I looked, for perhaps a minute. I looked, and thought of all the times that Mrs Sucksby had washed and combed and shined my hair, when I was a girl. I thought of her warming her bed before she put me in it, so I should not take chills. I thought of her putting aside, for me, the tenderest morsels of meat; and smoothing my teeth, when they cut; and passing her hands across my arms and legs, to be sure that they grew straight. I remembered how close and safe she had kept me, all the years of my life. I had gone to Briar, to make my fortune, so I might share it with her. Now my fortune was gone. Maud Lilly had stolen it and given me hers. She was supposed to be here.
She had made me be her, while she was loose in the world, and every glass she gazed at— as say, in milliners' shops, while she was fitted with gowns; or in theatres; or in halls, as she went dancing— every glass showed her to be everything I was not— to be handsome, and cheerful, and proud, and free—
I might have raged. I think I began to. Then I saw the look in my eye, and my face frightened me. I stood, not knowing what I should do, until the nurse on duty woke up, and came and jabbed me.
'All right, Miss Vanity,' she said with a yawn. 'I dare say your heels are worth looking at, too. So let's see 'em.' She pushed me back into the middle of the turning line; and I bowed my head and walked, watching the hem of my skirt, my boots, the boots of the lady in front— anything, anything at all, to save me from lifting my gaze to the drawing- room window and seeing again the look in my own mad eye.
That, I suppose, was at the end of June. It might have been sooner, though. It was hard to know what dates were what. It was hard to tell so much as the day— you only knew another week had gone by when, instead of spending all 277
morning on your bed, you were made to stand in the drawing-room and listen while Dr Christie read prayers; then you knew it was a Sunday. Perhaps I ought to have made a mark, like convicts do, for every Sunday that came round; but of course, for many weeks there seemed no point— each time one came I thought that, by the next, I should have got out. Then I began to grow muddled. It seemed to me that some weeks had two or three Sundays in them. Others seemed to have none. All we could tell for certain was, that spring had turned to summer: for the days grew long, the sun grew fiercer; and the house grew hot, like an oven.
I remember the heat, almost more than anything. It was enough to make you mad all by itself. The air in our rooms, for instance, became like soup. I think one or two ladies actually died, through breathing that air— though of course, being medical men, Dr Graves and Dr Christie were able to pass off their deaths as strokes. I heard the nurses say that. They grew bad-tempered as the days grew warm. They complained of headaches and sweats. They complained of their gowns. 'Why I stay here, looking after you, in wool,' they'd say, pulling us about, 'when I might be at Tunbridge Asylum, where the nurses all wear poplin— !'
But the fact of it was, as we all knew, no other madhouse would have had them; and they wouldn't have gone, anyway. They had it too easy. They talked all the time of how troublesome and sly their ladies were, and showed off bruises; but of course, the ladies were far too dazed and miserable to be sly, the trouble came all from the nurses when they fancied some sport. The rest of the time their job was the slightest one you can imagine, for they got us in bed at seven o'clock— gave us those draughts, to make us sleep— then they sat till midnight reading papers and books, making toast and cocoa, doing fancy-work, whistling, farting, standing at the door and calling down the hall to each other, even slipping in and out of each other's rooms when they were especially bored, leaving their ladies locked up and unguarded.
And in the mornings, when Dr Christie had made his round, they would take off their caps, unpin their hair, roll down their stockings and lift their skirts; and they gave us newspapers and made us stand beside them and fan their great white legs.
Nurse Bacon did, anyway. She complained of the heat more than anyone, because of the itch in her hands. She had Betty rubbing grease into her fingers ten times a day.
Sometimes she would scream. And when the weather was at its warmest she put two china basins beside her bed and slept with her hands in water. That gave her dreams.
'He's too slippy!' she cried one night. And then, in a mumble: 'There, I've lost him ..."
I also dreamed. I seemed to dream every time I closed my eyes. I dreamed, as you might suppose I would, of Lant Street, of the Borough, of home. I dreamed of Mr Ibbs and Mrs Sucksby.— Those were troubling dreams, however; often I woke weeping from dreams like that. Now and then I dreamed only of the madhouse: I would dream I had woken and had my day. Then I really would wake, and have the day still to do— and yet, the day was so like the day I had dreamed, I might as well have dreamed them both.— Those dreams bewildered me.
The worst dreams of all, however, were the dreams I began to have as the weeks slipped by and the nights grew hotter and I began to get more and more muddled in my mind. They were dreams of Briar, and of Maud.
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For I never dreamed of her as I knew she really was— as a viper or a thief. I never dreamed of Gentleman. I only ever used to dream that we were back in her uncle's house, and I was her maid. I dreamed we walked to her mother's grave, or sat by the river. I dreamed I dressed her and brushed her hair. I dreamed— you can't be blamed, can you, for what you dream?— I dreamed I loved her. I knew I hated her. I knew I wanted to kill her. But sometimes I would wake, in the night, not knowing. I would open my eyes and look about me, and the room would be so warm everyone would have turned and fretted in their beds— I would see Betty's great bare leg, Nurse Bacon's sweating face, Miss Wilson's arm. Mrs
Price put back her hair as she slept, rather in the way that Maud had used to do: I would gaze at her in my half- sleep and quite forget the weeks that had passed, since the end of April. I would forget the flight from Briar, forget the wedding in the black flint church, forget the days at Mrs Cream's, the drive to the madhouse, the awful trick; forget I meant to escape, and what I planned to do when I had done it. I would only think, in a kind of panic, Where is she? Where is she?— and then, with a rush of relief: There she is . . .1 would close my eyes again and, in an instant, be not in my bed at all but in hers. The curtains would be let down, and she would be beside me. I would feel her breath. 'How close the night is, tonight!' she would say, in her soft voice; and then:
'I'm afraid! I'm afraid— !'
'Don't be frightened,' I would always answer. 'Oh, don't be frightened.'— And at that moment, the dream would slip from me and I would wake. I would wake in a kind of dread, to think that, like Nurse Bacon, I might have said the words aloud— or sighed, or quivered. And then I would lie and be filled with a terrible shame. For I hated her! I hated her!— and yet I knew that, every time, I secretly wished that the dream had gone on to its end.
I began to be afraid I would rise in my sleep. Say I tried to kiss Mrs Price, or Betty?
But if I tried to stay awake, then I grew bewildered. I imagined fearful things. Those nights were queer nights. For though the heat made us all grow stupid, it also now and then sent ladies— even quiet, obedient ladies— into fits. You caught the commotion of it from your bed: the shrieking, the ringing of bells, the pounding of running feet. It broke into the hot and silent night, like a clap of thunder; and though you knew, each time, what it was, still the sounds came so strangely— and sometimes one lady would set off another; and then you would lie and wonder whether that mightn't set off you, and you would seem to feel the fit gathering inside you, you would start to sweat, perhaps to twitch— oh, those were dreadful nights! Betty might moan. Mrs Price would start to weep. Nurse Bacon would rise: 'Hush! Hush!' she'd say. She would open the door, lean out and listen. Then the shrieking would stop, the footsteps begin to fade. 'That's got her,' she'd say. 'Now, will they pad her, I wonder, or plunge her?'— and at that word, plunge,