'Mrs Sucksby taught me lots of things,' I said, 'and not what you are saying now.'
'Mrs Sucksby kept you too close,' he answered. 'Too close. The boys of the Borough are right, calling you slow. Too close, too long. Too much like this.' He showed me his fist.
'Go and fuck it,' I said.
At that his cheeks, behind his whiskers, grew crimson, and I thought he might get up and hit me. But he only leaned forward in his seat, and reached to grip the arm of my chair. He said quietly,
'Let me see you in your tantrums again and I will drop you, Sue, like a stone. Do you understand me? I have come far enough now, to do without you if I must. She will do anything I tell her. And say my old nurse, in London, should grow suddenly sick, and need her niece to tend her? What would you do then? Should you like to put on your old stuff gown again, and go back to Lant Street with nothing?'
I said,'I should tell Mr Lilly!'
'Do you think he would have you in his room, long enough to hear you?'
'Then, I should tell Maud.'
'Go ahead. And why not tell her, while you are about it, that I have a tail with a point, and cloven hooves? So I would have, were I to act my crimes upon the stage. No-one expects to meet a man like me in life, however. She would choose not to believe you.
She cannot afford to believe you! For she has come as far as we have, and must marry 85
me now, or be more or less ruined. She must do as I say— or stay here, and do nothing, for the rest of her life. Do you think she'll do that?'
What could I say? She had as good as told me herself that she would not. So I was silent. But from that point on, I think I hated him. He sat with his hand on my chair, his eyes on mine, for another moment or two; then there came the pat of Maud's slippers on the stairs, and after a second her face about the door. And then, of course, he sat back and his look changed. He rose, and I rose, and I made a hopeless sort of curtsey. He went quickly to her and led her to the fire.
'You are cold,' he said.
They stood before the mantel, but I saw their faces in the glass. She looked at the coals in the hearth. He gazed at me. Then he sighed and shook his hateful head.
'Oh, Sue,' he said, 'you are terribly stern today.'
Maud looked up. 'What's this?' she said.
I swallowed, saying nothing. He said,
'Poor Sue is weary of me. I've been teasing her, while you were gone.'
'Teasing her, how?' she asked, half- smiling, half- frowning.
'Why, by keeping her from her sewing, by talking of nothing but you! She claims to have a soft heart. She has no heart at all. I told her my eyes were aching for want of gazing at you; she told me to wrap them in flannel and keep to my room. I said my ears were ringing, for want of your sweet voice; she wanted to call for Margaret to bring castor-oil to put in them. I showed her this blameless white hand, that wants your kisses. She told me to take it and— ' He paused.
'And what?' said Maud.
'Well, put it in my pocket.'
He smiled. Maud looked once at me, in a doubtful way. 'Poor hand,' she said at last.
He lifted his arm. 'It still wants your kisses,' he said.
She hesitated, then took his hand and held it in her own two slender ones and touched his fingers, at the knuckles, with her lips.— 'Not there,' he said quickly, when she did that. 'Not there, but here.'
He turned his wrist and showed his palm. She hesitated again, then dipped her head to it. It covered her mouth, her nose, and half her face.
He caught my eye, and nodded. I turned away and wouldn't look at him.
For he was right, damn him. Not about Maud— for I knew that, whatever he said about hearts and gas-pipes, she was sweet, she was kind, she was everything that was gentle and handsome and good. But, he was right about me. How could I go back to the Borough, with nothing? I was meant to make Mrs Sucksby's fortune. How could I go back to her, and to Mr Ibbs— and to John— saying, I had thrown off the plot, let slip three thousand pounds, because—
Because what? Because my feelings were finer than I thought? They would say my nerve had failed me. They would laugh in my face! I had a certain standing. I was the daughter of a murderess. I had expectations. Fine feelings weren't in them. How could they be?
And then, say I gave it all up— how would that save Maud? Say I went home: Gentleman would go on and marry her, and lock her up anyway. Or, say I peached 86
him up. He would be sent from Briar, Mr Lilly would keep her all the closer— she might as well be put in a madhouse, then. Either way, I didn't say much to her chances.
But her chances had all been dealt her, years before. She was like a twig on a rushing river. She was like milk— too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.
Besides, nobody's chances were good, where I came from. And though she was to do badly, did that mean I must?
I didn't think it did. So though, as I have said, I was sorry for her, I was not quite sorry enough to want to try and save her. I never really thought of telling her the truth, of showing up Gentleman as the villain he was— of doing anything, anything at all, that would spoil our plot and keep us from our fortune. I let her suppose he loved her and was kind. I let her think that he was gentle. I watched her try to make herself like him, knowing all the time that he meant to take her, trick her, fuck her and lock her away. I watched her grow thin. I watched her pale and dwindle. I watched her sit with her head in her hands, passing the points of her fingers across her aching brow, wishing she might be anyone but herself, Briar any house but her uncle's, Gentleman any man but the man she must marry; and I hated it, but turned away. I thought, It can't be helped. I thought, It's their business.
But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there. All day I sat or walked with her, so full of the fate I was bringing her to I could hardly touch her or meet her gaze; and all night I lay with my back turned to her, the blanket over my ears to keep out her sighs. But in the hours in between, when she went to her uncle, I felt her— I felt her, through the walls of the house, like some blind crooks are said to be able to feel gold. It was as if there had come between us, without my knowing, a kind of thread. It pulled me to her, wherever she was. It was like—
It's like you love her, I thought.
It made a change in me. It made me nervous and afraid. I thought she would look at me and see it— or Gentleman would, or Margaret, or Mrs Stiles. I imagined word of it getting back to Lant Street, reaching John— I thought of John, more than any of them.
I thought of his look, his laugh. 'What have I done?' I imagined I'd say. 'I haven't done anything!' And I hadn't. It was only, as I've said, that I thought of her so, that I felt her so. Her very clothes seemed changed to me, her shoes and stockings: they seemed to keep her shape, the warmth and scent of her— I didn't like to fold them up and make them flat. Her rooms seemed changed. I took to going about them— just as I had done, on my first day at Briar—
and looking at all the things I knew she had taken up and touched. Her box, and her mother's picture. Her books. Would there be books for her, at the madhouse? Her comb, with hairs snagged in it. Would there be anyone to dress her hair? Her looking- glass. I began to stand where she liked to stand, close to the fire, and I'd study my face as I'd seen her studying hers.
'Ten days to go,' I would say to myself. 'Ten days, and you will be rich!'
But I'd say it, and across the words might come the chiming of the great house bell; 87