'I am very well,' I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.
'That will do,' he says, raising his hand. Then: 'I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?'
I nod. 'Oh yes.'
'I hope you can be silent?'
'I can.'
'Be silent, then.— That's better.' He turns to the matron. 'I see she wears her mother's likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother's fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don't care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad 114
promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan't want a thick- legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?'
The matron colours. 'It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house.'
'Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?'
He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, 'How well does she read?
How fair is her hand? Come, give her a piece of text and let her demonstrate.'
The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. 'Softly!' he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.
'A girl's hand,' he says, when I have finished, 'and burdened with serifs.' But he sounds pleased, nonetheless.
I am also pleased. I understand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blotted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stick and tilts his head so low I can see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.
'Well, miss,' he says, 'how should you like to come and live in my house? Don't push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to come to me, and learn neat ways and plain letters?'
He might have struck me. 'I should like it not at all,' I say at once.
The matron says, 'For shame, Maud!'
The gentleman snorts. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'she has her mother's unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall forget to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that— hmm?'
He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instruction to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.
'I will not go!' I cry. 'He shall not make me!'
The matron draws me to her. I have seen her take a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.
Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother's brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to
take me home and make me ready for the roast. All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff— a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my complaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it comes time for her to take me, they kiss me and 115
hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their own, and pluck and grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls— their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek.
My uncle's servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.
'What a place to raise a girl in!' she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.
I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath come quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle— at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, complacently. 'Got a temper, have you?' she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it. The third egg she places on my lap. I will not eat it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. 'Tut tut,' she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage.
The horse goes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees.
Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.
I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grimness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncle's house that bewilders and frightens me, that first day. The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle
into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within and seem to tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat. 'That's Mr Way, your uncle's steward,' says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease— for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkness that seems to lap at my buff gown. When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silence, that my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and flowering creepers.
The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall.
'Come up, child,' says the woman when I do that; and now when she puts her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightened, the higher we go. For the house seems awful to me— the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half- hidden— like expectant grubs, in the cells of a hive— there stand servants, come to see me make my progress through the house.
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I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurses.
I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.
'Why do they watch?' I say to the woman.
'Why, to see your face,' she answers. 'To see if you turned out handsome as your mother.'
'I have twenty mothers,' I say at that; 'and am handsomer than any of them.'
The woman has stopped before a door. 'Handsome is as hand-
some does,' she says. 'I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours.'
She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it.
The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire— I am too small to see my face in the glass above— and stand and shiver.
'Should have kept your mittens,' says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands.