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!'
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.
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.
'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.
'I am perfectly clear in my head,' I said.
He looked at his watch. 'Splendid!'
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'Dr Christie, I beg you— !'
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.
'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!'
H e r u b b e d h i s e y e . ' Y o u r n a m e , ' h e s a i d . ' S u s a n — w h a t a r e y o u c a l l i n g i t , now?— Trinder?'
'Susan— No!' I said. 'Not in that book. It is Susan Smith, in there.'
'Susan Smith, again!'
'Only in there. They made me put it. He showed me how! Don't you see?'
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— '
'Fancies? God help me, it's the plainest truth!'
'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 overindulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.'
'Inflamed?' I said. 'Over- indulge? Literature?'
'You have read too much.'
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!'
He had begun to walk to the door of the room, with Dr Graves close behind him. 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?'
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 note-book. Nurse Spiller, let Mrs Rivers go. Mrs Rivers— ' 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.
'Watch her, sir!' said Nurse Spiller, when she saw the pencil's point. 'She's a sly one, this one!'
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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?'
'No, sir,' I said. I took the pencil in my hand. It trembled. He watched me.
'You may hold it better than that, I think,' he said.
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.
'I am not used to holding pencils,' I said.
Dr Christie nodded. 'I think you are. Come, write me a line upon this paper.'
'I can't,' I said.
'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.'
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.
'You have written Susan,' said Dr Christie. 'Why is that?'
'It is my name.'
'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.'
'I can't. I can't!'
'Yes, you can. Write a single word, then. Write me this. Write: speckle.'
I shook my head.
'Come, come,' he said, 'this word is not difficult. And you know the first letter of it, we have seen you write that already.'
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.
'You still press hard,' Dr Christie said.
'Do I?'
'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?'
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.'
He tapped at his chin.
'For you,' he said, 'are Susan Smith, or Trinder.'
I quivered again. 'Sir, I am!'
He was silent. I thought, That's it! and almost swooned, with relief. Then he turned to Dr Graves and shook his head.
'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 271
her. We must study on this,
until our course of treatment is decided. Mrs Rivers, my pencil if you please. Ladies, good-day.'
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. '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?'