I curled my lip at her. ‘Gentleman,’ I said. ‘Gentleman. You have learned Borough habits very quick.’
The blood rose in her cheek. ‘I am changed,’ she murmured. ‘I am not what I was.’
‘You are not,’ I said.
She lowered her eyes. She looked at her hands. And then, as if seeing that they were bare—and as if one could cover the bareness of the other—she put them awkwardly together. There came the faint jingle of metal: she had, upon her wrist, two or three thin silver bangles, of a kind I had used to like to wear. She held them, to make them be still; then lifted her head again and caught my gaze. I said, in a hard, steady voice:
‘Was being a lady not enough for you, that you must come to the Borough and take the things that were ours?’
She did not answer.
‘Well?’ I said.
She began to try to draw free the bangles. ‘Take them,’ she said. ‘I don’t want them!’
‘You think I want them?’
Mrs Sucksby stepped forward, her own hands darting towards Maud’s.
‘Let them stay!’ she cried.
Her voice was hoarse. She looked at me, then gave an awkward sort of laugh. ‘Dear girl,’ she said, moving back, ‘what’s silver, in this house? What’s silver, compared with the joy of seeing your face?’ She put one hand to her throat, and leaned with the other upon the back of a chair. She leaned heavily, and the chair-legs grated on the floor. ‘Dainty,’ she said, ‘fetch me out a tumbler of brandy, will you? This turn of things’ve quite undone me.’
Like Mr Ibbs, she took out a handkerchief and passed it over her face. Dainty gave her her drink, and she sipped it, and sat.
‘Come beside me,’ she said to me. ‘Put down that old knife, won’t you?’ And then, when I hesitated: ‘What, afraid of Miss Lilly? With me and Mr Ibbs—and your own pal Charles—to mind you? Come, sit.’
I looked again at Maud. I had thought her a viper, but, in the bringing and pouring of the brandy the lamp had got moved about, and I saw in the light of it how slight and pale and tired she was. At Mrs Sucksby’s cry, she had fallen still; her hands still shook, however, and she rested her head against the high back of her chair, as if the weight of it hurt her. Her face was damp. A few strands of hair clung to it. Her eyes were darker than they ought to have been, and seemed to glitter.
I sat, and put the knife before me. Mrs Sucksby took my hand. I said,
‘I have been done very wrong, Mrs Sucksby.’
Mrs Sucksby slowly shook her head. ‘My dear, I begin to see it,’ she said.
‘God knows what lies they’ve told you! The truth is, she was in it with him from the start. They set me up, between them, to take her place; and they put me in the madhouse, where everyone supposed me to be her—’
John whistled. ‘Double-cross,’ he said. ‘Nice work but—oh!’ He laughed. ‘You pigeon!’
Which is what I had known, all along, he would say; though now, it did not seem to matter. Mrs Sucksby looked, not at me, but at our joined hands. She was smoothing her thumb upon mine. I thought the news had stunned her.
‘A bad business,’ she said quietly.
‘Worse than that!’ I cried. ‘Oh, much, much worse! A madhouse, Mrs Sucksby! With nurses, that hurt and starved me! I was hit one time, so hard—! I was dropped—I was dropped in a bath—!’
She drew free her hand and raised it before her face.
‘No more, dear girl! No more. I can’t bear to hear it.’
‘Did they torture you, with tongs?’ asked John. ‘Did they put you in a strait-coat?’
‘They put me in a tartan gown, and boots of—’
‘Of iron?’
I hesitated, then glanced at Charles.
‘Boots without laces,’ I said. ‘They thought that, if they gave me laces, I should hang myself. And my hair—’
‘Did they cut it?’ said Dainty, sitting, putting a hand before her mouth. Her mouth had a fading bruise beside it—from John, I suppose. ‘Did they shave it off?’
I hesitated again, then said, ‘They sewed it to my head.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Sue!’ she said. ‘I swear, I never meant it when I called you a bitch just now!’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘You weren’t to know.’ I turned again to Mrs Sucksby, and touched the skirt of my dress. ‘This gown I stole,’ I said. ‘And these shoes. And I walked, nearly all the way to London. My only thought was to get back here to you. For worse than all the cruel things that were done to me in the madhouse was the thought of the lies that Gentleman must have told you, about where I had gone. I supposed at first, he would have said that I had died.’
She took my hand again. ‘He might,’ she said, ‘have thought of it.’
‘But I knew you would ask for my body.’
‘Wouldn’t I! Straight off!’
‘Then I guessed what he would say. He would say I had cut with the money, and cheated you all.’
‘He did,’ said John. He sucked his tooth. ‘I always said that you hadn’t the nerve.’
I looked into Mrs Sucksby’s face. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t believe it,’ I said, ‘of your own daughter.’ Her grip on my hand grew tight. ‘I knew you would look for me, until you found me.’
‘Dear girl, I—Oh, I should have got you, too, in another month more!—only, you know, I kept my searching quiet from John and Dainty.’
‘Did you, Mrs Sucksby?’ said Dainty.
‘My dear, I did. I sent out a man, confidentially.’
She wiped her lips. She looked at Maud. But Maud had her eyes upon me. I suppose the lamp that lit her face also lit mine, for she said, softly and suddenly,
‘You look ill, Sue.’
It was the third time she had spoken my name. I heard it and—despite myself—I thought of the other times she had said it, so softly as that, and felt myself colour.
‘You do look done up,’ said Dainty. ‘You look like you ain’t slept in a week.’
‘I haven’t,’ I said.
‘Then why,’ said Mrs Sucksby, making to rise, ‘won’t you go upstairs now, and put your head down? And then tomorrow, me and Dainty will come and fix you up in one of your old gowns, and dress your hair—’
‘Don’t go to sleep here, Sue!’ said Maud, leaning from her chair and putting her hand towards me. ‘There’s danger here.’
I took up my knife again, and she drew her hand back. I said,
‘You think I don’t know danger? You think that, in looking at you, I’m not seeing danger with a face—a false face, with an actress mouth—with lying blushes, and two brown treacherous eyes?’
The words were like clinker on my tongue: they were awful, but I must spit them out or swallow them and choke. She held my gaze, and her eyes did not seem treacherous, at all. I turned the knife. The blade took up the light of the lamp and sent it darting across her cheek.
‘I came here to kill you,’ I said.
Mrs Sucksby shifted in her seat. Maud kept her glittering gaze on mine.
‘You came to Briar,’ she said, ‘to do that . . .’
Then I looked away and let the knife fall. I felt suddenly tired, and sick. I felt all the walking I had done, and all the careful watching. Now nothing was as I had thought it would be. I turned to Mrs Sucksby.
‘Can you sit,’ I said, ‘and hear her tease me? Can you know the wicked trick she played me, and have her here, and not want to throttle her?’ I meant it; and yet it sounded like bluster, too. I looked around the room. ‘Mr Ibbs, can you?’ I said. ‘Dainty, shouldn’t you like to shake her to pieces, in my behalf?’
‘Shouldn’t I!’ said Dainty. She showed her fist. ‘Cheat my best pal, would you?’ she said to Maud. ‘Lock her up in a madhouse and sew up her hair?’ Maud said nothing, but slightly turned her head. Dainty shook her fist again, then let it sink. She caught my eye. ‘Seems an awful shame, though, Sue. Miss Lilly turning out to be such a sport, and all. And brave? I done her ears last week, and
she never cried once. And then, she has took to taking stitches out, that natural—’
‘All right, Dainty,’ said Mrs Sucksby quickly.
I looked again at Maud—at her neat ear which, I now saw, had a crystal drop falling from it on a wire of gold; and at the curls in her fair hair; and at her dark eye-brows. They had been tweezered into two fine arches. Above her chair—I had not seen this before, either, but it seemed all of a piece with the drops, the curls and arches, the bangles on her wrist—above her chair there was hanging, from a beam, a little cage of wicker with a yellow bird in it.
I felt tears rise into my throat.
‘You have taken everything that was mine,’ I said. ‘You have taken it, and made it better.’
‘I took it,’ she answered, ‘because it was yours. Because I must!’
‘Why must you? Why?’
She opened her mouth to speak. Then she looked at Mrs Sucksby and her face changed.
‘For villainy’s sake,’ she said flatly. ‘For villainy’s sake. Because you were right, before: my face is a false one, my mouth is an actress mouth, my blushes tell lies, my eyes—My eyes—’ She looked away. Her voice had begun to rise. She made it flat again. ‘Richard found that, after all, we must wait for our money, longer than we thought.’
She took up her glass in both her hands, and swallowed what was left in it.
‘You haven’t got the money?’
She put the glass back down. ‘Not yet.’
‘That’s something, then,’ I said. ‘I shall want a share of that. I shall want half of it. Mrs Sucksby, do you hear? They shall give me half their fortune, at least. Not a stinking three thousand, but a half. Think what we shall do, with that!’
But I did not want the money; and when I spoke, my voice sounded hateful to me. Mrs Sucksby said nothing. Maud said,
‘You shall have what you like. I will give you anything, anything at all—if you will only go from here, now, before Richard comes back.’
‘Go from here? Because you tell me to? This is my home! Mrs Sucksby—Mrs Sucksby, will you tell her?’
Mrs Sucksby again passed a hand across her mouth.
‘There again, Susie,’ she said slowly, ‘Miss Lilly might be right. If there is the money to be thought of, you might do well, for now, to keep out of Gentleman’s way. Let me speak with him, first. I’ll give him a taste of my temper, though!’
She said it in a queer, half-hearted way, with a try at a smile—as she might have said it, I thought, if she had just found out that Gentleman had swindled her out of two or three shillings at cards. I guessed she was thinking about Maud’s fortune, and how it might be cut. I couldn’t help but wish that, after all, the money was nothing to her. I said,
‘Will you make me go?’ The words came out like a whisper. I looked away from her, about the kitchen—at the old Dutch clock on the shelf, and the pictures on the walls. On the floor by the door to the stairs was the white china chamber-pot, with the dark eye in it, from my own room, that must have been brought down to be washed and then forgotten. I would not have forgotten it. On the table beneath my hand was a heart: I had scratched it into the wood, the summer before. I had been like a child still, then. I had been like an infant—I looked about me again. Why were there no babies? The kitchen was still. Everyone was still, and watching me.
‘Will you make me go,’ I said again to Mrs Sucksby, ‘and let her stay?’ Now my voice was broken as a boy’s. ‘Will you trust them, not to send Dr Christie to me? Will you—Will you take her gowns, will you take the pins from her head, will you kiss her, will you let her sleep beside you in my old place, while I lie in a bed with—with red hairs in it?’
‘Sleep beside me?’ said Mrs Sucksby quickly. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Red hairs?’ said John.
But Maud had lifted her head, her gaze grown sharp. ‘You have watched us!’ she said. And then, when she had thought it through: ‘At the shutter!’
‘I’ve watched you,’ I answered, more strongly. ‘I’ve watched you, you spider! taking everything of mine. You would rather do that—God damn you!—than sleep with your own husband!’
‘Sleep with—with Richard?’ She looked astounded. ‘You don’t suppose—?’
‘Susie,’ said Mrs Sucksby, putting her hand upon me.
‘Sue,’ said Maud at the same time, leaning across the table and also reaching for me. ‘You don’t suppose him anything to me? You don’t think him a husband to me, in anything but name? Don’t you know I hate him? Don’t you know I hated him, at Briar?’
‘Will you make out now,’ I said, in a kind of trembling scorn, ‘that you only did what you did because he made you?’
‘He did make me!—But, not in the way you mean.’
I said, ‘Will you pretend, that you aren’t a swindling cheat?’
She said, ‘Will you?’
And again, she held my gaze; and again, I was almost shamed by it, and looked away. Then after a moment I said, more quietly,
‘I hated it. I didn’t smile, with him, when your back was turned.’
‘You think I did?’
‘Why not? You are an actress. You are acting now!’
‘Am I?’
She said it, still with her eyes on my face, still with her hand reaching for mine but falling short of taking it. The light was all upon us, the rest of the kitchen almost dark. I looked at her fingers. They were marked with dirt, or bruised. I said,
‘If you hated him, why did you do it?’
‘There was no other way,’ she said. ‘You saw my life. I needed you, to be me.’
‘So you might come here, and be me!’ She did not answer. I said, ‘We might have cheated him. If you had told me. We might have—’
‘What?’
‘Anything. Something. I don’t know what . . .’
She shook her head. ‘How much,’ she asked quietly, ‘would you have given up?’
Her gaze was so dark, yet so steady and true; but I grew aware, all at once, of Mrs Sucksby—of John and Dainty, Mr Ibbs—all of them, watching, silent and curious, thinking, What’s this . . . ? And in that moment, I saw into my own cowardly heart and knew that I would have given up nothing for her, nothing at all; and that, sooner than be shamed by her now, I would die.
She reached again. Her fingers brushed my wrist. I took up the knife and jabbed at her hand.
‘Don’t touch me!’ I said, as I did it. I got to my feet. ‘Don’t any of you touch me!’ My voice was wild. ‘Not any of you! Do you hear me? I came back here, thinking this my home; now you want to cast me out again. I hate you all! I wish I had stayed in the country!’
I looked from face to face. Dainty had begun to cry. John sat, open-mouthed and astonished. Mr Ibbs had his hand at his cheek. Maud nursed her bleeding fingers. Charles shook. Mrs Sucksby said,
‘Sue, put down the knife. Cast you out? The idea! I—’
Then she stopped. Charley Wag had lifted his head. From Mr Ibbs’s shop there came the sound of a key, turning in a lock. Then came the kicking of boots; then whistling.
‘Gentleman!’ she said. She looked at Maud, at Mr Ibbs, at me. She got up, and leaned to catch at my arm. ‘Sue,’ she said, as she did it. She spoke in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘Susie, sweetheart, will you come upstairs . . . ?’
But I did not answer, only gripped the knife more firmly. Charley Wag gave a feeble bark, and Gentleman heard him, and barked in reply. Then he whistled again, a lazy waltz tune, and we heard him stumbling along the passage and watched as he pushed at the door. I think he was drunk. His hat was crooked, his cheek quite pink, his mouth a perfect O. He stood, and slightly swayed, and looked about the room, squinting into the shadows. The whistle died. His lips grew straight, and he licked them.
‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘here’s Charles.’ He winked. Then he looked at me, and at my knife. ‘Hallo, here’s Sue.’ He took off his hat and began to unwind the scarlet cloth from his throat. ‘I supposed you might come. Had you le
ft it another day, I should have been ready. I have just now collected a letter, from that fool Christie. He certainly dragged his heels, in letting me know of your escape! I think he planned to recapture you before he should have to. Bad publicity, when one’s lady lunatics run.’
He put the scarlet cloth inside the hat and let them drop. He took out a cigarette.
‘You’re fucking cool,’ I said. I was shaking. ‘Here’s Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, know everything.’
He laughed. ‘I should say they do.’
‘Gentleman!’ said Mrs Sucksby. ‘Listen to me. Sue has told us terrible things. I want you to go.’
‘Don’t let him leave!’ I said. ‘He’ll send for Dr Christie!’ I waved my knife. ‘Charles, stop him!’
Gentleman had lit his cigarette, but apart from that had not moved. He turned to look at Charles, who had taken a couple of doubtful steps towards him. He put his hand to Charles’s hair.
‘So, Charley,’ he said.
‘Please, sir,’ said Charles.
‘You have found me out a villain.’
Charles’s lip began to tremble. ‘Honest to God, Mr Rivers, I never meant to!’
‘There, there,’ said Gentleman. He stroked Charles’s cheek. Mr Ibbs made a puffing sound with his lips. John got to his feet, then looked about him as if he did not know why he had done it. He blushed.
‘Sit down, John,’ said Mrs Sucksby.
He folded his arms. ‘I shall stand if I like.’
‘Sit down, or I’ll hit you.’
‘Hit me?’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Hit them two, there!’ He pointed to Gentleman and Charles. Mrs Sucksby took two quick steps, and struck him. She struck him hard. He put both his arms to his head and gazed at her from between his elbows.
‘You old cow!’ he said. ‘You been down on me since the day I was born. You touch me again, you’ll know it!’
His eyes blazed as he said it; but then, they filled with tears and he began to snivel. He walked to the wall, and kicked it. Charles shuddered and wept harder. Gentleman looked from one to the other, then gazed at Maud in pretend amazement.