

'

i

'Do you wish to cause a fuss? Come, now. I know a house— '

'A house? Haven't I told you that I want only to see my friend?'

'Well, he'll like you better, I think, when you have washed your hands and changed your stockings and taken a tea. Or else— who knows?— when you have done those things you may find you like me better.— Hmm?'

His face is still kind, he still smiles; but he takes my wrist and moves his thumb across it, and tries, again, to hand me into the coach. We struggle properly, now. No-one tries to intervene. From the other vehicles in the road I suppose we are quite hidden. The men and women passing upon the bridge look once, then turn their heads.

There is the driver, however. I call to him. 'Can't you see?' I call.

'There's been a mistake here. This man is insulting me.'— The man lets me go, then. I move further about the coach, still calling up. 'Will you take me? Will you take me, alone? I shall find someone to pay you, I give you my word, when we arrive.'

The driver looks me over blankly as I speak. When he learns I have no money, he turns his head and spits. 'No fare, no passage,' he says.

The man has come close again. 'Come on,' he says— not smiling, now. 'There's no need for this. What are you playing at? It's clear you're in some sort of fix. Shouldn't you like the stockings, the tea?'

But I still call up to the driver. 'Will you tell me, then,' I say, 'which way I must walk?

I must reach Holywell Street. Will you tell me, which way I must take, for there?'

He hears the name and snorts— in scorn, or laughter, I cannot tell. But he raises his whip. 'That way/ he says, gesturing over the bridge; 'then westwards, by Fleet Street.'

'Thank you.' I begin to walk. The man reaches for me. 'Let go of me,' I say.

'You don't mean it.' 'Let go!'

I almost shriek it. He falls back. 'Go on, then!' he says. 'You damn little teaser.'

I walk, as quickly as I can. I almost run. But then, after a moment, the cab comes beside me and slows to match my pace. The gentleman looks out. His face has changed again.

'I'm sorry,' he says, coaxingly. 'Come up. I'm sorry. Will you come? I'll take you to your friend, I swear it. Look here. Look here.' He shows me a coin. 'I'll give you this.

Come up. You mustn't go to Holywell Street, they are bad men there— not at all like me. Come now, I know you're a lady. Come, I'll be kind ..."

So he calls and murmurs, half the length of the bridge; until finally a line of waggons forms behind the crawling cab, and the driver shouts that he must go on. Then the 240

man draws back, puts up his window with a bang; the cab pulls away. I let out my breath. I have begun to shake. I should like to stop, to rest; I dare not, now.

T leave the bridge: here the road meets another, more busy than those on the southern shore ; b u t m o r e a n o n y m o u s t o o , I t h i n k . I a m g r a t e f u l f o r t h a t , t h o u g h t h e crowds— the crowds are terrible. Never mind, never mind, push through them. Go on.

Westwards, as the driver directed.

Now the street changes again. It is lined with houses with bulging windows— shops, I understand them to be, at last: for there are goods on show, marked up with prices on cards. There are breads, there are medicines. There are gloves. There are shoes and hats.— Oh, for a little money! I think of the coin the gentleman offered, from the window of the coach: should I have seized it, and run? Too late to wonder it now. No matter. Go on. Here is a church, parting the road like the column of a bridge parts water. Which side ought I to take? A woman passes, bare-headed like me: I catch her arm, ask her the way. She points it out and then, like everyone else, stands staring as I take it.

But here is Holywell Street at last!— Only, now I hesitate. How have I imagined it?

Not like this, perhaps— not so narrow, so crooked, so dark. The London day is still hot, still bright; in turning into Holywell Street, however, I seem to step into twilight. But the twilight is good, after all: it hides my face, and robs my gown of its colours. I walk further. The way grows narrower. The ground is dusty, broken, unpaved. There are shops, lit up, on either side of me: some with lines of tattered clothes hung before them, some with broken chairs and empty picture- frames and coloured glasses spilling from them, in heaps; the most, however, selling books. I hesitate again, when I see that. I have not handled a book since I left Briar; and now, to come so suddenly upon them, in such numbers; to see them laid, face- up, like loaves in trays, or piled, haphazardly, in baskets; to see them torn, and foxed, and bleached— marked up 2d., 3d., This Box Is.— quite unnerves me. I stop, and watch as a man picks idly through a box of coverless volumes and takes one up. The Mousetrap of Love.— I know it, I have read that title so many times to my uncle I know it almost by heart!

Then the man lifts his head and finds me watching; and I walk on. More shops, more books, more men; and finally a window, a

little brighter than the rest. The display is of prints, hung up on strings. The glass has Mr Hawtrey's name upon it, in letters of flaking gold. I see it, and shake so hard I almost stumble.

Inside, the shop is small and cramped. I have not expected that. The walls are all given over to books and prints, and there are cabinets, besides. Three or four men stand at them, each leafing rapidly and intently through some album or book: they don't look up when the door is opened; but when I take a step and my skirts give a rustle, they all turn their heads, see me, and openly stare. But I am used to stares, by now. At the rear of the shop is a little writing- table, with a youth sitting at it, dressed in a waistcoat and sleeves. He stares, as they do— then, when he sees me advancing, gets up. 'What are you looking for?' he says. I swallow. My mouth is dry.

I say, quietly, 'I'm looking for Mr Hawtrey. I wish to speak with Mr Hawtrey.'

He hears my voice, and blinks; the customers shift a little, and look me oVfer again.

241

'Mr Hawtrey,' he says, his tone a little changed. 'Mr Hawtrey doesn't work in the shop.

You oughtn't to have come to the shop. Have you got an appointment?'

'Mr Hawtrey knows me,' I say. 'I don't need an appointment.' He glances at the customers. He says, 'What's your business with him?'

'It's private,' I say. 'Will you take me to him? Will you bring him to me?'

There must be something to my look, however, or my voice. He grows more guarded, steps back.

'I'm not sure, after all, if he's in,' he says. 'Really, you oughtn't to have come to the shop. The shop is for selling books and prints— d o y o u k n o w w h a t k i n d ? M r Hawtrey's rooms are upstairs.'

There's a door, at his back. 'Will you let me go to him?' I say. He shakes his head. 'You may send up a card, something like that.'

'I don't have a card,' I say. 'But give me a paper, and I'll write him out my name. He'll come, when he reads it. Will you give me a paper?'

fie does not move. He says again, 'I don't believe he's in the house.'

'Then I'll wait, if I must,' I say.

'You cannot wait here!'

'Then I think,' I answer, 'you must have an office, some room like that; and I will wait there.'

He looks again at the customers; picks up a pencil and puts it down.

'If you will?' I say.

He makes a face. Then he finds me a slip of paper and a pen. 'But you shan't,' he says,

'be able to wait, if it turns out he's not in.1 I nod. 'Put your name on there,' he says, pointing.

I begin to write. Then I remember what Richard told me once— how the booksellers speak of me, in the shops of London. I am afraid to write, Maud Lilly. I am afraid the youth will see. At last— remembering something else— I put this: Galatea.

I fold it, and hand it to him. He opens the door, whistles into the passage beyond. He listens, then whistles again. There come footsteps. He leans and murmurs, gestures to me. I wait.

And, as I do, one of the customers closes his album and catches my eye. 'Don't mind him,' he says softly, meaning the youth. 'He supposes you gay, that's all. Anyone can see, though, that you're a lady . . .' He looks me over, then nods to the shelves of books. 'You like them, hmm?' he says, in a different tone. 'Of course you do. Why shouldn't you?'

I say nothing, do nothing. The youth steps back.

'We're seeing,' he says, 'if he's in.'

There are pictures behind his head, pinned to the wall in wax-paper wrappers: a girl on a swing, showing her legs; a girl in a boat, about to slip; a girl falling, falling from the breaking branch of a tree ... I close my eyes. He calls to one of the men: 'Do you wish to buy that book, sir— ?'

Presently, however, there come more footsteps, and the door is opened again.

242

It is Mr Hawtrey.

He looks shorter, and slighter, than I remember him. His coat

and trousers are creased. He stands in the passage in some agitation, does not come into the shop— meets my gaze, but does not smile— looks about me, as if to be sure I am alone; then beckons me t o h i m . T h e y o u t h s t e p s b a c k t o l e t m e p a s s . ' M r Hawtrey— ' I say. He shakes his head, however; waits until the door is closed behind me before he will speak. What he says then— in a whisper so fierce it is almost a hiss— is:

'Good God! Is it you? Have you really come here, to me?'

I say nothing, only stand with my eyes on his. He puts his hand, in distraction, to his head. Then he takes my arm. 'This way,' he says, leading me to a set of stairs. The steps have boxes upon them. 'Be careful. Be careful,' he says, as we climb them. And then, at the top: 'In here.'

There are three rooms, set up for the printing and binding of books. In one, two men work, loading type; another, I think, is Mr Hawtrey's own office. The third is small, and smells strongly of glue. It's in there that he shows me. The tables are piled with papers— loose papers, ragged at the edges: the leaves of unfinished books. The floor is bare and dusty. One wall— the wall to the typesetters' room— has frosted glass panels in it. The men are just visible, bending over their work.

There is a single chair, but he does not ask me to sit. He closes the door and stands before it. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his face. His face is yellowish-white.

'Good God,' he says again. And then: 'Forgive me. Forgive me. It's only the surprise of the thing.'

He says it, more kindly; and I hear him and half turn away.

'I'm sorry,' I say. My voice is not steady. 'I'm afraid I will weep. I have not come to you to weep.'

'You may weep, if you like!' he says, with a glance at the frosted glass.

But I will not weep. He watches me struggling against my tears for a moment, then shakes his head.

'My dear,' he says gently at last. 'What have you done?'

'Don't ask me.'

'You have run away.'

'From my uncle, yes.'

'From your husband, I think.'

'My husband?' I swallow. 'Do you know, then, of that?'

He shrugs, colours, looks away.

I say, 'You think me wrong. You do not know what I have been made to suffer! Don't worry'— for he has lifted his eyes to glance, again, at the panels of glass— 'don't worry, I shan't grow wild. You may think what you like of me, I don't care. But you must help me.

Will you?'

'My dear— '

'You will. You must. I have nothing. I need money, a house to stay in. You used to like to say you would make me welcome— '

243

Despite myself, my voice is rising.

'Be calmer,' he says— lifting his hands as if to soothe me; but not moving from his place at the door. 'Be calmer. You know how queer this will look? Do you? What are my staff to think? A girl comes asking for me urgently, sending up a riddling name . . .' He laughs, not happily. 'What would my daughters say, my wife?'

'I am sorry.'

Again he wipes his face. He lets out his breath. 'I wish you would tell me,' he says,

'why you have come, to me. You mustn't think I will take your part against your uncle.

I never liked to see him keep you so meanly, but he mustn't know you've come here.

Nor must you think— is it what you are hoping?— that I'll help you back into his favours. He has quite cast you off, you know. Besides that, he is ill— seriously ill— over this business. Did you know that?'

I shake my head. 'My uncle is nothing to me, now.'

'But he is something to me, you understand. If he should hear of your coming— '

'He will not.'

'Well.' He sighs. Then his face grows troubled again. 'But to come to me! To come here!' And he looks me over, takes in my gaudy dress and gloves— which are filthy; my hair— which I think is tangled; my face— which must be dusty, lustreless, white. 'I should hardly have known you,' he says, still frowning, 'you seem so changed. Where is your coat, and your hat?'

'There was not time— '

He looks appalled. 'Did you come, like this?' He squints at the hem of my skirt; then he sees my feet, and starts. 'Why, look at your slippers! Your feet are bleeding! Did you leave, without shoes?'

'I must. I have nothing!'

'Not shoes?'

'No. Not so much as that.'

'Rivers keeps you without shoes?'

He does not believe it. 'If I might only,' I say, 'make you know— ' But he is not listening. He is looking about him, as if seeing for the first time the tables, the piles of paper. He takes up a few blank sheets, begins hurriedly to cover up the naked print.

'You oughtn't to have come here,' he says, as he does it. 'Look at this! Look at this!'

I catch sight of a line of print. '— you shall have enough, I warrant you, and I shall whip, whip— ' 'Do you try and hide it,' I say, 'from me? I have seen worse at Briar.

Have you forgotten?'

'This is not Briar. You don't understand. How could you? You were among gentlemen, there. It is Rivers I blame for this. He ought— having taken you— at least to have kept you closer. He saw what you were.'

'You don't know,' I say. 'You don't know how he's used me!'

'I don't want to know! It is not my place to know! Don't tell me.— Oh, only look at yourself! Do you know how you will have seemed, upon the streets? You can't have come unnoticed, surely?'

I gaze down at my skirt, my slippers. 'There was a man,' I say, 'upon the bridge. I thought he meant to help me. But he meant only— ' My voice begins to shake.

244

'You see?' he says then. 'You see? Suppose a policeman should have seen you, and followed you here? Do you know what would happen to me— to my staff, to my stock— if the police were to come down heavily upon us? They might, for such a matter as this.— Oh, God, only look at your feet! Are they bleeding, truly?'

He helps me into the chair, then gazes about him. 'There's a sink,' he says, 'next door.

Wait here, will you?' He goes off, to the room with the typesetters in it. I see them lift their heads, hear his

nice.— I don't know what he must tell them. I don't care. In sitting, I have grown tired; and the soles of my feet, which until now have been almost numb, have begun to smart. The room has no window of its own, and no chimney, and the smell of glue seems stronger. I have come close to one of the tables: I lean upon it, and gaze across it— at the piles of pages, untrimmed, unsewn, some of them disturbed or concealed by Mr Hawtrey.'— and I shall whip, whip, whip, your backside till the blood runs down your heels

' The print is new, and black; but the paper is poor, the ink has feathered.

What is the fount? I know it, but— it troubles me— I cannot name it.

'— so, so, so, so, so, you like the birch, do you?'

Mr Hawtrey returns. He has a cloth, and a bowl, half- filled with water; also a glass, with water for me to drink.

'Here you are,' he says, putting the bowl before me, wetting the cloth and handing it to me; then glancing nervously away. 'Can you do it? Just enough to take the blood away, for now

The water is cold. When I have wiped my feet I wet the cloth again and, for a second, sit and hold it to my face. Mr Hawtrey looks round and sees me do it. 'You're not feverish?' he says. 'You're not ill?'— 'I am only warm,' I say. He nods, and comes and takes the bowl. Then he gives me the glass, and I drink a little of it. 'Very good,' he says.

I look again at the leaves of print upon the table; but the name of the fount escapes me, still. Mr Hawtrey checks his watch. Then he puts his hand to his mouth and bites at the skin of his thumb, and frowns.

I say, 'You are good, to help me. I think other men would blame me.'

'No, no. Haven't I said? It is Rivers I blame. Never mind. Tell me, now. Be honest with me. What money have you, upon you now?'

'I have none.'

'No money at all?'

'I have only this gown. But we might sell it, I think? I should sooner take a plainer one, anyway.'

'Sell your gown?' His frown grows deeper. 'Don't speak so oddly, will you? When you go back— '

'Go back? To Briar?'

'To Briar? I mean, to your husband.'

'To him?' I look at him in amazement. 'I cannot go back to him! It has taken me two months to escape him!'

He shakes his head. 'Mrs Rivers— ' he says. I shudder.

'Don't call me that,' I say, 'I beg you.'

245

'Again, so odd! What ought I to call you, if not that?'

'Call me Maud. You asked me, just now, what I have that is mine. I have that name; that, and nothing else.'

He makes some movement with his hand. 'Don't be foolish,' he says. 'Listen to me, now. I am sorry for you. You have had some quarrel, haven't you— ?'

I laugh— so sharply, he starts; and the two typesetters look up. He sees them do it, then turns back to me.

'Will you be reasonable?' he says quietly, warningly.

But how can I be that?

'A quarrel,' I say. 'You think it a quarrel. You think I have run on bleeding feet, half-way across London, for that? You know nothing. You cannot guess what danger I am in, what coils— ! But, I can't tell you. It's too great a thing.'

'What is?'

'A secret thing. A scheme. I cannot say. I cannot— Oh!' I have lowered my gaze, and it has fallen again upon the pages of print. 'you like the birch, do you?' 'What is this type?' I say. 'Will you tell me?'

He swallows. 'This type?' he says, his voice quite changed.

'This fount.'

For a second he does not answer. Then: 'Clarendon,' he says, quietly.

Clarendon. Clarendon. I knew it, after all. I continue to gaze at the paper— I think I put my fingers to the print— until Mr Hawtrey comes and places a blank sheet upon it, as he did with the others.

'Don't look there,' he says. 'Don't stare so! What is the matter with you? I think you must be ill.'

'I am not ill,' I answer. 'I am only tired.' I close my eyes. 'I wish I might stay here, and sleep.'

'Stay here?' he says. 'Stay here, in my shop? Are you mad?' At sound of that word I open my eyes, and meet his gaze; he colours, looks quickly away. I say again, more steadily, 'I am only tired.' But he does not answer. He puts his hand to his mouth and begins to bite, again, at the skin of his thumb; and he watches me, carefully, cautiously, from the side of his eye. 'Mr Hawtrey— ' I

say.

'I wish,' he says suddenly then, 'I just wish you would tell me what it is you mean to do. How am I even to get you from the shop? I must bring a cab, I suppose, to the back of the building.'

'Will you do that?'

'You have somewhere to go, to sleep? To eat?'

'I have nowhere!'

'You must go home, then.'

'I cannot do that. I have no home! I need only a little money, a little time. There is a person I mean to find, to save— '

'To save?'

'To find. To find. And, having found her, then I may need help again. Only a little help.

I have been cheated, Mr Hawtrey. I have been wronged. I think, with a lawyer— if we 246

might find an honest man— You know I am rich?— or, ought to be.' Again, he watches but does not speak. I say, 'You know I am rich. If you'll only help me, now. If you'll only keep me— '

'Keep you! Do you know what you are saying? Keep you, where?'

'Not in your own house?'