She lifts her head. 'London, miss?'
I nod. 'What do ladies do there, at this hour in the day?'
'Ladies, miss?'
'Ladies, like me.'
She looks about her. Then, after a second: 'Make visits, miss?'
'Visits?'
'To other ladies?'
Ah.'
She does not know. She is making it up. I am sure she is making it up! Even so, I think over her words and my heart beats suddenly hard. Ladies, I said, like me. There are no ladies like me, however; and for a second I have a clear and frightening picture of myself in London, alone, unvisited—
But I am alone and unvisited, now. And I shall have Richard
there, Richard will guide and advise me. Richard means to take us a house, with rooms, with doors that will fasten—
Are you cold, miss?' she says. Perhaps I have shivered. She rises, to fetch me a shawl. I watch her walk. Diagonally she goes, over the carpet— heedless of the design, the lines and diamonds and squares, beneath her feet.
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I watch and watch her. I cannot look too long, too narrowly at her, in her easy doing of commonplace things. At seven o'clock she makes me ready for supper with my uncle. At ten she puts me into my bed. After that, she stands in her room and I hear her sighing, and I lift my head and see her stretch and droop. Her candle lights her, very plainly; though I lie hidden in the dark. Quietly she passes, back and forth across the doorway— now stooping to pick up a fallen lace; now taking up her cloak and brushing mud from its hem. She does not kneel and pray, as Agnes did. She sits on her bed, out of my sight, but lifts her feet: I see the toe of one shoe put to the heel of the other and work it down. Now she stands, to undo the buttons of her gown; now she lets it fall, steps awkwardly out of her skirt; unlaces her stays, rubs her waist, sighs again. Now she steps away. I lift my head, to follow. She comes back, in her nightgown— shivering. I shiver, in sympathy. She yawns. I also yawn. She stretches— enjoying the stretch— liking the approach of slumber! Now she moves off— puts out her light, climbs into her bed— grows warm I suppose, and sleeps . . .
She sleeps, in a sort of innocence. So did I, once. I wait a moment, then take out my mother's picture and hold it close to my mouth.
That's her, I whisper. That's her. She's your daughter now!
How effortless it seems! But when I have locked my mother's face away I lie, uneasily.
My uncle's clock shudders and strikes. Some animal shrieks, like a child, in the park. I close my eyes and think— what I have not thought so vividly of, in years— of the madhouse, my first home; of the wild-eyed women, the lunatics; and of the nurses. I remember all at once the nurses' rooms, the mattings of coir, a piece of text on the limewashed walclass="underline" My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me. I remember an attic stair, a walk upon the roof, the softness of lead beneath my fingernail, the frightful drop to the ground—
I must fall into sleep, thinking this. I must plunge to the deepest layers of the night.
But then, I am woken— or, not quite woken, not quite drawn free from the tugging of the dark. For I open my eyes and am bewildered— perfectly bewildered— and filled with dread. I look at my form in the bed and it seems shifting and queer— now large, now small, now broken up with spaces; and I cannot say what age I am. I begin to shake. I call out. I call for Agnes. I have quite forgotten that she has gone. I have forgotten Richard Rivers, and all our plot. I call for Agnes, and it seems to me she comes; but she comes, to take away my lamp. I think she must do it to punish me.
'Don't take the light!' I say; but she takes it, she leaves me in the terrible darkness and I hear the sighing of doors, the passage of feet, beyond the curtain. It seems to me then that much time passes before the light comes back. But when Agnes lifts it and sees my face, she screams.
'Don't look at me!' I cry. And then: 'Don't leave me!' For I have a sense that, if she will only stay, some calamity, some dreadful thing— I d o n o t k n o w i t , c a n n o t n a m e it— will be averted; and I—
or sne— will be saved. I hide my face against her and seize her hand. But her hand is pale where it used to be freckled. I gaze at her, and do not know her.
She says, in a voice that is strange to me: 'It's Sue, miss. Only Sue. You see me? You are dreaming.'
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'Dreaming?'
She touches my cheek. She smooths my hair— not like Agnes, after all, but like—
Like no-one. She says again, 'It's Sue. That Agnes had the scarlatina, and is gone back home. You must lie down now, or the cold will make you ill. You mustn't be ill.'
I swim in black confusion for another moment; then the dream slips from me all at once and I know her, and know myself— my past, my present, my ungaugeable future.
She is a stranger to me, but part of it all.
'Don't leave me, Sue!' I say.
I feel her hesitate. When she draws away, I grip her tighter. But she moves only to climb across me, and she comes beneath the sheet and lies with her arm about me, her mouth against my hair.
She is cold, and makes me cold. I shiver, but soon lie still. 'There,' she says then. She murmurs it. I feel the movement of her breath and, deep in the bone of my cheek, the gentle rumble of her voice. 'There. Now you'll sleep— won't you? Good girl.'
Good girl, she says. How long has it been since anyone at Briar believed me good?
But she believes it. She must believe it, for the working of our plot. I must be good, and kind, and simple. Isn't gold said to be good? I am like gold to her, after all. She has come to ruin me; but, not yet. For now she must guard me, keep me sound and safe as a hoard of coins she means, at last, to squander—
I know it; but cannot feel it as I should. I sleep in her arms, dreamless and still, and wake to the warmth and closeness of her. She moves away as she feels me stir. She rubs her eye. Her hair is loose and touches my own. Her face, in sleep, has lost a little of its sharpness. Her brow is smooth, her lashes powdery, her gaze, when it meets mine, quite clear, untinged with mockery or malice . . . She smiles. She yawns. She rises. The blanket lifts and falls, and
sour heat comes gusting. I lie and remember the night. Some feeling— shame, or panic— flutters about my heart. I put my hand to the place where she has lain, and feel it cool.
She is changed with me. She is surer, kinder. Margaret brings water, and she fills me a bowl. 'Ready, miss?' she says. 'Better use it quick.' She wets a cloth and wrings it and, when I stand and undress, passes it, unasked, across my face and beneath my arms. I have become a child to her. She makes me sit, so she may brush my hair. She tuts:
'What tangles! The trick with tangles is, to start at the bottom ..."
Agnes had used to wash and dress me with quick and nervous fingers, wincing with every catching of the comb. One time I struck her with a slipper— so hard, she bled.
Now I sit for Susan— Sue, she called herself, in the night— now I sit patiently while Sue draws out the knots from my hair, my eyes upon my own face in the glass . . .
Good girl.
Then: 'Thank you, Sue,' I say.
I say it often, in the days and nights that follow. I never said it to Agnes. 'Thank you, Sue.' 'Yes, Sue,' when she bids me sit or stand, lift an arm or foot. 'No, Sue,' when she is afraid my gown must pinch me.
No, I am not cold.— But she likes to look me over as we walk, to be quite sure; will gather my cloak a little higher about my throat, to keep off draughts. No, my boots are 159
not taking in the dew.— But she'll slide a finger between my stockinged ankle and the leather of my shoe, for certainty's sake. I must not catch cold, at any cost. I must not tire. 'Wouldn't you say you had walked enough, miss?' I mustn't grow ill. 'Here is all your breakfast, look, untouched. Won't you take a little more?' I mustn't grow thin. I am a goose that must be plump, to be worth its slaughter.