The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.
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I imagine a table, slick with blood. The blood is my mother's. There is too much of it. There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beneath, the women have set down china bowls; and so the silences between my mother's cries are filled -- drip drop! drip drop! -- with what might be the staggered beating of clocks. Beyond the beat come other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; another strap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood -- drip drop! drip, drop! -- the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mother's bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.
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I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.
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I pass my first ten years a daughter to the nurses of the house. I believe they love me. There is a tabby cat upon the wards, and I think they keep me, rather as they keep that cat, a thing to pet and dress with ribbons. I wear a slate-grey gown cut like their own, an apron and a cap; they give me a belt with a ring of miniature keys upon it, and call me "little nurse". I sleep with each of them in turn, in their own beds, and follow them in their duties upon the madhouse wards. The house is a large one -- seems larger to me, I suppose -- and divided in two: one side for female lunatics, one side for male. I see only the female. I never mind them. Some of them kiss and pet me, as the nurses do. Some of them touch my hair and weep. I remind them of their daughters. Others are troublesome, and these I am encouraged to stand before and strike with a wooden wand, cut to my hand, until the nurses laugh and say they never saw anything so droll.
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So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoned to the nurses' parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her -- a gentleman, she says -- but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time.
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Thus I learn the rudiments of discipline and order; and incidentally apprehend the attitudes of insanity. This will all prove useful, later. When I am old enough to reason I am given a gold ring said to be my father's, the portrait of a lady called my mother, and understand I am an orphan; but, never having known a parent's love -- or rather, having known the favours of a score of mothers -- I am not greatly troubled by the news. I think the nurses clothe and feed me, for my own sake. I am a plain-faced child but, in that childless world, pass for a beauty. I have a sweet singing voice and an eye for letters. I suppose I shall live out all my days a nurse, contentedly teasing lunatics until I die.
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"That will do," he says, raising his hand. Then: "I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?"
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"She's undersize," he says; "but makes enough noise with her feet, for all that. How's her voice?"
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"I am very well," I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.
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"Step closer," the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a cane with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by a pair of coloured glasses. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one. I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.
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His own voice is low, tremulous, complaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.
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"I can."
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"Say a word to the gentleman," says the matron quietly. "Say how you are."
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I nod. "Oh yes."
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"I hope you can be silent?"
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The matron colours. "It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house."
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"Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?"
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He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, "How well does she read? How fair is her hand? Come, give her a piece of text and let her demonstrate."
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"Be silent, then.-- That's better." He turns to the matron. "I see she wears her mother's likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother's fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don't care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan't want a thick-legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?"
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The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. "Softly!" he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.
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I am also pleased. I understand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blotted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stick and tilts his head so low I can see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.
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"Well, miss," he says, "how should you like to come and live in my house? Don't push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to come to me, and learn neat ways and plain letters?"
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"A girl's hand," he says, when I have finished, "and burdened with serifs." But he sounds pleased, nonetheless.
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The matron says, "For shame, Maud!"
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He might have struck me. "I should like it not at all," I say at once.
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The gentleman snorts. "Perhaps," he says, "she has her mother's unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall forget to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that -- hmm?"
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He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instruction to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.
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"I will not go!" I cry. "He shall not make me!"
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The matron draws me to her. I have seen her take a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.
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Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother's brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to take me home and make me ready for the roast.
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All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff -- a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my complaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it comes time for her to take me, they kiss me and hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their own, and pluck and grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls -- their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek.
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My uncle's servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.
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I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath come quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle -- at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, complacently. "Got a temper, have you?" she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it. The third egg she places on my lap. I will not eat it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. "Tut tut," she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage. The horse goes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees. Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.
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"What a place to raise a girl in!" she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.
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The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within and seem to tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat.
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I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grim-ness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncle's house that bewilders and frightens me, that first day.
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"That's Mr Way, your uncle's steward," says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease -- for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkness that seems to lap at my buff gown.
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When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silence, that my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and flowering creepers.
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"Why do they watch?" I say to the woman.
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"Come up, child," says the woman when I do that; and now when she puts her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightened, the higher we go. For the house seems awful to me -- the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half-hidden -- like expectant grubs, in the cells of a hive -- there stand servants, come to see me make my progress through the house.
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I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurses. I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.
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The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall.
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"Why, to see your face," she answers. To see if you turned out handsome as your mother."
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The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire -- I am too small to see my face in the glass above -- and stand and shiver.
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"Should have kept your mittens," says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands.
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"I have twenty mothers," I say at that; "and am handsomer than any of them."
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The woman has stopped before a door. "Handsome is as handsome does," she says. "I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours."
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"Mr Inker's daughter shall have those." She takes my cloak from me, then draws the ribbons from my hair and brushes it with a broken comb. "Tug all you like," she says as I pull away. "It shall only hurt you, it shan't harm me. Why, what a business those women made of your head! Anyone would have supposed them savages. How I'm to see you neat, after their work, I can't say. Now, look here." She reaches beneath the bed. "Let's see you use your chamber-pot. Come along, no foolish modesty. Do you think I never saw a little girl lift up her skirts and piddle?"
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She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it.
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"I saw them do this for your mother, when I was parlourmaid here," she says, pulling me about. "She was a deal gratefuller than you are. Didn't they teach you manners, in that house of yours?"
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I long for my little wooden wand: I would show her all I'd learned of manners, then! But I have observed lunatics, too, and know how to struggle while only seeming to stand limp. At length she steps from me and wipes her hands.
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She folds her arms and watches me, and then she wets a cloth with water and washes my face and hands.
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There has come the stifled ringing of a bell, three times. It is a clock; I understand it, however, as a signal to the house, for I have been raised to the sound of similar bells, that told the lunatics to rise, to dress, to say their prayers, to take their dinners. I think, Now I shall see them!, but when we go from the room the house is still and quiet as before. Even the watchful servants have retired. Again my boots catch on the carpets.
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"I don't want to be a lady!" I say. "My uncle cannot make me."
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"Lord, what a child! I hope your uncle knows his business, bringing you here. He seems to think he'll make a lady of you."
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"I should say he can do what he likes, in his own house," she answers. "There now! How late you've made us."
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"Walk softly!" says the woman in a whisper, pinching my arm. "Here's your uncle's room, look."
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"So, miss," he says, stepping towards me, moving his jaw. The woman makes a curtsey. "How is her temper, Mrs Stiles?" he asks her.
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She knocks, then takes me in. He has had paint put on the windows years before, and the winter sun striking the glass, the room is lit strangely. The walls are dark with the spines of books. I think them a kind of frieze or carving. I know only two books, and one is black and creased about the spine -- that is the Bible. The other is a book of hymns thought suitable for the demented; and that is pink. I suppose all printed words to be true ones.
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The woman sets me very near the door and stands at my back, her hands like claws upon my shoulders. The man they have called my uncle rises from behind his desk; its surface is hidden by a mess of papers. Upon his head is a velvet cap with a swinging tassel on a fraying thread. Before his eyes is another, paler, pair of coloured glasses.
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"Rather ill, sir."
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"I can see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?"
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"Threw them aside, sir. Wouldn't have them."
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My uncle comes close. "An unhappy beginning. Give me your hand, Maud."
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I will not give it. The woman catches my arm about the wrist and lifts it. My hand is small, and plump at the knuckles. I am used to washing with madhouse soap, which is not kind. My nails are dark, with madhouse dirt. My uncle holds my finger-ends. His own hand has a smear or two of ink upon it. He shakes his head.
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"Now, did I want a set of coarse fingers upon my books," he says, "I should have had Mrs Stiles bring me a nurse. I should not have given her a pair of gloves, to make those coarse hands softer. Your hands I shall have soft, however. See here, how we make children's hands soft, that are kept out of their gloves." He puts his own hand to the pocket of his coat, and uncoils from it -- one of those things, that bookmen use -- a line of metal beads, bound tight with silk, for keeping down springing pages. He makes a loop of it, seeming to weigh it; then he brings it smartly down upon my dimpling knuckles. Then, with Mrs Stiles's assistance, he takes my other hand and does the same to that. The beads sting like a whip; but the silk keeps the flesh from breaking. At the first blow I yelp, like a dog -- in pain, in rage and sheer astonishment. Then, Mrs Stiles releasing my wrists, I put my fingers to my mouth and begin to weep.
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"Well," he says quietly. "You shan't forget the gloves in future, hmm?"
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"Keep silence, girl!" he says. I shake and cannot. Mrs Stiles pinches the flesh of my shoulder, and that makes me cry harder. Then my uncle draws forth the beads again; and at last I grow still.
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Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and -- under cover of plucking my trembling shoulder as if to keep it from falling into a slouch -- gives me another pinch. The yellow window grows bright, then dim, then bright again, as the wind sends clouds across the sun.
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My uncle winces at the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.
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I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. "You'll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I can't have storms and tantrums, here. Very well." He waves his hand. "Now, leave her with me. Don't stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild."
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"Now," says my uncle, when the housekeeper has gone. "You know, do you not, why I have brought you here."
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I put my crimson fingers to my face, to wipe my nose.
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"To make a secretary of you. What do you see here, all about these walls?"
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"To make a lady of me."
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He gives a quick, dry laugh.
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"Wood, sir."
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"Books, girl," he says. He goes and draws one from its place and turns it. The cover is black, by which I recognise it as a Bible. The others, I deduce, hold hymns. I suppose that hymn-books, after all, might be bound in different hues, perhaps as suiting different qualities of madness. I feel this, as a great advance in thought.
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My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.
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"Do you see this title, girl? -- Don't take a step! I asked you to read, not to prance."
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But the book is too far from me. I shake my head, and feel my tears return.
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"Ha!" cries my uncle, seeing my distress. "I should say you can't! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after consultation with an oculist -- an eyedoctor. These are uncommon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same -- I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready. You understand me, hmm?"
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The spine is a fine one, and -- I will know it well, in time -- a favourite of his. The title is -- But now I run ahead of my own innocence; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.
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After my uncle has spoken he seems to forget me. I stand for another quarter-hour before he lifts his head and catches sight of me, and waves me from the room. I struggle a moment with the iron handle of his door, making him wince against the grinding of the lever; and when I close it, Mrs Stiles darts from the gloom to lead me back upstairs. "I suppose you're hungry," she says, as we walk. "Little girls always are. I should say you'd be grateful for a white egg now."
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I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book back in its place, lingering a moment over the aligning of the spine upon the shelf.
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I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings for a girl to come, and the girl brings a biscuit and a glass of sweet red wine. She sets them down before me, and smiles; and the smile is harder to bear, somehow, than a slap would have been. I am afraid I will weep again. But I swallow my tears with my dry biscuit, and the girl and Mrs Stiles stand together, whispering and watching. Then they leave me quite alone. The room grows dark. I lie upon the sofa with my head upon a cushion, and pull my own little cloak over myself, with my own little whipped, red hands. The wine makes me sleep. When I wake again, I wake to shifting shadows, and to Mrs Stiles at the door, bringing a lamp.
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Mrs Stiles laughs. "Do you mean to that house, with those rough women? What a place to call your home!"
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I say, "I should like, if you please, to be taken home now."
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I wake with a terrible fear, and a sense of many hours having passed. I think the bell has recently tolled. I believe it is seven or eight o'clock.
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"I should think they miss me."
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I say, "You've no right to hurt me! You're nothing to me! I want my mothers, that love me!"
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"Here's your mother," she says, plucking at the portrait at my throat. "That's all the mother you'll have here. Be grateful you have that, to know her face by. Now, stand and be steady. You must wear this, to give you the figure of a lady."
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"I should say they are glad to be rid of you -- the nasty, pale-faced little thing that you are. Come here. It's your bed-time." She has pulled me from the sofa, and begins to unlace my gown. I tug away from her, and strike her. She catches my arm and gives it a twist.
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She has taken the stiff buff dress from me, and all the linen beneath. Now she laces me tight in a girlish corset that grips me harder than the gown. Over this she puts a nightdress. On to my hands she pulls a pair of white skin gloves, which she stitches at the wrists. Only my feet remain bare. I fall upon the sofa and kick them. She catches me up and shakes me, then holds me still.
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"Say your prayers," she says, "and ask Our Father to forgive you."
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"I had a little daughter once, that died. She had a fine black head of curling hair and a temper like a lamb's. Why dark-haired, gentle-tempered children should be made to die, and peevish pale girls like you to thrive, I cannot say. Why your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash and perished, while I must live to keep your fingers smooth and see you grow into a lady, is a puzzle. Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer."
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"See here," she says, her face crimson and white, her breath coming hard upon my cheek.
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She catches me up and takes me to the dressing-room, makes me climb into the great, high, dusty bed, then lets down the curtains. There is a door beside the chimney-breast: she tells me it leads to another chamber, and a badtempered girl sleeps there. The girl will listen in the night, and if I am anything but still and good and quiet, she will hear; and her hand is very hard.
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Then she takes up the lamp and leaves, and I am plunged in an awful darkness.
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Indeed, no sooner has this idea risen in me, than I begin to hear the smothered sounds of movement, close by -- unnaturally close, they seem to me to be: I imagine a thousand skulking figures with their faces at the curtain, a thousand searching hands. I begin to cry. The corset I wear makes the tears come strangely. I long to lie still, so the lurking women shall not guess that I am there; but the stiller I try to be, the more wretched I grow. Presently, a spider or a moth brushing my cheek, I imagine the throttling hand has come at last, and jerk in a convulsion and, I suppose, shriek.
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I think it a terrible thing to do to a child; I think it terrible, even now. I lie, in an agony of misery and fear, straining my ears against the silence -- wide awake, sick, hungry, cold, alone, in a dark so deep the shifting black of my own eye-lids seems the brighter. My corset holds me like a fist. My knuckles, tugged into their stiff skin gloves, are starting out in bruises. Now and then the great clock shifts its gears, and chimes; and I draw what comfort I can from my idea that somewhere in the house walk lunatics, and with them watchful nurses. Then I begin to wonder over the habits of the place. Perhaps here they give their lunatics licence to wander; perhaps a madwoman will come to my room, mistaking it for another? Perhaps the wicked-tempered girl that sleeps next door is herself demented, and will come and throttle me with her hard hand!
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There comes the sound of an opening door, a light between the seams of the curtain. A face appears, close to my own -- a kind face, not the face of a lunatic, but that of the girl who earlier brought my little tea of biscuits and sweet wine. She is dressed in her nightgown, and her hair is let down.
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"Now, then," she says softly. Her hand is not hard. She puts it to my head and strokes my face, and I grow calmer. My tears flow naturally. I say I have been afraid of lunatics, and she laughs.
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"There are no lunatics here," she says. "You are thinking of that other place. Now, aren't you glad, to have left there?" I shake my head. She says, "Well, it is only strange for you here. You will soon grow used to it."
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I say I do not like the darkness. I say I am frightened to lie alone. She hesitates, thinking perhaps of Mrs Stiles. But I dare say my bed is softer than hers; and besides, it is winter, and fearfully cold.
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She takes up her light. I see her do it, and begin at once again to cry. -- "Why, you shall be asleep in a moment!" she says.
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She says at last that she will lie with me until I sleep. She snuffs her candle, I smell the smoke upon the darkness.
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I say I think I shall like it a little, if she will lie with me every night; and at that she laughs again, then settles herself more comfortably upon the feather mattress.
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She tells me her name is Barbara. She lets me rest my head against her. She says, "Now, isn't this nice as your old home? And shan't you like it here?"
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She sleeps at once, and heavily, as housemaids do. She smells of a violet facecream. Her gown has ribbons upon it, at the breast, and I find them out with my gloved hands and hold them while I wait for sleep to come -- as if I am tumbling into the perfect darkness and they are the ropes that will save me.
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I am telling you this so that you might appreciate the forces that work upon me, making me what I am.
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Next day, I am kept to my two bleak rooms and made to sew. I forget my terrors of the darkness of the night, then. My gloves make me clumsy, the needle pricks my fingers. "I shan't do it!" I cry, tearing the cloth. Then Mrs Stiles beats me. My gown and corset being so stiff, she hurts her palm in the striking of my back. I take what little consolation I might, from that.
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I am beaten often, I believe, in my first days there. How could it be otherwise? I have known lively habits, the clamour of the wards, the dotings of twenty women; now the hush and regularity of my uncle's house drives me to fits and foaming tempers. I am an amiable child, I think, made wilful by restraint.
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I dash cups and saucers from the table to the floor. I lie and kick my legs until the boots fly from my heels. I scream until my throat bleeds. My passions are met with punishments, each fiercer than the last. I am bound about the wrists and mouth. I am shut into lonely rooms, or into cupboards. One time -- having overturned a candle and let the flame lap at the fringes of a chair until they smoke -- I am taken by Mr Way into the park and carried, along a lonely path, to the ice-house. I don't remember, now, the chill of the place; I remember the blocks of grey ice -- I should have supposed them clear, like crystal -- that tick in the wintry silence, like so many clocks. They tick for three hours. When Mrs Stiles comes to release me I have made myself a kind of nest and cannot be uncurled, and am as weak as if they had drugged me.
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At night, Barbara shakes her head.
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"Fierce, and snappish."
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My uncle waits, all that time, as he might wait for the breaking of a horse. Now and then he has Mrs Stiles conduct me to his library, and questions her as to my progress.
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"Still badly, sir."
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"You've tried your hand?"
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She nods. He sends us away. Then come more shows of temper, more rages and tears.
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"How do we do, Mrs Stiles?"
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"What a dot of a girl, to be so naughty! Mrs Stiles says she never saw such a little Tartar as you. Why can't you be good?"
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"Still fierce?"
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This makes a period of, perhaps a month; though to my childish mind it seems longer.
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It is something, to see her made afraid. I complain of pains in my fingers, and weakness, for a day or two after that, and watch her flutter; then I forget myself, and pinch her -- and by that, she knows my grip is a strong one, and soon punishes me again.
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"If she loses the use of her hands, my God, he'll have our characters for ever!"
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I think that frightens her. She carries me back quietly, by the servants' stairs, and she and Barbara bathe me, then rub my arms with spirits.
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I was good, in my last home -- and see how I was rewarded!
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He flinches from the sight of us. "Good God, what is it?"
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Next morning I upturn my chamber-pot and tread the mess into the carpet. Mrs Stiles throws up her hands and screams; then strikes my face. Then, half-clad and dazed as I am, she drags me from my dressing-room to my uncle's door.
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"Oh, a frightful thing, sir!"
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"Not more of her violence? And do you bring her here, where she might break out, among the books?"
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But he lets her speak, looking all the time at me. I stand very stiff, with a hand at my hot face, my pale hair loose about my shoulders.
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At length he takes off his spectacles and closes his eyes. His eyes appear naked to me, and very soft at the lids. He raises his thumb and smudged forefinger to the bridge of his nose, and pinches.
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"Well, Maud," he says as he does it, "this is sorry news. Here is Mrs Stiles, and here am I, and here are all my staff, all waiting on your good manners. I had hoped the nurses had raised you better than this. I had hoped to find you biddable." He comes towards me, blinking, and puts his hand upon my face. "Don't shrink so, girl! I want only to examine your cheek. It is hot, I think. Well, Mrs Stiles's hand is a large one." He looks about him. "Come, what have we that is cool, hmm?"
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He has a slim brass knife, blunt-edged, for cutting pages. He stoops and puts the blade of it against my face. His manner is mild, and frightens me. His voice is soft as a girl's. He says, "I am sorry to see you hurt, Maud. Indeed I am. Do you suppose I want you harmed? Why should I want that? It is you who must want it, since you provoke it so. I think you must like to be struck. -- That is cooler, is it not?" He has turned the blade. I shiver. My bare arms creep with cold. He moves his mouth. "All waiting," he repeats, "on your good manners. Well, we are good at that, at Briar. We can wait, and wait, and wait again. Mrs Stiles and my staff are paid to do it; I am a scholar, and inclined to it by nature. Look about you here, at my collection. Do you suppose this the work of an impatient man? My books come to me slowly, from obscure sources. I have contentedly passed many tedious weeks in expectation of poorer volumes than you!" He laughs, a dry laugh that might once have been moist; moves the point of the knife to a spot beneath my chin; tilts up my face and looks it over. Then he lets the knife fall, and moves away. He tucks the wires of his spectacles behind his ears.
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And of course, these are thoughts that come to me later, when I know the full measure of my uncle's particular mania.
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I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks -- conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich -- instead of women -- then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs. -- I cannot say.
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Perhaps children are like horses after all, and may be broken. My uncle returns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely back to my sewing. It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patience. There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged.
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"I advise you to whip her, Mrs Stiles," he says, "if she prove troublesome again."
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That day, in my childish way, I glimpse only its surface. But I see that it is dark, and know that it is silent -- indeed, its substance is the substance of the darkness and the silence which fills my uncle's house like water or like wax.
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Should I struggle, it will draw me deep into itself, and I will drown. I do not wish, then, to do that.
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I cease struggling at all, and surrender myself to its viscid, circular currents.
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That is the first day, perhaps, of my education. But next day, at eight, begin my lessons proper. I never have a governess: my uncle tutors me himself, having Mr Way set a desk and a stool for me close to the pointing finger on his library floor. The stool is high: my legs swing from it and the weight of my shoes makes them tingle and finally grow numb. Should I fidget, however -- should I cough, or sneeze -- then my uncle will come and snap at my fingers with the rope of silkcovered beads. His patience has curious lapses, after all; and though he claims to be free of a desire to harm me, he harms me pretty often. Still, the library is kept warmer than my own room, to ward off mould from the books; and I find I prefer to write, than to sew. He gives me a pencil with a soft lead that moves silently upon paper, and a green-shaded reading-lamp, to save my eyes.
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I call them lessons; but I am not taught as other girls are. I learn to recite, softly and clearly; I am never taught to sing. I never learn the names of flowers and birds, but am schooled instead in the hides with which books are bound -- as say, morocco, russia, calf, chagrin; and their papers -- Dutch, China, motley, silk. I learn inks; the cutting of pens; the uses of pounce; the styles and sizes of founts: sans-serif, antique, Egyptian, pica, brevier, emerald, ruby, pearl… They are named for jewels. It is a cheat. For they are hard and dull as cinders in a grate.
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The lamp smells, as it heats, of smouldering dust: a curious smell -- I shall grow to hate it! -- the smell of the parching of my own youth. My work itself is of the most tedious kind, and consists chiefly of copying pages of text, from antique volumes, into a leather-bound book. The book is a slim one, and when it is filled my job is to render it blank again with a piece of india-rubber. I remember this task, more than I remember the pieces of matter I am made to copy: for the pages, from endless friction, grow smudged and fragile and liable to tear; and the sight of a smudge on a leaf of text, or the sound of tearing paper, is more than my uncle, in his delicacy, can bear. They say children, as a rule, fear the ghosts of the dead; what I fear most as a child are the spectres of past lessons, imperfectly erased.
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But I learn quickly. The season turns. I am made small rewards: new gloves, soft-soled slippers, a gown -- stiff as the first, but of velvet. I am allowed to take my supper in the dining-room, at one end of a great oak table, set with silver. My uncle sits at the other end. He keeps a reading-easel beside his place, and speaks very seldom; but if I should be so unlucky as to let fall a fork, or to jar my knife against my plate, then he will raise his face and fix me with a damp and terrible eye. "Have you some weakness about the hands, Maud, that obliges you to grind your silver in that way?"
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"The knife is too large and too heavy, Uncle," I answer him fretfully once. Then he has my knife taken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, and hearts, and calves' feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson -- as if reverting to the substance they were made from. My appetite leaves me. I care most for the wine. I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial. They are to keep me mindful, not of my name, but of that of my mother; which was Marianne.
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She is buried in the loneliest spot of all that lonely park -- hers a solitary grey stone among so many white. I am taken to see it, and made to keep the tomb neat.
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"Be grateful that you may," says Mrs Stiles, watching me trim the springing cemetery grass, her arms folded across her bosom. "Who shall tend my grave? I shall be all but forgotten."
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Her husband is dead. Her son is a sailor. She has taken all her little daughter's curling black hair to make ornaments with. She brushes my own hair as if the locks are thorns and might cut her; I wish they were. I think she is sorry not to whip me. She still bruises my arms with pinches. My obedience enrages her more than ever my passions did; and seeing that, I grow meeker, with a hard, artful meekness that, receiving the edge of her sorrow, keeps it sharp, that provokes her to the pinches -- they are profitless enough -- and to scolds, which pay more, as being revealing of her griefs. I take her often to the graves, and make certain to sigh, to the full strength of my lungs, over my mother's stone. In time -- so cunning am I! -- I find out the name of her dead daughter; then, the kitchen cat giving birth to a litter of kittens, I take one for a pet, and name it for her. I make sure to call it loudest when Mrs Stiles is near: "Come, Polly! Oh, Polly! What a pretty child you are! How fine your black fur is! Come, kiss your mama."
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Mrs Stiles trembles and winks at the words.
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"You're a sly, hateful child," she says. "Don't think Barbara don't know it. Don't think she can't see through you and your designing ways."
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I run and hide my face. I think of my lost home, and the nurses that loved me, and the thought brings the hot tears coolly to my eyes.
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"Oh, Barbara!" I cry. "Say you shan't! Say you wouldn't!"
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Do you see, what circumstances make of me?
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"Take the filthy creature and have Mr Inker drown it!" she says to Barbara, when she can bear it no more.
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"Think of you?" says Mrs Stiles, with a laugh. "Why, I dare say your place at the madhouse has been filled by a new little girl with a happier temper. I am sure, they were glad to be rid of you." In time, I believe her.
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Barbara says she never could. Mrs Stiles sends her away.
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But it is she who cries then, in great hard sobs; and my own eyes soon dry in the studying of hers. For what is she, to me? What is anyone now? I had thought my mothers, the nurses, might send to save me; six months go by -- another six, another -- and they send nothing. I am assured they have forgotten me.
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My proper mother I hate. Didn't she forsake me, before anyone? I keep her portrait in a little wooden box beside my bed; but her sweet white face has nothing of me in it, and I grow to loathe it. "Let me kiss mama good-night," I say one time, unlocking my box. But I do it only to torment Mrs Stiles. I raise the picture to my lips and, while she looks on, thinking me sorry -- "I hate you," I whisper, my breath tarnishing the gold. I do it that night, and the night which follows, and the night which follows that; at last, as a clock must tick to a regular beat, I find I must do it or lie fretful in my bed. And then, the portrait must be set down gently, with its ribbon quite uncreased. If the frame strikes the velvet lining of the wooden box too hard, I will take it out and set it down carefully again.
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I begin to forget. My old life grows shadowy in proportion to the new -- or, sometimes emerges to darken or trouble it, in dreams and half-memories, just as those smudged strokes of forgotten lessons now and then start out upon the pages of my copy-book.
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So white blooms blush, before they curl and tumble. One day I arrive at my uncle's room to find my little desk removed, and a place made ready for me among his books. He sees my look, and beckons me to him.
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"Take off your gloves," he says. I do, and shudder to touch the surfaces of common things. It is a cold, still, sunless day. I have been at Briar, then, two years. My cheek is round as a child's, and my voice is high. I have not yet begun to bleed as women do.
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Meanwhile my uncle observes my work and finds my letters, my hand, my voice, greatly improved. He is used occasionally to entertaining gentlemen at Briar: now he has me stand for them and read. I read from foreign texts, not understanding the matter I am made to recite; and the gentlemen -- like Mrs Stiles -- watch me strangely. I grow used to that. When I have finished, at my uncle's instruction I curtsey. I curtsey well. The gentlemen clap, then come to shake or stroke my hand. They tell me, often, how rare I am. I believe myself a kind of prodigy, and pink under their gazes.
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Mrs Stiles watches me do it, with a curious expression. I never lie quite still until Barbara comes.
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"A little, sir."
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"Well, I am more than that. I am a curator of poisons. These books -- look, mark them! mark them well! -- they are the poisons I mean. And this --" Here he reverently puts his hand upon the great pile of ink-stained papers that litter his desk -- "this is their Index. This will guide others in their collection and proper study. There is no work on the subject so perfect as this will be, when it is complete. I have devoted many years to its construction and revision; and shall devote many more, as the work requires it. I have laboured so long among poisons I am immune to them, and my aim has been to make you immune, that you might assist me. My eyes -- do you look at my eyes, Maud." He takes off his spectacles and brings his face to mine; and I flinch, as once before, from the sight of his soft and naked face -- yet see now, too, what the coloured lenses hide: a certain film, or milkiness, upon the surface of his eye. "My eyes grow weak," he says, replacing his glasses. "Your sight shall save my own. Your hand shall be my hand. For you come here with naked fingers, while in the ordinary world -- the commonplace world, outside this chamber -- the men who handle vitriol and arsenic must do so with their flesh guarded. You are not like them. This is your proper sphere. I have made it so. I have fed you poison, by scruple and grain. Now comes the larger dose."
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"Yes, sir."
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"Well, Maud," says my uncle. "At last you cross the finger of brass, and come to my books. You are about to learn the proper quality of your vocation. Are you afraid?"
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"You do well to be. For here is fearful matter. You think me a scholar, hmm?"
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The book is called The Curtain Drawn Up, or the Education of Laura. I sit alone, and turn the cover; and understand at last the matter I have read, that has provoked applause from gentlemen.
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"Keep this from others. Remember the rareness of our work. It will seem queer, to the eyes and ears of the untutored. They will think you tainted, should you tell. You understand me? I have touched your lip with poison, Maud. Remember."
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He turns and takes a book from his shelves, then hands it to me, pressing my fingers hard about it.
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The world calls it pleasure. My uncle collects it -- keeps it neat, keeps it ordered, on guarded shelves; but keeps it strangely -- not for its own sake, no, never for that; rather, as it provides fuel for the satisfying of a curious lust. I mean, the lust of the bookman.
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"See here, Maud," he will say to me softly, drawing back the glass doors of his presses, passing his fingers across the covers of the texts he has exposed. "Do you note the marbling upon these papers, the morocco of this spine, the gilt edge? Observe this tooling, look." He tilts the book to me but, jealously, will not let me take it. "Not yet, not yet! Ah, see this one, also. Black-letter; the titles, look, picked out in red. The capitals flowered, the margin as broad as the text. What extravagance! And this! Plain board; but see here, the frontispiece" -- the picture is of a lady reclined on a couch, a gentleman beside her, his member bare and crimson at the tip -- "done after Borel, most rare. I had this as a young man from a stall at Liverpool, for a shilling. I should not part with it now, for fifty pounds.-- Come, come!" He has seen me blush. "No schoolgirl modesty here! Did I bring you to my house, and teach you the ways of my collection, to see you colour? Well, no more of that. Here is work, not leisure. You will soon forget the substance, in the scrutiny of the form."
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"Your cunt," I answer."Why is it so black?"
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So he says to me, many times. I do not believe him. I am thirteen. The books fill me, at first, with a kind of horror: for it seems a frightful thing, that children, in becoming women and men, should do as they describe -- get lusts, grow secret limbs and cavities, be prone to fevers, to crises, seek nothing but the endless joining together of smarting flesh. I imagine my mouth, stopped up with kisses. I imagine the parting of my legs. I imagine myself fingered and pierced… I am thirteen, as I have said. The fear gives way to restlessness: I begin to lie each night at Barbara's side, wakeful while she sleeps on; one time I put back the blanket to study the curve of her breast. Then I take to watching her as she bathes and dresses. Her legs -- that I know from my uncle's books should be smooth -- are dark with hair; the place between them -- which I know should be neat, and fair -- darkest of all. That troubles me. Then at last, one day, she catches me gazing.
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"What are you looking at?" she says.
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"From my uncle," I say.
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She starts away from me as if in horror, lets her skirt fall, puts her hands before her breast. Her cheek flares crimson. "Oh!" she cries. "I never did! Where did you learn such words?"
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"Oh, you liar! Your uncle's a gentleman. I'll tell Mrs Stiles!"
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"Speak like a devil, will you?" she says as she does it. "Like a slut and a filthy beast? Like your own trash mother? Will you? Will you?"
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She does. I think Mrs Stiles will hit me; instead, like Barbara, she starts back. But then, she takes up a block of soap and, while Barbara holds me, she presses the soap into my mouth -- presses it hard, then passes it back and forth across my lips and tongue.
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Then she lets me fall, and stands and wipes her hands convulsively upon her apron. She has Barbara keep to her own bed, from that night on; and she makes her keep the door between our rooms ajar, and put out a light.
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"Thank God she wears gloves, at least," I hear her say. "That may keep her from further mischief…"
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I wash my mouth, until my tongue grows cracked, and bleeds; I weep and weep; but still taste lavender. I think my lip must have poison in it, after all.
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But soon, I do not care. My cunt grows dark as Barbara's, I understand my uncle's books to be filled with falsehoods, and I despise myself for having supposed them truths. My hot cheek cools, my colour dies, the heat quite fades from my limbs. The restlessness turns all to scorn. I become what I was bred to be. I become a librarian.
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"We have it here, Uncle," I will answer. -- For within a year I know the place of every book upon his shelves. I know the plan of his great index -- his Universal Bibliography of Priapus and Venus. For to Priapus and Venus he has devoted me, as other girls are apprenticed to the needle or the loom. I know his friends -- those gentlemen who visit, and still hear me recite. I know them now for publishers, collectors, auctioneers -- enthusiasts of his work. They send him books -- more books each week -- and letters: "'Mr Lilly: on the Cleland. Grivet of Paris claims no knowledge of the lost, sodomitical matter. Shall I pursue?'"
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"The Lustful Turk," my uncle might say, looking up from his papers. "Where do we have it?"
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"What think you, Maud?" he says. "-- Well, never mind it now. We must leave the Cleland to languish, and hope for more in the spring. So, so. Let me see…"
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I say nothing. "Should you like it?"
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He divides the slips of paper upon his desk. "Now, The Festival of the Passions. Have we still the second volume, on loan from Hawtrey? You must copy it, Maud…"
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"I will," I say.
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My uncle hears me read, his eyes creased hard behind their lenses.
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You think me meek. How else should I answer? Once, early on, I forget myself, and yawn. My uncle studies me. He has taken his pen from his page, and slowly rolls its nib. "It appears you find your occupation dull," he says at last. "Perhaps you would like to return to your room."
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"Perhaps, sir," I say, after a moment.
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"Perhaps. Very good. Put back your book then, and go. But, Maud --" This last, as I cross to the door. "Do you instruct Mrs Stiles to keep the fuel from your fire. You don't suppose I shall pay, to keep you warm in idleness, hmm?"
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I hesitate, then go. This is, again, in winter -- it seems always winter there! I sit wrapped in my coat until made to dress for dinner. But at the table, when Mr Way brings the food to my plate, my uncle stops him. "No meat," he says, laying a napkin across his lap, "for idle girls. Not in this house."
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Then Mr Way takes the platter away. Charles, his boy, looks sorry. I should like to strike him. Instead I must sit, twisting my hands into the fabric of my skirt, biting down my rage as I once swallowed tears, hearing the sliding of the meat upon my uncle's ink-stained tongue, until I am dismissed.
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Next day at eight o'clock, I return to my work; and am careful never to yawn again.
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I grow taller, in the months that follow. I become slender and more pale. I become handsome. I outgrow my skirts and gloves and slippers.-- My uncle notes it, vaguely, and instructs Mrs Stiles to cut me new gowns to the pattern of the old. She does, and makes me sew them. I believe she must take a sort of malicious pleasure from the dressing of me to suit his fancy; then again, perhaps in her grief for her daughter she has forgotten that little girls are meant to turn out women. Anyway, I have been too long at Briar, and draw a comfort, now, from regularity. I have grown used to my gloves and my hard-boned gowns, and flinch at the first unloosening of the strings. Undressed, I seem to feel myself as naked and unsafe as one of my uncle's lense-less eyes.
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Asleep, I am sometimes oppressed by dreams. Once I fall into a fever, and a surgeon sees me. He is a friend of my uncle's and has heard me read. He fingers the soft flesh beneath my jaw, puts his thumbs to my cheeks, draws down my eye-lids. "Are you troubled," he says, "with uncommon thoughts? Well, we must expect that. You are an uncommon girl." He strokes my hand and prescribes me a medicine -- a single drop to be taken in a cup of water -- "for restlessness". Barbara puts out the mixture, while Mrs Stiles looks on.
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Then Barbara leaves me, to be married, and I am given another maid. Her name is Agnes. She is small, and slight as a bird -- one of those little, little birds that men bring down with nets. She has red hair and white skin marked with freckles, like paper foxed with damp. She is fifteen, innocent as butter. She thinks my uncle kind. She thinks me kind, at first. She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it. When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behind her tears, keeps still its look of mine. I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.
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I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fiction; but have never, since I first came to my uncle's house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing. You must remember this, in what follows. You must remember what I cannot do, what I have not seen. I cannot, for example, sit a horse, or dance. I have never held a coin in order to spend it. I have never seen a play, a railway, a mountain, or a sea.
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So my life passes. You might suppose I would not know enough of ordinary things, to know it queer. But I read other books besides my uncle's; and overhear the talk of servants, and catch their looks, and so, by that -- by the curious and pitying glances of parlourmaids and grooms! -- I see well enough the oddity I have become.
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I like to walk beside the water, thinking of this. There is an ancient, overturned punt there, half rotted away -- the holes in its hull a perpetual mockery, it seems to me, of my confinement; but I like to sit upon it, gazing at the rushes at the water's edge. I remember the Bible story, of the child that was placed in a basket and was found by the daughter of a king. I should like to find a child. I should like it, not to keep it! -- but to take its place in the basket and leave it at Briar to grow up to be me. I think often of the life I would have, in London; and of who might claim me.
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I have never seen London; and yet, I think I know it, too. I know it, from my uncle's books. I know it lies upon a river -- which is the same river, grown very much broader, that runs beyond his park.
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I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.
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But I am inside the cabinet, and long to get out…
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That is when I am still young, and given to fancies. When I am older I do not walk by the river so much as stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncle's library I one day, with my finger-nail, make a small and perfect crescent, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye -- like a curious wife at the keyhole of a cabinet of secrets.
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