London is a city of opportunities fulfilled. This place, of jostling and clamour, I do not know. It is thick with purposes I do not understand. It is marked with words, but I 197
cannot read it. The regularity, the numberless repetition, of
brick, of house, of street, of person— of dress, and feature, and expression— stuns and exhausts me. I stand at Richard's side and keep my arm in his. If he should leave me— ! A whistle is blown and men, in dark suits— ordinary men, gentlemen— pass by us, running-We take our place in the hackney at last, and are jerked out of the terminus into choked and filthy roads. Richard feels me tense. 'Are you startled, by the streets?' he says. 'We must pass through worse, I'm afraid. What did you expect? This is the city, where respectable men live side by side with squalor. Don't mind it. Don't mind it at all. We are going to your new home.'
'To our house,' I say. I think: There, with the doors and windows shut, I will grow calm. I will bathe, I will rest, I will sleep.
'To our house,' he answers. And he studies me a moment longer, then reaches across me. 'Here, if the sight troubles you— ' He pulls down the blind.
And so once again we sit, and sway to the motion of a coach, in a kind of twilight; but we are pressed about, this time, by all the roar of London. I do not see it when we go about the park. I do not see what route the driver takes, at alclass="underline" perhaps I should not know it, if I did, though I have studied maps of the city, and know the placing of the Thames. I cannot say, when we stop, how long we have driven for— so preoccupied am I with the desperate stir of my senses and heart. Be bold, I am thinking. God damn you, Maud! You have longed for this. You have given up Sue, you have given up everything, for this. Be bold!
Richard pays the man, then returns for our bags. 'From here we must walk,' he says. I climb out, unassisted, and blink at the light— though the light here is dim enough: we have lost the sun, and the sky is anyway thick with cloud— brown cloud, like the dirty fleece of a sheep. I have expected to find myself at the door to his house, but there are no houses here: we have entered streets that appear to me unspeakably shabby and mean— are hedged on one side by a great, dead wall, on the other by the lime-stained arches of a bridge. Richard moves off. I catch at his arm.
'Is this right?' I say.
'Quite right,' he answers. 'Come, don't be alarmed. We cannot live grandly, yet. And we must make our entrance the quiet way, that's all.'
'You are still afraid that my uncle may have sent men, to watch usr
He again moves off. 'Come. We can talk soon, indoors. Not here. Come on, this way.
Pick up your skirts.'
He walks quicker than ever now, and I am slow to follow. When he sees me hanging back he holds our bags in one hand and, with the other, takes my wrist. 'Not far, now,'
he says, kindly enough; his grip is tight, however. We leave that road and turn into another: here I can see the stained and broken face of what I take to be a single great house, but which is in fact the rear of a terrace of narrow dwellings. The air smells riverish, rank. People watch us, curiously. That makes me walk faster. Soon we turn again, into a lane of crunching cinders. Here there are children, in a group: they are standing idly about a bird, which lurches and hops. They have tied its wings with 198
twine. When they see us, they come and press close. They want money, or to tug at my sleeve, my cloak, my veil. Richard kicks them away. They swear for a minute, then return to the bird. We take another, dirtier, path— Richard all the time gripping me harder, walking faster, faster, certain of his way. 'We are very close now,' he says.
'Don't mind this filth, this is nothing. All London is filthy like this. Just a little further, I promise. And then you may rest.'
And at last, he slows. We have reached a court, with a thick mud floor and nettles.
The walls are high, and running with damp. There is no open route from here, only two or three narrow covered passages, filled with darkness. Into one of these he makes to draw me, now; but, so black and foul is it, I suddenly hesitate, and pull against his grip.
'Come on,' he says, turning round, not smiling.
'Come to where?' I ask him.
'To your new life, that has waited for you to start it, too long. To our house. Our housekeeper expects us. Come, now.— Or shall I leave you here?'
His voice is tired, hard. I look behind me. I see the other passages, but the muddy path he has led me down is hidden— as if the glistening walls have parted to let us come, then closed to trap me.
What can I do? I cannot go back, alone, to the children, the labyrinth of lanes, the street, the city. I cannot go back to Sue. I am not meant to. Everything has been impelling me here, to this dark point. I must go forward, or cease to exist. I think again of the room that is waiting for me: of the door, with its key that will turn; of the bed, on which I shall lie and sleep, and sleep—
I hesitate, one second more; then let him draw me into the passage. It is short, and ends with a flight of shallow stairs, leading downwards; and these, in turn, end at a door, on which he knocks. From beyond the door there comes at once the barking of a dog, then soft, quick footsteps, a grinding bolt. The dog falls silent. The door is opened, by a fair- haired boy— I suppose, the housekeeper's boy. He looks at Richard and nods.
'All right?' he says.
'All right,' answers Richard. 'Is Aunty home? Here's a lady, look, come to stay.'
The boy surveys me, I see him squinting to make out the features behind my veil.
Then he smiles, nods again, draws back the door to let us pass him; closes it tightly at our backs.
The room beyond is a kind of kitchen— I suppose, a servants' kitchen, for it is small, and windowless, dark and unwholesome, and chokingly hot: there is a good fire lit, and one or two smoking lamps upon a table and— perhaps, after all, these are the grooms' quarters— a brazier in a cage, with tools about it. Beside the brazier is a pale man in an apron who, on seeing us come, sets down some fork or file and wipes his hands and looks me over, frankly. Before the fire sit a young woman and a boy: the girl fat- faced, red-haired, also watching me freely; the boy sallow and scowling, chewing with broken teeth on a strip of dry meat, and dressed— I notice this, even in my confusion— in an extraordinary coat, that seems pieced together from many varieties of fur. He holds, between his knees, a squirming dog, his hand about its jaws 199
to keep it from barking. He looks at Richard and then at me. He surveys my coat and gloves and bonnet. He whistles.
'What price them togs,' he says.
Then he flinches as, from another chair— a rocking chair, that creaks as it tilts— a white- haired woman leans to strike him. I suppose her the housekeeper. She has watched me, more closely and more eagerly than any of the others. She holds a bundle: now she puts it down and struggles from her seat, and the bundle gives a shudder. This is more astonishing than the lighted brazier, the coat of fur— it is a sleeping, swollen- headed baby in a blanket.
I look at Richard. I think he will speak, or lead me on. But he has taken his hand from me and stands with folded arms, very leisurely. He is smiling, but smiling oddly.
Everyone is silent. No-one moves save the white- haired woman. She has left her chair and comes about the table. She is dressed in taffeta, that rustles. Her face has a blush, and shines. She comes to me, she stands before me, her head weaves as she tries to catch the line of my features. She moves her mouth, wets her lips. Her gaze is still c l o s e a n d t e r r i b l y e a g e r . W h e n s h e r a i s e s h e r b l u n t r e d h a n d s t o m e , I flinch.— 'Richard,' I say. But he still does nothing, and the woman's look, that is so awful and so strange, compels me. I stand and let her fumble for my veil. She puts it back. And then her gaze changes, grows stranger still, when she sees my face. She touches my cheek, as if uncertain it will remain beneath her fingers.