"There she is!" I cried, lifting my hand and pointing. "There she is! Don't let her go! Don't you fucking let her go --!"
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I shrieked. I shrieked and shrieked. I struggled like a fiend. But the more I twisted, the tighter I was held. I saw Gentleman fall back in his seat and the coach start up and begin to turn. I saw Maud put her face to the window of cloudy glass. At sight of her eyes, I shrieked again.
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But the coach drove on, the wheels throwing up dust and gravel as the horse got up its speed; and the faster it went, the harder I think I fought. Now the other doctor came forward, to help Dr Christie. The woman in the apron came, too. They were trying to pull me closer to the house. I wouldn't let them.
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The coach was speeding, growing smaller. "They're getting away!" I cried. Then the woman got behind me and seized my waist. She had a grip on her like a man's. She lifted me up the two or three steps that led to the house's front door, as if I might be so many feathers in a bag.
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"Now then," she said as she hauled me. "What's this? Kick your legs, will you, and trouble the doctors?"
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Her mouth was close to my ear, her face behind me. I hardly knew what I was doing. All I knew was, she had me there, and Gentleman and Maud were escaping. I felt her speak, bent my head forward, then took it sharply back.
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"Oh!" she cried. Her grip grew slack. "Oh! Oh!"
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"She's becoming demented," said Dr Christie. I thought he was talking about her. Then I saw he meant me. He took a whistle from his pocket and gave it a blow.
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"For God's sake," I cried, "won't you hear me? They have tricked me, they have tricked me --!"
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The woman grabbed me again -- about the throat, this time; and as I turned in her arms she hit me hard, with the points of her fingers, in my stomach. I think she did it in such a way, the doctors did not see. I gave a jerk, and swallowed my breath. Then she did it again. "Here's fits!" she said.
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Meanwhile, they had got me into the hall of the house and the sound of the whistle had brought another two men. They were pulling on brown paper cuffs over their coat-sleeves. They did not look like doctors. They came and caught hold of my ankles.
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"Watch your hands!" called Dr Graves. "She may snap."
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"Hold her tight," said Dr Christie. He had brought out a thing like a great flat spoon, made of horn. He came to my side and held my head, and put the spoon to my mouth, between my teeth. It was smooth, but he pushed it hard and it hurt me. I thought I should be choked: I bit it, to keep it from going down my throat. It tasted bad. I still think of all the other people's mouths it must have gone in, before mine.
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"Keep her steady," said Dr Graves. "She's in a convulsion. She may put out her joints."
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The men drew my legs straight, and my skirts rose to my knees. I began to be afraid of the skirts rising higher. That made me twist about, I suppose.
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I could not tell them that I was not in a fit, but only winded; that the woman had hurt me; that I was anyway not a lunatic, but sane as them. I could not say anything, for trying to find my breath. I could only croak.
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He saw my jaws close. "Now she takes it!" he said. That's right. Hold her steady." He looked at Dr Graves. "To the soft room? I think so. Nurse Spiller?"
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I was not thinking, now, of Gentleman and Maud. I was thinking of myself. I was growing horribly afraid. My stomach ached from the nurse's fingers. My mouth was cut by the spoon. I had an idea that, once they got me into a room, they would kill me.
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"A thrasher, ain't she?" said one of the men, as he worked for a better grip on my ankle.
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"A very bad case," said Dr Christie. He looked into my face. "The convulsion is passing, at least." He raised his voice. "Don't be afraid, Mrs Rivers! We know all about you. We are your friends. We have brought you here to make you well."
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I tried to speak. "Help! Help!" I tried to say. But the spoon made me gobble like a bird. It also made me dribble; and a bit of dribble flew out of my mouth and struck Dr Christie's cheek. Perhaps he thought I had spat it. Anyway, he moved quickly back, and his face grew grim. He took out his handkerchief.
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That was the woman that held me by the throat. I saw her nod to him, and then to the men in the cuffs, and they turned so that they might walk with me, further into the house. I felt them do it and began to struggle again.
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Finally, one of the men began to whistle a tune, and to beat out the time of it, with his finger-ends, on my leg. Then we reached another room, with a ceiling of a paler shade of drab; and here they stopped.
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They carried me along a passage, through a set of doors and a room; then to a landing, another passage, another room -- I tried to study the way, but they had me on my back: I could make out only so many drab-coloured ceilings and walls.
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"Very good," he said to the men and the nurse, as he wiped his cheek. "That will do. Now you may take her."
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"Careful, now," they said.
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After about a minute I knew they had got me deep into the house, and that I was lost. I could not cry out. The nurse kept her arm about my throat, and I still had the spoon of horn in my mouth. When we reached a staircase they took me down it, saying, "To you, Mr Bates," and, "Watch this turn, it's a tight one!" -- as if I might be, not a sack of feathers now, but a trunk or a piano. Not once did they look me in the face.
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The men put down my legs. The woman took her arm from my neck and gave me a push. It was only a little push and yet, they had so pulled and shaken me about, I found I staggered and fell. I fell upon my hands. I opened my mouth and the spoon fell out. One of the men reached, quick, to take it. He shook the spit from it.
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"Little devil!"
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"You may say please, now," said the woman. Then she spoke to the men. "Gave me a crack with her head, upon the steps. Look here. Am I bruised?"
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She put her foot to me. "Now, does Dr Christie have you here to give us all bruises? Eh, my lady? Mrs What-is-your-name? Mrs Waters, or Rivers? Does he?"
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"Please," I said.
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"I believe you shall be."
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"Please," I said again. "I ain't Mrs Rivers."
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"She ain't Mrs Rivers? Hear that, Mr Bates? And I ain't Nurse Spiller, I dare say. And Mr Hedges ain't himself. Very likely."
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She came closer to me, and she picked me up about my waist; and she dropped me. You could not say she threw me, but she lifted me high and let me fall; and me being just then so dazed and so weak, I fell badly.
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"That's for cracking my face," she said. "Be glad we ain't on stairs, or a roof. Crack me again -- who knows? -- we might be."
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She pulled her canvas apron straight, and leaned and caught hold of my collar. "Right, let's have this gown off. You may look like thunder, too. That's nothing to me. Why, what small little hooks! And my hand's hard, is it? Used to better, are you? I should say you are, from what I've heard." She laughed. "Well, we don't keep ladies' maids, here. We has Mr Hedges and Mr Bates." They still stood, watching, at the door. "Shall I call them over?"
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Then she stood, darker-faced than ever, and sweating.
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Her face grew dark. "Bitch, am I?" she answered. "Well!"
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"You may call who you like, you great bitch," I said, in a pant. "You ain't having my dress."
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And she drew back her hand and curled her fingers into a fist, and she hit me. I had grown up in the Borough, surrounded by every kind of desperate dodger and thief; but I had had Mrs Sucksby for a mother, and had never been hit. The blow knocked me almost out of my head. I put my hands to my face, and lay down in a crouch; but she got the gown off me anyway -- I suppose she was used to getting gowns off lunatics, and had a trick for it; and next she got hold of my corset and took that. Then she took my garters, and then my shoes and stockings, and finally my hair-pins.
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I supposed she meant to strip me bare; which I would rather die first, than endure. I got on to my knees and twisted from her.
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"There!" she said, looking me over in my petticoat and shimmy. "There's all your ribbons and laces gone. If you chokes yourself now, it'll be no business of ours. You hear me? Mrs Ain't-Mrs-Rivers? You sit in the pads for a night, and stew. See how you care for that. Convulsions? I think I know a temper from a fit. Kick all you like in here. Put out your joints, chew your tongue off. Keep you quiet. We prefers them quiet, makes our job nicer."
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She said all that, and she made a bundle of my clothes and swung them over her shoulder; and then she left me. The men went with her. They had seen her hit me, and done nothing. They had watched her take my stockings and stays. I heard them pull off their paper cuffs. One began to whistle again. Nurse Spiller closed the door and locked it, and the whistling grew very much fainter.
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When it had grown so faint I could no longer hear it, I got to my feet. Then I fell down again. My legs had been pulled so hard they shook like things of rubber, and my head was ringing, from the punch. My hands were trembling. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, properly funked. I went, on my knees, to the door, to look at the key-hole. There was no handle. The door itself was covered in a dirty canvas, padded with straw; the walls were covered in padded canvas, too. The floor had oil-cloth on it. There was a single blanket, very much torn and stained. There was a little tin pot I was meant to piddle in. There was a window, high up, with bars on. Beyond the bars were curling leaves of ivy. The light came in green and dark, like the water in a pond.
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Then I turned back to the door and put my fingers to it -- to the key-hole, to the canvas, to the edge, anywhere -- to try and pull it. But it was tight as a clam -- and, what was worse, as I stood plucking at it I began to make out little dints and tears in the dirty canvas -- little crescents, where the weave was worn -- that I understood all at once must be the marks left by the finger-nails of all the other lunatics -- all the real lunatics, I mean -- who had been put in that room before me.
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I stood and looked at it all, in a sort of daze -- hardly believing, I think, that those were my cold feet on the oil-cloth floor; that it was my sore face, my arms, that the green light struck.
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"Help! Help!" I cried. My voice sounded strange. "Oh, help! They have put me in here, thinking I'm mad! Call Richard Rivers!" I coughed. "Help! Doctor! Help! Can you hear me?" I coughed again. "Help! Can you hear me --?"
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The thought that I was standing, doing just what they had done, was horrible. I stepped away from the door, the daze slipped from me, and I grew wild with fright. I flung myself back, and began to beat at the padded canvas with my hands. Each blow made a cloud of dust.
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So then I tried the walls. They were also thick. And when I had given up banging and shouting, I put the blanket and the little tin pot together in a heap beneath the window, and climbed on them, trying to reach the glass; but the tin pot buckled, and the blanket slithered and I fell.
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And so on. I stood and called, and coughed, and beat upon the door -- only stopping, now and then, to put my ear to it, to try to tell if there might be anyone near -- for I can't say how long; and no-one came. I think the padding was too thick; or else, the people that heard me were used to lunatics calling, and had learned not to mind.
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At last I sat on the oil-cloth floor and cried. I cried, and my own tears stung me. I put my finger-tips to my cheek and felt about my swelling face. I felt my hair. The woman had pulled it to take the pins out, and it lay all about my shoulders; and when I took up a length of it, meaning to comb it, some of it came away in my hands. That made me cry worse than ever. I don't say I was much of a beauty; but I thought of a girl I knew, who had lost her hair to a wheel in a workshop -- that hair had never grown back. Suppose I should be bald? I went over my head, taking out the hair that was loose, wondering if I ought to keep it, perhaps for making a wig with later; but there was not much of it, after all. In the end I rolled it up and put it in a corner.
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And as I did that, I saw something, pale upon the floor. It looked like a crumpled white hand, and it gave me a start, at first; then I saw what it was. It had fallen out of my bosom when the nurse had got the gown off me, and been kicked out of sight. There was the mark of a shoe upon it, and one of its buttons was crushed. It was that glove of Maud's, that I had taken that morning from her things and meant to hold on to, as a keepsake of her.
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I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands. If I had thought myself funked, a minute before -- well, that funking was nothing to what I felt now, looking at that glove, thinking of Maud, and of the awful trick that she and Gentleman had played me. I hid my face in my arms, for very shame. I walked, from one wall to another, and from that to another: if I once tried to be still, it was as if I was resting on needles and pins -- I started up, crying out and sweating.
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I thought of all my time at Briar, when I had supposed myself such a sharper, and been such a simpleton. I thought of the days I had spent, with those two villains -- the looks the one must have given the other, the smiles. Leave her alone, why don't you? I had said to him, feeling sorry for her. And then, to her: Don't mind him, miss. He loves you, miss. Marry him. He loves you. He will do it like this…
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Then, I might really have been demented. I walked, and my bare feet went slap, slap, slap on the oil-cloth; and I put the glove to my mouth and I bit it. Him I suppose I expected no better of. It was her I thought of most -- that bitch, that snake, that -- Oh! To think I had ever looked at her and taken her for a flat. To think I had laughed at her. To think I had loved her! To think I had thought she loved me! To think I had kissed her, in Gentleman's name. To think I had touched her! To think, to think --!
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To think I lay on the night of her wedding with a pillow over my head, so I should not hear the sound of her tears. To think that, if I had listened, I might have heard -- might I? might I? -- the sound of her sighs. I could not bear it. I forgot, for the moment, the little detail of how, in swindling me, she had only turned my own trick back on myself.
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Oh! Oh! I feel the sting of it, even now.
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I walked, and moaned, and swore, and cursed her; I gripped and bit and twisted that glove, until the light beyond the window faded, and the room grew dark. No one came to look at me. No-one brought me food, or a gown, or stockings. And though I was warm at first, from all the walking, when at last I grew so tired I found I must lie upon the blanket or drop, I became cold; and then I could not get warm again.
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I did not sleep. From the rest of the house there came, every so often, queer noises -- shouts, and running feet and, once, the blowing of the doctor's whistle.
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At some hour of the night it began to rain, and the water went drip against the window. In the garden, a dog barked: I heard that and began to think, not of Maud, but of Charley Wag, of Mr Ibbs and Mrs Sucksby -- of Mrs Sucksby in her bed, the empty place beside her, waiting for me. How long would she wait? How soon would Gentleman go to her? What would he say? He might say I was dead. But then, if he said that, she would ask for my body, to bury. -- I thought of my funeral, and who would cry most. He might say I was drowned or lost in marshes. She would ask for the papers to prove it. Could those papers be faked? He might say I had taken my share of the money, and cut. He would say that, I knew it. But Mrs Sucksby wouldn't believe him. She would see through him like he was glass. She would hunt me out. She had not kept me seventeen years to lose me now, like this! She would look in every house in England, until she found me!
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That's what I thought, as I grew calmer. I thought I must only speak with the doctors and they would see their mistake and let me go; but that anyway, Mrs Sucksby would come, and I should get out like that.
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And when I was free, I would go to wherever Maud Lilly was, and -- wasn't I my mother's own daughter, after all? -- I would kill her.
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You can see what little idea I had of the awfulness of the fix I was really in.
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They came into the room and stood and looked me over. Nurse Spiller said, "Here she is."
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The other, who was dark, said, "Young, to be mad."
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Next morning, the woman who had thrown me about came back for me. She came, not with the two men, Mr Bates and Mr Hedges, but with another woman -- nurses, they called them there; but they were no more nurses than I was, they only got that work through being stout and having great big hands like mangles.
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"Listen here," I said, very carefully. I had worked this out. I had heard them coming, and had got to my feet and put my petticoat straight, and tidied my hair. "Listen here. You think I am mad. I am not. I am not the lady you and the doctors suppose me to be, at all. That lady, and her husband -- Richard Rivers -- are a pair of swindlers; and they have swindled you, and me, and just about everybody; and it is very important that the doctors know it, so I may be let out and those swindlers caught. I --"
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Again they stood and looked me over. "You must call us nurse when you speak to us," the dark one said at last. "But between you and me, dear, we would rather you didn't speak to us at all. We hear that much nonsense -- well. Come along. You must be bathed, so that Doctor Christie may look at you. You must be put in a gown. Why, what a little girl! You must be no more than sixteen."
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She had come close, and made to catch at my arm. I drew away from her.
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"Right in the face," said Nurse Spiller, speaking across my words. "Right here, with her head."
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"Will you listen to me?" I said.
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She put her hand to her cheek, close to her nose, where there was the smallest, faintest mark of crimson. My own face, of course, was swollen like a pudding; and I dare say my eye was almost black. But I said, still carefully, "I am sorry I hurt your face. I was only so thrown, to be brought in here, as a lunatic; when all the time it was the other lady, Miss Lilly -- Mrs Rivers -- that was meant to come."
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"Listen to you? La, if I listened to all the rubbish I heard in this house, I should go mad myself. Come on, now."
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Her voice, that had started off mild, grew sharper. She took hold of my arm. I flinched from the feel of her fingers. "Watch her," said Nurse Spiller, seeing me twitch.
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I said, "If you'll only not touch me, I'll go with you, wherever you want."
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"Ho!" said the dark nurse then. "There's manners. Come with us, will you? Very grateful, I'm sure."
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She pulled me and, when I tugged against her grip, Nurse Spiller came to help her. They got their hands beneath my arms and more or less lifted me, more or less dragged me, out of the room. When I kicked and complained -- which I did, from the shock of it -- Nurse Spiller got those great hard fingers of hers into my arm-pit, and jabbed. You can't see bruises in an arm-pit. I think she knew it. "She's off!" she said, when I cried out.
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"That's my head ringing for the rest of the day," said the other. And she gripped me tighter and shook me.
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Then I grew quiet. I was afraid I should be punched again. But I was also looking hard at the way we were taking -- at the windows and the doors. Some doors had locks. All the windows had bars on. They looked over a yard. This was the back part of the house -- what should have been, in a house like Briar, the servants' part. Here it was given over to nurses. We met two or three of them as we walked. They wore aprons and caps, and carried baskets, or bottles, or sheets.
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"Well, they come in all sizes…"
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"Cracked Nancy on the cheek."
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I didn't know what they meant. But being held up for strangers to study, and talk and smile over, made me ashamed, and I kept silent.
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The new nurse looked more interested. "This one?" she said. "Looks too slight for that."
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The new nurse looked at me, in a considering sort of way. "Sharp-faced," she said, after a minute. "Ain't she, though?"
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"And the rest," said the dark nurse. She dropped her voice. "She's the one -- you know?"
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She whistled. They should bring 'em in bound. Young, though, ain't she?"
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"Good morning," they all sang out.
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"I'm seventeen," I said.
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"Good morning," my nurses answered.
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The woman went off on her way and my two nurses gripped me tight again and took me, down another passage, to a little room. It might have once been a pantry it was very like Mrs Stiles's pantry, at Briar -- for there were cupboards, with locks upon them, and an arm-chair and a sink.
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"What's her trouble? Delusions?"
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"Sixteen, if she's a day."
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"New "un?" one asked at last, with a nod at me. "Come up from the pads? Is she bad?"
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"That will do," she said, when she saw me do that. "Do you think Dr Christie cares how dusty your toes are? Here, now. Let's see your linen." She caught hold of the hem of my shimmy, then turned her head to Nurse Spiller, who nodded.
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Nurse Spiller sat down in the chair, giving a great sigh as she did so. The other nurse put water in the sink. She showed me a slip of yellow soap and a dirty flannel.
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The water was cold. I wet my face and arms, then made to wash my feet.
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"Here you are," she said. And then, when I did nothing: "Come on. You've hands, haven't you? Let's see you wash."
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"Good, ain't it? Too good for this house. That'll boil up to nothing, that will." She gave it a tug. "You take that off, dear. We shall keep it, quite safe, against the day you leave us. -- What, are you shy?"
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"Shy?" said Nurse Spiller, yawning. "Don't waste our time. And you, a married lady."
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"I ain't married," I said. "And I'll thank you both to keep your hands off my linen. I want my own gown back, and my stockings and shoes. I need only speak with Dr Christie, and then you'll be sorry."
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"What's that?" they said at once. Then they saw it was only a glove. They looked at the stitching inside the wrist.
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"Hoity-toity!" cried the dark nurse. She wiped her eyes. "Dear me. Come, now. It's no use growing sulky. We must have your linen -- it's nothing to me and Nurse Spiller, it's the rules of the house. Here's a new set, look, and a gown and -- look here -- slippers."
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They looked at me and laughed.
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She had gone to one of the cupboards and brought out a set of greyish underthings, and a wool gown, and boots. She came back to me, holding them, and Nurse Spiller joined her; and it was no good then how hard I argued and cursed, they got hold of me and stripped me bare. When they took off my petticoat, that glove of Maud's fell out. I had had it under the waistband. I bent and caught it up.
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"You shan't have it!" I cried, snatching it back. They had taken my clothes and my shoes; but I had walked and torn and bitten that glove all night, it was all I had to keep my nerve up. I had the idea that, if they were to take it, I should be like a Samson shorn.
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"Here's your own name, Maud," they said. "That's pretty work, that is."
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Perhaps they noticed a look in my eye.
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So they let me keep it; and then I stood limp and let them dress me, through fear they would change their minds.
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The gown was meant to be a tartan, but the colours had run. The stockings were short, like a boy's. The shoes were of india-rubber.
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"One glove's no use, after all," said the dark nurse to Nurse Spiller, quietly. "And remember Miss Taylor, who had the buttons on a thread that she called her babies? Why, she'd take the hand off, that tried to get a hold of one of those!"
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"Here you are, Cinderella," said the dark nurse, putting them on me. And then, looking me over: "Well! You shall bounce like a ball all right, in those!"
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The clothes were all madhouse things. The corset had hooks instead of laces, and was too big for me. -- "Never mind," they said, laughing. They had chests like boats. "Plenty of room for growing in."
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They laughed again then, for quite a minute. Then they did this. They sat me in the chair and combed my hair and made it into plaits; and they took out a needle and cotton, and sewed the plaits to my head.
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"Let me see to it," said Nurse Spiller. She finished it off -- two or three times, as if by accident, putting the point of the needle to my scalp. That is another place that don't show cuts and bruises.
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"It's this, or cut it," the dark nurse said when I struggled; "and no skin off my nose either way."
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"This ain't fair!" I said. "This ain't fair, at all!"
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"Mind, now, you remember your manners," they said as we walked. "Start going off your head again, we shall have you back in the pads, or plunge you."
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And so, between the two of them they got me ready; and then they took me to the room that was to be mine.
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They shook me, and did not answer. So then I fell silent and, again, tried hard to study the way they took me. I was also growing afraid. I had had an idea in my head -- that I think I had got from a picture, or a play -- of how a madhouse should be; and so far, this house was not like it. I thought, "They have got me in the place where the doctors and nurses live. Now they'll take me to the mad bit." -- I think I supposed it would be something like a dungeon or a gaol.
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But we walked only down more drab-coloured corridors, past door after drab-coloured door, and I began to look about me and see little things -- such as, the lamps being ordinary brass ones, but with strong wire guards about the flames; and the doors having fancy latches, but ugly locks; and the walls having, here and there, handles, that looked as though they might, if you turned them, ring bells.
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And finally it broke upon me that this was the madhouse after all; that it had once been an ordinary gentleman's house; that the walls had used to have pictures and looking-glasses on them, and the floors had used to have rugs; but that now, it had all been made over to madwomen -- that it was, in its way, like a smart and handsome person gone mad itself.
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"Come on," said Nurse Spiller, giving me a prod.
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And I can't say why, but somehow the idea was worse and put me in more of a creep than if the place had looked like a dungeon after all. I shuddered and slowed my step, then almost stumbled. The india-rubber boots were hard to walk in.
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"Fourteen. Here we are."
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"Which do we want?" asked the other nurse, looking at the doors.
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All the doors had little plates screwed to them. We stopped at one of them, and Nurse Spiller gave a knock, then put a key to the lock and turned it. The key was a plain one, shined from use. She kept it on a chain inside her pocket.
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The wooden wall had glass at the top, that let in light from a window beyond it, but the room had no window of its own. The air was close. There were four beds in it, along with a cot where a nurse slept. Three of the beds had women beside them, getting dressed. One bed was bare.
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The room she took us into was not a proper room, but had been made, by the building of a wooden wall, inside another. -- For, as I said, that house had been all chopped up and made crazy.
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"This is to be yours," said Nurse Spiller, taking me to it. It was placed very near the nurse's cot. "This is where we puts our questionable ladies. Try a queer trick here, Nurse Bacon shall know all about it. Shan't you, Nurse Bacon?"
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"Sixteen," said the dark nurse.
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This was the nurse of that room. "Oh, yes," she said. She nodded and rubbed her hands. She had some ailment that made her fingers very fat and pink, like sausages -- an unlucky ailment, I suppose, for someone with a name like hers -- and she liked to rub them often. She looked me over in the same cool way that all the other nurses had, and she said, as they had, "Young, ain't you?"
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"Seventeen," I said.
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"Sixteen? We should call you the child of the house, if it weren't for Betty. Look here, Betty! Here's a fresh young lady, look, almost your age. I should say she can run very quick up and down a set of stairs. I should say she's got neat ways. Eh, Betty?"
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She had called to a woman who stood at the bed across from mine, pulling a gown on over a great fat stomach. I thought her a girl at first; but when she turned and showed her face, I saw that she was quite grown-up, but a simpleton. She looked at me in a troubled sort of way, and the nurses laughed.
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I found out later that they used her more or less as they would a servant, and had her running every sort of chore; though she was -- if you could believe it -- the daughter of a very grand family.
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She ducked her head while the nurses laughed, and cast a few sly looks at my feet -- as if to see for herself how quick they might be, really. At last one of the other two women said quietly, "Don't mind them, Betty. They seek only to provoke you."
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"Who spoke to you?" said Nurse Spiller at once.
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The woman worked her lips. She was old, and slight, and very pale in the cheek. She caught my eye, then glanced away as if ashamed.
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She seemed harmless enough; but I looked at her, and at Betty, and at the other woman there -- a woman who stood, gazing at nothing, pulling her hair before her face -- and I thought that, for all I knew, they might be so many maniacs; and here was I, being obliged to make a bed among them.
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"Can't we?" said Nurse Spiller. "I think we know the law. Your order's been signed, ain't it?"
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I went to the nurses. I said, "I won't stay here. You can't make me."
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"But this is all a mistake!"
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Nurse Bacon yawned and rolled her eyes. The dark nurse sighed. "Come, Maud," she said. "That's enough."
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She caught Nurse Bacon's eye. "Hear that? She will speak like that, by the hour."
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Nurse Bacon put her knuckles to her hips and rubbed them.
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"My name ain't Maud," I answered. "How many times do I have to tell you? It ain't Maud Rivers!"
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That stopped them laughing. They caught hold of me, and shook me; and Nurse Spiller hit me again about the face -- upon the same spot as before -- though not so hard.
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Still rubbing her own hands against her skirt, she gazed at mine. I gazed with her. My fingers looked like Maud's. I put them behind my back. I said, "I only got hands so white through being maid to a lady. It was that lady that tricked me. I --"
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"Maid to a lady!" The nurses laughed again.
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I stamped my foot. "For fuck's sake!" I cried.
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"Well, don't that take the cake! We got plenty girls suppose themselves duchesses. I never met one that thought herself a duchess's maid! Dear me, that's novel, that is. We shall have to put you in the kitchen, give you polish and a cloth."
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"Don't care to speak nicely?" she said. "Ain't that a shame! Perhaps she'd like a situation as a nurse. See how she'd like that. Spoil her white little hands, though."
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"There, now you've set them off!" said Nurse Spiller. "And here's the doctors due, any minute."
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I suppose she thought the old bruise would cover up the new. The pale old woman saw her do it and gave a cry. Betty, the idiot girl, began to moan.
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The doctors were like kings to them. Nurse Bacon went to Betty, to bully her out of her tears. The dark nurse ran to the old woman.
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She shook me again, then let me stagger away so she might put straight her apron.
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"You finish fastening your buttons, you creature!" she said, waving her arms.
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"And you, Mrs Price, you take your hair from out your mouth this instant. Haven't I told you a hundred times, you shall swallow a ball of it, and choke? I'm sure I don't know why I warn you, we should all be glad if you did…"
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I looked at the door. Nurse Spiller had left it open, and I wondered if I might reach it if I ran.
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But from the room next to ours -- and then, from all down the corridor, from all the other rooms we had passed -- there came, as I wondered, the sound of doors being unlocked and opened; and then the grumbling voices of nurses, the odd shriek. Somewhere, a bell was rung. That was the signal that meant the doctors were coming.
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And I thought, after all, that I should make a far better case for myself in standing and talking quietly with Dr Christie, than in running at him in a pair of rubber boots.
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I moved close to my bed, putting my knee to it to keep my leg from trembling; and I felt for my hair, meaning to tidy it -- forgetting, for the moment, that they had stitched it to my head.
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The dark nurse went off, running. The rest of us stood in silence, listening out for the sound of the doctors' footsteps. Nurse Spiller shook her finger at me. "You watch your filthy tongue, you trollop," she said.
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We waited for about ten minutes, then there was a stir in the passage and Dr Christie and Dr Graves came walking very quickly into the room, their heads bent over Dr Graves's note-book.
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He put his hand to his pocket and brought out a piece of sugar. She took it, and curtseyed.
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"Dear ladies, good morning," said Dr Christie, looking up. He went first to Betty. "How are you, Betty? Good girl. You want your medicine, of course."
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"Good girl," he said again. Then, moving past her: "Mrs Price. The nurses tell me you have been giving in to tears. That is not good. What will your husband say? Shall he be pleased to think you melancholy? Hmm? And all your children? What shall they think?"
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"Miss Wilson, what complaints have you for us today?" asked Dr Christie.
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She worked her mouth; then said, after a minute: "A curb."
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"You will find the food wholesome enough, Miss Wilson, if you will only sample it."
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"The want of pure air," she said quickly.
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"Your tongue, Miss Wilson! What do we keep upon it? Hmm?"
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He took her wrist, all the time murmuring to Dr Graves, who finally made some note in his book. Then they walked to the pale old lady.
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"A tonic, for shattered nerves. You know this, Miss Wilson."
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"The frigid water."
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"That is right. A curb. Very good. Draw it tight. Nurse Spiller -- " He turned and called the nurse to him, and spoke to her quietly.
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"Hmm?"
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"And of wholesome food."
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She moved her lips, and swayed on her feet. Then all at once she cried out: "Thieves!"
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I jumped at the sound. Dr Christie looked up at her. That's enough," he said. "Remember your tongue. What have you upon it?"
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"Yes, yes." He looked at Dr Graves's book.
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"Well, we have heard them many times. You need not repeat them."
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She answered in a whisper: "I don't know, sir."
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"Thieves! Devils!"
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"None but the usual ones," she answered.
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"Mrs Rivers." He took my hand about the wrist, not smiling. "How are you?"
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He turned and came towards me.
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"Sir," I said. "Sir, I --"
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Miss Wilson put her hands to her mouth, as if to feel for a chain; and again, she caught my eye, and her fingers fluttered, and she seemed ashamed. I should have been sorry for her, at any other time; but for now, if they had laid her and ten more ladies like her down upon the floor and told me my way out was across their backs, I'd have run it with clogs on. I waited only until Dr Christie had finished giving his instructions to the nurse, and then I licked my mouth and leaned and said, "Dr Christie, sir!"
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"Pulse rather rapid," he said quietly, to Dr Graves. Dr Graves made a note of it. He turned back to me. "You have hurt your face, I am sorry to see."
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Nurse Spiller spoke before I could. "Cast herself to the floor, Dr Christie," she said, "while in the grip of her fit."
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"Ah, yes. You see, Mrs Rivers, the violence of the condition in which you arrived here. I hope you slept?"
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"I am not Maud Rivers!"
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"So I did," he said slowly. "And you told me how you feared for your mistress's health; how you wished she might be kept quiet and free from harm. For sometimes it is easier -- is it not? -- to ask for assistance in behalf of another, than for ourselves? We understand you, Mrs Rivers, very well."
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"Dr Christie," I said, more loudly.
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"Mrs Rivers? For God's sake, how can I be her? I stood and saw her married. You came to me, and heard me speak. I --"
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"I'm not staying here," I said.
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"Pulse quickening, now," he murmured.
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"Is that so?" He had narrowed his eyes and was looking into my mouth. "Teeth sound enough, I think. Gums may be putrid, however. -- You must tell us, if they start troubling you."
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I pulled my hand away. "Will you listen to me? You have got me here, by mistake."
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"Not staying, Mrs Rivers?"
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"Dear, dear. We cannot have that. I shall have the nurses give you a draught. You shall never grow well, without slumber."
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"Slept? No, I --"
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He nodded to Nurse Bacon. She nodded back.
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"Her husband, I tell you! I saw them married. You may find out the vicar that did it. You may bring Mrs Cream!"
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"Your husband."
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"Come, come," he went on. "That is all your fancy, is it not?"
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"I am not Maud Rivers! My name is Susan --"
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"Susan Smith," I said finally.
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"Susan Smith. Of -- where was it, Dr Graves? Of Whelk Street, Mayfair?"
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"Richard Rivers," I answered.
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I did not answer.
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He raised a finger, and almost smiled. "You are not ready to admit that you are Maud Rivers. Hmm? That is quite a different thing. And when you are ready to admit to it, our work shall be done. Until then --"
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But here, for the first time, I faltered.
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"It was Gentleman's fancy," I said, thrown off. "That devil --!"
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"Which gentleman, Mrs Rivers?"
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"You shan't keep me here. You shan't! You keep me, while those swindling villains --"
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"Yes?"
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"Her husband."
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"Mrs Cream, the lady you lodged with? We spoke at length with her. She told us, very sadly, of the melancholy temper that stole upon you, in her house."
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"Ah."
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He folded his arms. "Which swindling villains, Mrs Rivers?"
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"She was speaking of Maud."
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"She was speaking of Maud, not me. You bring her here. You show her my face, see what she says then. Bring anyone here that has known Maud Lilly and me. Bring Mrs Stiles, the housekeeper at Briar. Bring old Mr Lilly!"
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He shook his head. "And don't you think," he said, "your own husband might be supposed to know you, as well as your uncle? And your maid? She stood before us, and spoke of you, and wept." He lowered his voice. "What had you done to her, hmm, to make her do that?"
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"Oh!" I said, twisting my hands together. ("See her colour change now, Dr Graves," he said softly.) "She wept, to trick you! She's nothing but an actress!"
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"Of course."
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"An actress? Your maid?"
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"Maud Lilly! Don't you hear me? Maud Lilly and Richard Rivers. They have put me here -- they have cheated and tricked me -- they have made you think me her, and her me!"
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He shook his head again, and drew close his brows; and again, he almost smiled. Then he said, slowly and very easily: "But, my dear Mrs Rivers, why should they go to the trouble of doing that?"
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He nodded to Dr Graves, and they began to move off.
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"Mrs Rivers?" he said.
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I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. For, what could I say? I still supposed that if I only told him the truth, he would believe it. But the truth was I had plotted to steal a lady's fortune; that I had made myself out a servant, when I was really a thief. If I had not been so afraid, and so tired, and so bruised from my night in the pads, I might have thought up a clever story. Now I could not think, at all. Nurse Bacon rubbed her hands and yawned. Dr Christie still watched me, with a humouring expression on his face.
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"Ah."
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I did not look at her. I watched Dr Christie turn from me, and saw beyond him the pale old lady, her fingers still chafing at her mouth; and the sad-faced woman with her hair pulled all before her eyes; and Betty, the idiot girl, her lip gleaming with sugar; and I grew wild again. I thought, "I don't care if they put me in a prison for it! Better a prison, with thieves and murderesses, than a madhouse!" I said, "Dr Christie, sir! Dr Graves! Listen to me!"
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"Wait! Wait!" I cried.
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Nurse Spiller came forward. "That's enough from you," she said. "You are wasting the doctors' time."
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"I don't know," I answered at last.
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"That's enough," said Nurse Spiller again. "Don't you know what busy men the doctors are? Don't you think they got better things to do than hear all your nonsense? Get back!"
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I had stepped after Dr Christie and was reaching for his coat. "Please, sir," I said. "Listen to me. I haven't been perfectly straight with you. My name ain't Susan Smith, after all."
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"Susan Trinder, sir. Sue Trinder, of -- " I was about to say, Lant Street; then knew that of course I must not say it, for fear it should lead the police to Mr Ibbs's shop. I closed my eyes and shook my head. My brain felt hot. Dr Christie drew himself from my hand.
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He had made to shake me off. Now he turned a little to me. "Mrs Rivers," he began.
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"You must not touch my coat," he said, his voice grown sterner. I clutched it again. "Only hear me out, I beg you! Only let me tell you or the terrible plot I was made to be part of, by Richard Rivers. That devil! He is laughing at you, sir! He is laughing at all of us! He has stolen a fortune. He has fifteen thousand pounds!"
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They put me back in the pads. They let me wear the gown and boots, however; and they gave me a basin of tea.
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"When I get out, you'll be sorry!" I said, as they closed the door on me. "I got a mother in London. She is looking for me, in every house in the land!"
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I would not let go of his coat. My voice was high, like the yelp of a dog. Nurse Spiller got her arm about my neck, and Dr Christie put his hands over mine and worked free my fingers. Dr Graves came to help him. At the feel or their hands, I shrieked. I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded. I shrieked, and Dr Christie got out his whistle, just like before. There was a bell rung. Mr Bates and Mr Hedges came running, in their brown-paper cuffs. Betty bellowed.
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Nurse Spiller nodded. "Is she?" she said. "That's yours, and all our other ladies', then"; and she laughed.
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I think the tea -- which tasted bitter -- must have had a draught in it. I slept through a day -- or it might have been two days; and when I finally came to myself, I came to stupid. I let them take me, stumbling, back to the room with the beds. Dr Christie made his tour, and held my wrist.
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And then, at twelve, she put the magazine away and gave a great yawn, and took us downstairs for our dinners. Another nurse came to help her. "Come on, come on," they said. "No dawdling."
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My head grew clearer as the day wore on, though. I lay on my bed and tried to think. They made us keep to our rooms in the morning, and we were meant to sit and be silent -- or to read, if we liked -- while Nurse Bacon watched. But I think what books there were in the house, the ladies had already read; for they only, like me, lay upon their beds, doing nothing, and it was Nurse Bacon who sat, with her feet put up on a stool, looking over the pages of a little magazine -- now and then licking one of her fat red fingers, to turn a page; and now and then chuckling.
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"You are calmer today, Mrs Rivers," he said; and my mouth being dry, from the draught and from sleeping, it was as much as I could do to unstick my tongue from my gums, to answer, "I ain't Mrs Rivers!" And he had gone, before I said it.
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We walked in a line. The pale old lady -- Miss Wilson -- pressed close at my back.
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"Don't be frightened," she said, "of -- Don't turn your head! Hush! Hush!" I felt her breath on my neck. "Don't be frightened," she said, "of your soup."
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Then I walked faster, to be nearer Nurse Bacon. She led us to the dining-room. They were ringing a bell there, and as we went our line was joined by other nurses, with ladies from the rooms they watched in. I should say there were sixty or so ladies kept in that house; and they seemed to me now, after my spell in the pads, a vast and horrible crowd. They were dressed as I was -- I mean badly, in all sorts of fashions; and this -- and the fact that some had had their hair cut to their heads; and some had lost teeth, or had their teeth taken from them; and some had cuts and bruises, and others wore canvas bracelets or muffs -- this made them look queerer than perhaps they really were. I'm not saying they weren't all mad, in their own fashions; and to me, just then, they looked mad as horse-flies. But there are as many different ways of being mad, after all, as there are of being crooked. Some were perfect maniacs. Two or three, like Betty, were only simpletons. One liked to shout bad words. Another threw fits. The rest were only miserable: they walked, with their eyes on the floor, and sat and turned their hands in their laps, and mumbled, and sighed.
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I sat among them, and ate the dinner I was served. It was soup, as Miss Wilson had said, and I saw her looking at me, nodding her head, as I supped it; but I would not catch her eye. I would not catch anyone's eye. I had been drugged and stupid, before; now I was back in a sort of fright -- a sort of fever of fright -- sweating, and twitching, and wild. I looked at the doors and windows -- I think, if I had seen a window of plain glass, I should have run through it. But the windows all had bars on. I don't know what we should have done in a fire. The doors had ordinary locks, and with the right sort of tools I suppose I might have picked them. But I hadn't any kind of tool -- not so much as a hair-pin -- and nothing to make one with. The spoons we ate our soup with were made of tin, and so soft, they might have been rubber. You could not have picked your nose with them.
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Dinner lasted half an hour. We were watched by the nurses and a few stout men -- Mr Bates and Mr Hedges, and one or two others. They stood at the side of the room, and now and then walked between the tables. When one drew close I twitched and lifted up my hand and said, "Please sir, where are the doctors? Sir? May I see Dr Christie, sir?"
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"Where are you from?" asked the first.
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"What?" I said. "No."
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"You must be familiar," she said, "with the squares of Kensington."
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"From London," I said, still looking after the man. Though here they think I come from somewhere else."
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"Ah! London! How I miss it!"
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"I don't know. I don't know. I never saw them."
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"Be quiet!" he said again, moving past.
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A lady said, "You shan't see the doctors now. They come only in the mornings. Don't you know?"
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"What?" The stout man had turned and was walking back towards us. I lifted my hand again, and waved it. "Will you tell me," I said to him, "where I can find Dr Christie? Sir? Please, sir?"
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"Who are your people?"
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"Dr Christie is busy," he said. "Be quiet." He walked on.
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"And the season just beginning. That is very hard for you. And so young! Are you out?"
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"From London!" she cried. Some of the other ladies said it, too: "London!"
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"She is new here," said another.
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"I should say the trees are all in leaf."
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The lady beside me put her hand upon my arm.
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I said, "Out?"
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"Who are your people?"
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The stout man walked as far as the window, then turned and folded his arms. I had raised my hand again, but now let it droop.
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"My people are thieves," I said miserably.
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"Oh!" The ladies made faces. "Queer girl…"
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She showed me a ring that she wore, on a string, around her neck. It was gilt, and wanted stones.
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The woman beside me, however, beckoned me close.
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"Your property gone?" she said, in a whisper. "Mine, too. But see here."
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"Here's my capital," she said. "Here's my security." She tucked the ring beneath her collar, and touched her nose, and nodded. "My sisters have taken the rest. They shan't have this, however! Oh, no!"
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I spoke to no-one, after that. When dinner was ended the nurses took us to a garden and made us walk about it for an hour. The garden had walls on every side, and a gate: the gate was locked, but you could see through its bars to the rest of the park that the house was set in. There were many trees there, some of them close to the great park wall. I made a note of that. I had never climbed a tree in my life, but how hard could it be? If I might get to a high enough branch I would risk breaking both my legs in a jump, if the jump meant freedom. If Mrs Sucksby didn't come first.
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But then, when Nurse Spiller came to the door with a can of tea and gave me a basin of it, I took it, but did not drink it. I tipped it on the floor, when I thought no-one was looking. It steamed for a second, then seeped between the boards. I put my foot on the place I had tipped it. I looked up, and saw Betty watching.
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But then, I still supposed, too, that I should make my case with Dr Christie. I meant to show him how sane I was. At the end of our hour in the garden a bell was rung, and we were taken back to the house and made to sit, until tea-time, in a great grey room that smelt of leaking gas, that they called the drawingroom; and then we were locked back in our bedrooms. I went -- still twitching, still sweating -- and said nothing. I did all that the other ladies -- sad Mrs Price, and pale Miss Wilson, and Betty -- did: I washed my face and hands, at the washstand, when they were finished with the water; and cleaned my teeth, when they had all used the brush; and put my hateful tartan gown in a tidy heap, and pulled on a night-gown; and said Amen, when Nurse Bacon mumbled out a prayer.
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She sat up, reading, and the light of her lamp shone in my eyes. Even when, after hours and hours, she put down her magazine and took off her apron and gown and got into her bed, she left a light still burning, so she could see us if we stirred in the night; and then she went straight to sleep and started snoring. Her snores were like the sound of a file on iron; and made me more homesick than ever. She took her chain of keys to bed with her, and slept with it about her neck.
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"Bad girl?" said Nurse Bacon, turning round. "I know who's one of them, all right. Into your bed. Quick! quick! all of you. God bless me, what a life!" She could grumble like an engine. All the nurses there could. We had to be quiet, however. We had to lie still. If we didn't, they came and pinched or smacked us. -- "You, Maud," said Nurse Bacon, that first night, when I turned and trembled. "Stop moving!"
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"Made a mess," she said loudly. She had a voice like a man's. "Bad girl."
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I lay with Maud's white glove in my fist, and now and then put the tip of one of its fingers to my mouth, imagining Maud's soft hand inside it; and I bit and bit. But I slept, at last; and when next morning the doctors came back on their round with Nurse Spiller, I was ready.
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"Dr Christie, I beg you --!"
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He looked at his watch. "Splendid!"
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"Mrs Rivers, how are you?" said Dr Christie, after he had given Betty her sugar and spent a minute looking over Mrs Price and Miss Wilson.
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I dipped my head and caught his eye, and I told him my story, all over again -- how I was not Maud Rivers, but had only been put in his house through a terrible trick; how Richard Rivers had had me at Briar as Maud Lilly's servant, so I might help him marry her and, afterwards, make her out to be mad. How they had swindled me and taken her fortune, all for themselves.
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"I am perfectly clear in my head," I said.
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"They have played me false," I said. "They have played you false! They are laughing at you! You don't believe me? Bring anyone from Briar! Bring the vicar of the church they were married in! Bring the great church book -- you'll see their names put there, and next to them, my own!"
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He rubbed his eye. "Your name," he said. "Susan -- what are you calling it, now? -- Trinder?"
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"Susan -- No!" I said. "Not in that book. It is Susan Smith, in there."
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"Only in there. They made me put it. He showed me how! Don't you see?"
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"Fancies, Mrs Rivers. If you might only hear yourself! Terrible plots? Laughing villains? Stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad? The stuff of lurid fiction! We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy."
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"Fancies? God help me, it's the plainest truth!"
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But now I was almost weeping. Dr Christie began to look grim. "I have let you say too much," he said. "You are growing excited. We cannot have that. We must have calm, at all times. These fancies of yours --"
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I looked at him and could not speak. "God help me," I said at last, as he turned away, "if I can read two words in a row! As for writing -- give me a pencil, and I'll put you down my name; and that's as much as I should ever be able to put, though you sit me down and make me try it for a year!"
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"Susan Smith, again!"
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"Inflamed?" I said. "Over-indulge? Literature?"
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"You have read too much."
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He had begun to walk to the door of the room, with Dr Graves close behind him.
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My voice was broken, for Nurse Spiller had caught hold of me to keep me from following after. "How dare you speak," she said, "to the doctors' backs! Don't pull from me! I should say you're wild enough to be put back in the pads. Dr Christie?"
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"Watch her, sir!" said Nurse Spiller, when she saw the pencil's point. "She's a sly one, this one!"
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But Dr Christie had heard my words and had turned at the door and was looking at me in a new sort of way, his hand at his beard. He glanced at Dr Graves. He said quietly, "It would show us, after all, the extent of the delusion; and may even serve to startle her out of it. What do you say? Yes, give me a page from your notebook. Nurse Spiller, let Mrs Rivers go. Mrs Rivers --"
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"Very good, I see her," he answered. "But I do not think she means us any harm. Do you, Mrs Rivers?"
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He came back to me and gave me the little piece of paper that Dr Graves had torn from his book. Then he put his hand to his pocket and brought out a pencil, and made to give me that.
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"It is my name."
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"You have written badly. Did you do so on purpose? Here." He gave me the paper back. "Write me out a line, as I requested first."
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Dr Christie nodded. "I think you are. Come, write me a line upon this paper."
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"I can't," I said.
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"Of course you can. Sit neatly on the bed and rest the paper on your knee. That is how we sit to write, is it not? You know it is. Now, write me your name. You can do that, at least. You have told us so. Go on."
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"I can't. I can't!"
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I hesitated, then wrote it. The paper tore beneath the lead. Dr Christie watched and, when I had finished, took the sheet from me and showed it to Dr Graves. They frowned.
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"You may hold it better than that, I think," he said.
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"You have written Susan," said Dr Christie. "Why is that?"
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"I am not used to holding pencils," I said.
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"No, sir," I said. I took the pencil in my hand. It trembled. He watched me.
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I moved it in my fingers, and it fell. I picked it up. "Watch her! Watch her!" said Nurse Spiller again, ready to make another grab at me.
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Again, I hesitated. And then, because he watched so closely -- and because, beyond him, Dr Graves and Nurse Spiller and Nurse Bacon, and even Mrs Price and Miss Wilson, also tilted their heads to see me do it -- I wrote an S. Then I made a hazard at the other letters. The word went on and on, and grew larger as I wrote.
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I shook my head.
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"Yes, you can. Write a single word, then. Write me this. Write: speckle."
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"Come, come," he said, "this word is not difficult. And you know the first letter of it, we have seen you write that already."
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"Do I?"
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"You still press hard," Dr Christie said.
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"You know you do. And your letters are muddled, and very ill-formed. What letter is this? It is one of your own imagining, I think. Now, am I to understand that your uncle -- a scholar, I believe? -- would countenance work like this, from his assistant?"
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Here was my moment. I quivered right through. Then I held Dr Christie's gaze and said, as steadily as I could: "I haven't an uncle to my name. You mean old Mr Lilly. I dare say his niece Maud writes neatly enough; but you see, I ain't her."
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He was silent. I thought, That's it! and almost swooned, with relief. Then he turned to Dr Graves and shook his head.
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He tapped at his chin. "For you," he said, "are Susan Smith, or Trinder."
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I quivered again. "Sir, I am!"
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"Quite complete," he said. "Isn't it? I don't believe I ever saw a case so pure. The delusion extending even to the exercise of the motor faculties. It's there we will break her. We must study on this, until our course of treatment is decided. Mrs Rivers, my pencil if you please. Ladies, good-day."
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He plucked the pencil from between my fingers, and turned, and left us. Dr Graves and Nurse Spiller went with him, and Nurse Bacon locked the door at their backs. I saw her turn the key, and it was just as if she had struck me or knocked me down: I fell upon my bed and broke out crying. She gave a tut -- but they were too used to tears in that house, it was nothing to see a woman sitting at dinner, weeping into her soup, or walking about the garden crying her head off. Her tut turned into a yawn. She looked me over, then looked away. She sat in her chair and rubbed her hands, and winced.
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I turned my head into my pillow and closed my eyes. If the house had been hell, and Nurse Bacon the Devil, and Betty a demon at her side, I could not have been more wretched. I cried until I could cry no more.
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She still held her chain of keys. The sight of them made me cry worse. She shook one free, and Betty took it to the nurse's cupboard, unlocked the door, and brought out a jar of grease. The grease was white and hard, like lard. Betty sat, took a handful of it, and began to work it into Nurse Bacon's swollen fingers. Nurse Bacon winced again. Then she sighed, and her face grew smooth.
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And then there came a movement beside my bed, and then a voice, very gentle. "Come, my dear. You must not give in to tears."
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"You think you've torments," she said, to me or to all of us. "Have these knuckles for an hour -- have these thumbs. Here's torments, with mustard on. Here's torments, with whips. Oh! Oh! God bless me, I think I shall die! Come, Betty, be a good girl to your poor old nurse. Fetch out my ointment, will you?"
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"That finds the mark!" she said; and Betty chuckled.
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It was the pale old lady, Miss Wilson. She had put out her hand to me. I saw it, and flinched.
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Nurse Bacon looked over. "I've got my eye on you," she said to me. "Don't think I haven't." Then she settled back in her chair. Betty still worked grease into her fingers.
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"I am sure you do not," answered Miss Wilson.
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"I'm only so frightened they will keep me here. I have been done very wrong. They say I am mad."
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"You must keep your spirit. This house is not so hard as some others. But nor is it perfectly kind. The air of this room, for example, that we must breathe, like oxen in a stall. The suppers. They call us ladies, yet the food -- the merest pap! -- I should blush to see it served to a gardener's boy."
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I said quietly, "You mustn't think I cry so easily as this, at home."
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"Ah," she said then. "You shrink from me. I don't wonder at it. I am not quite in my right mind. You will grow used to that, here. Hush! Not a word. Nurse Bacon watches. Hush!"
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She had taken a handkerchief from her sleeve, and made signs that I should dry my face. The handkerchief was yellow with age, but soft; and the softness of it, and the kindness of her look -- which, for all that she was mad, was the first piece of kindness that anyone had shown me since I came to the house -- made me begin to cry again.
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She pulled a face, let out her breath, and her eyes closed. I thought in horror, Two-and-twenty years! -- and the thought must have shown on my face, for Miss Wilson said, "You must not think you shall stay so long as that. Mrs Price comes, every year; but her husband has her home again, when the worst of her spells are past. It was a husband, I think, who signed your order? It is my brother who keeps me here. But men want wives, when they may do without their sisters." Her hand rose. "I would speak plainer, if I could. My tongue -- You understand."
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Her voice had risen. Nurse Bacon looked over again, and curled her lip. "I should like to see you blush, you phantom!" she said.
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She waved her hand, and looked for a moment so mad, my heart quite sank.
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Miss Wilson worked her mouth and looked embarrassed. "A reference," she said to me, "to my pallor. Will you believe me if I tell you, there is a substance in the water here, related to chalk --? But, hush! No more of that!"
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"I believe -- let me see -- we know so little of the passing seasons… I should say, many years."
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"Have you been here very long?" I asked, when her fluttering hand had fallen.
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"Two-and-twenty," said Nurse Bacon, still listening. "For you were quite an old hand -- were you not? -- when I first come in as a young one. And that was fourteen years, this autumn. -- Ah, press harder, Betty, there! Good girl."
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"That is hard for you," said Miss Wilson, shaking her head and sighing. "That is the worst of all."
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"The man," I said, "that has put me here, is a dreadful villain; and only pretends to be my husband."
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I touched her arm. My heart, that had sunk, now rose like a float -- so hard, it hurt me.
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"Don't make anything of that," she said, in a comfortable voice. "Miss Wilson believes all sorts of nonsense. Only ask her, now, what creatures live in the moon."
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"You believe it," I said. I looked at Nurse Bacon; but she had heard me and opened her eyes.
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"Curse you!" said Miss Wilson. "I told you that as a confidence! -- You may see, Mrs Rivers, how they work to diminish my standing. -- Does my brother pay a guinea a week for you to abuse me? Thieves! Devils!"
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Nurse Bacon made a show of rising from her chair and making her hands into fists; and Miss Wilson grew quiet again. I said, after a moment, "You may think what you like about the moon, Miss Wilson. Why shouldn't you? But when I tell you I have been put in here by swindlers and am perfectly right in my head, I say no more than the truth. Dr Christie shall find it out, in time."
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I stared at her. Then I looked at Nurse Bacon. "Is that true?" I asked. Nurse Bacon nodded. I began to weep again. "Then, God help me, I'm done for!" I cried. "For that shyster never, never will!"
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Miss Wilson shook her head. "So hard! So hard! But perhaps he will visit, and take a change of heart? They must let us see our visitors, you know; that is the law."
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I wiped my face. "He won't come," I said. "He knows that, if he did, I would kill him!"
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So then we all fell silent. Betty worked the grease in for another minute or two, then put the jar away and went back to her bed. Miss Wilson bent her head and her gaze grew dark. Mrs Price now and then let out a murmur or a moan from behind her veil of hair.
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"I hope he will," she answered. "I am sure he will. But you know, it is your husband who must sign you out."
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"That's enough!" Nurse Bacon said. "And you, Miss Muffet" -- she meant me -- "stop stirring up the ladies." And again, she showed her fist.
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She looked about her, in a sort of fear. "You must not say such things, in here. You must be good. Don't you know, that they have ways of taking you, of binding you -- That they have water --"
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"Water," murmured Mrs Price, in a shuddering way.
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"Will you sit down?" said Nurse Bacon.
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I got to my feet and walked from one wall of the room to the other, and back. "If only there was a window!" I said. "If only we might see out." And then: "If only I had never left the Borough!"
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Then she cursed. There had come a knocking at the door, and she must get up from her chair to answer it. It was another nurse, with a paper. I waited until their heads were close together, then stole back to Miss Wilson. Desperation was beginning to make me sly.
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From the room next door there came a burst of ragged shrieking. I thought of Mr Ibbs's sister. I thought of all my home, and all the people in it. I began, again, to sweat. I felt suddenly I think as a fly must feel, when wrapped in the thread of a spider.
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She looked at me, and then drew back. "I hope," she said, in an ordinary tone, "I hope you don't suppose that I was the kind of girl brought up to speak in whispers?"
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"Listen to me," I said quietly. "I must get out of here, quick as I can. I have people in London, with money. I've a mother. You've been here so long, you must know of a way. What is it? I'll pay you for it, I swear."
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"Whispering," said Betty, in her gruff voice.
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"Whispering? I'll whisper her, all right! Get back to your bed and leave Miss Wilson alone. Can't I turn my back a minute without you start up trying to tamper with the ladies?"
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Nurse Bacon looked round and stared. "You, Maud," she said. "What are you doing now?"
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I supposed she guessed I had been trying to escape. I went back to my bed. She stood at the door with the other nurse, and said something to her in a murmur. The other nurse wrinkled her nose. Then they looked me over in the same cool, nasty way that I had seen other nurses look at me, before. I was still too ignorant then, of course, to know what the nasty look meant. God help me, though! -- for I was to find out, soon enough.
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