Fingersmith

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.'

315

'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 316

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— M r s 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!'