英语小说网

"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."

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.

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.

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

"It ain't Sue," he says.

"Change of plan," says Richard, not catching my eye. "Sue stays on 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 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."

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.

"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!"

"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.

"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.

Richard meets my gaze, then looks away. "What can I say?" He shrugs. "I am a villain."

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

"Not mine," he answers at last.

He shakes his head. "Whose, then? Where, then?"

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

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

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

"Sue's house," I say. "Sue's house, of thieves."

"Not ours?"

He rubs at his eye. He is tired. "It is theirs," he says, nodding to the woman, the man. "Their house, in the Borough."

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.

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

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.

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

"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?"

"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!"

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

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

"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 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."

"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."

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.

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

"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."

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?"

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.

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 fluttering at the top of its swollen head. The woman still watches. The girl puts her 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?"

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 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?"

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."

She tilts her head. "Hear the grammar in that, Mr Ibbs?" she says. The man says he does.

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.

The red-haired girl has the fingers of the baby's hands in her mouth and is sucking on them, idly.

"French books," he says, with a snigger.

I turn my head, but not my gaze.

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.

"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.

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."

"Richard," I say. He doesn't answer.

"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 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."

"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 sighs. The boy looks up at her and scowls.

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?"

"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!"

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

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.

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."

"Hauteur," she repeats.

"Hauteur," he answers, not looking up.

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

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

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.

"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."

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.

"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!"

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

The boy makes a final stab with his knife, his face darkening. "Fuck!" 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, and before I can cry out and stop him he slices it, swiftly in one long gash.

"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?"

I am sure he says that. The words bewilder me, and I shrink away. I twist to look at Richard.

"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."

"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?"

"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?"

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.

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

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.

"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.

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 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.

"Lift your skirts, dear, above the flames," says the woman, going up before me. Richard comes, very close, behind.

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 into 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 hair-brush." 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!"

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

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

"I don't care," I say, taking another step, "to be tricked."

"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.

"Take your cloak off, Maud," he says.

He closes the door, and locks it.

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

Richard watches me and sighs. He makes his eyes wide. "You need not," he says, "look so like a rabbit. Do you think I would bring you all this way, to hurt you?"

I think: He is going to strangle me.

"Shut up, Maud."

I keep my cloak quite fastened, and move backwards, slowly, away from him and from the woman, back to the window. I will smash it with my elbow if I must. I will shriek into the street.

"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."

"Everything in this case." He says it meaningfully; and when I hesitate, not 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."

"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?"

His face seems honest -- but then, it has seemed honest to me before.

"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?"

"You are lying," I say.

"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?"

My mother! I came to London to escape her. Now all at once, I think of her grave in the park at Briar -- untended, untrimmed, its white stone creeping with grey.

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

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.

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

"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 A. -- Why, that's like your name, too! The next letter, though, is where they runs off different. That was a R…"

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?

The woman still watches. I let my hand drop.

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

"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.

"Find your room all right?" He nods.

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

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

"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."

"You was told it, I expect."

"I was, I know it," I say.

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

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

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

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.

She gazes at me again.

"A nurse," I say. "You were a nurse --"

"Now, what was I speaking of?" she says, her eyes on mine.

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.

"Of ladies," says Richard.

She waits. But I have grown still, and cold, and cautious, and say nothing. So then she goes on.

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.

"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. 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."

"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."

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

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 pass-ing 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.

"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…"

"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 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?"

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 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 --""

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

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.

"From him," I say.

"From anywhere. I could get you ten like that, have them atamped 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?"

"No mistake," answers Mrs Sucksby.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 --"

"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."

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 don't understand him. I hardly try to. I am thinking still of my uncle, my 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."

"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?"

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

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

"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 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.

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. Does my father still live? Did he never --?"

"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 --"

"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?"

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 --""

"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!""

"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.

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 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 name's Maud; and that's a name for a lady after all. Remember your word." "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 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.

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 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."

"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.

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.

"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.

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."

"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 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.

"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 have excuse," I say, "for anything! Anything!"

"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.

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?"

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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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.

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?"

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

"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…

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

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.

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 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."

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

"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.

Mrs Sucksby turns. Her gown is closed and perfectly smooth again, but she has her hand upon the bodice, as if nursing the words beneath. 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."

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!"

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

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."

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 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 eye-lids 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.

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

"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?"

"You are mad," I say to them both. "You are mad! I -- Pass me off as Sue?"

"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.

"Convince him, how?"

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

"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 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?"

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

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!"

She waves her hand before her face, says nothing. Richard snorts.

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?"

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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.

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

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

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."

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

"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…"

"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.

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

"Hanged?"

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

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."

"Gentleman, I mean it!"

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!"

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

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

"Hanged game," says Mrs Sucksby -- as if this, whatever it means, will make me bear it better.

She has risen, and lights a lamp: a score of gaudy surfaces -- the silk dressinggown, the cloudy brass of the bedstead, china ornaments upon the mantelshelf -- 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?"

"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 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.

Mrs Sucksby sees me, and tuts. "Oh, now," she says, "ain't that a shame! Crying? And all these handsome things? Gentleman, you see her? Crying, and for what?"

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.

"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?"

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?"

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

"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 --"

"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."

"You have killed her!" I say.

"Now, why look like that? Didn't I do everything for her, just as her mother 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?"

She swallows. I cry still harder. "Sue," I say. "Oh, Sue…"

"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."

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

"But, to cheat her! To leave her, there --!"

She reaches, and pats my sleeve. "You let them take her," she says. Then her look changes. She almost winks. "And oh, dear girl, don't you think you was your mother's daughter, then?"

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?

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

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

From the rooms below there come again shrieks, and blows, and laughter. Richard stands watching, with folded arms.

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

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.