She sighs. 'But it's the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world— ain't it, though! She kept very weak, and her baby hardly grew. Still she talked, all the time, of France, it was all she thought of; until one night, I was putting her into her bed when there comes a knocking on our kitchen door. It's the woman, from the Borough, what first put her on to me: I see her face, and know there's trouble. There is. What do you think? The lady's pa and brother have tracked her down after all. "They're coming," says the woman. "Lord help me, I never meant to tell them where you was; but the brother had a cane, and whipped me." She shows me her back, and it's black.
"They've gone for a coach," she says, "and a bully to help them. I should say you've an hour. Get your lady out now, if she means to go. Try to hide her and they'll pull your house apart!"
'Well! The poor lady had followed me down and heard it all, and started shrieking.
"Oh, I'm done for!" she said. "Oh, if I might only have got to France!"— but the trip downstairs had half-killed her, she was so weak. "They'll take my baby!" she said.
"They'll take her and make her theirs! They'll put her in their great house, they might as well lock her into a tomb! They'll take her, and turn her heart against me— oh! and I haven't even named her! I haven't even named her!" That's all she would say. "I haven't even named her!"— "Name her now, then!" I said, just to make her be quiet.
"Name her quick, while you still got the chance." "I will!" she said.
"But, what name shall I give her?" "Well," I said, "think on: she's to be a lady after all, there's no helping it now. Give her a name that'll fit her. What's your own name? Give 210
her that." Then she looked dark. She said, "My name's a hateful one, I'd sooner curse her before I let anyone call her Marianne— '"
She stops, seeing my face. It has jumped, or twisted— though I have known that the story must reach this point, and have stood, feeling my breath come shorter, my stomach grow sourer, as the tale proceeds. I draw in my breath. 'It's not true,' I say.
'My mother, coming here, without a husband? My mother was mad. My father was a soldier. I have his ring. Look here, look here!'
I have gone to my bag, and I stoop to it, and pull at the torn leather and find the little square of linen that holds my jewels. There is the ring that they gave me in the madhouse: I hold it up. My hand is shaking. Mrs Sucksby studies it and shrugs.
'Rings may be got,' she says, 'from just about anywhere.'
'From him,' I say.
'From anywhere. I could get you ten like that, have them stamped V.R.— Would that make them the Queen's?'
I cannot answer. For what do I know about where rings come from and how they may be stamped? I say again, more weakly, 'My mother coming here, without a husband.
Ill, and coming here. My father— My uncle— ' I look up. 'My uncle. Why should my uncle lie?'
'Why should he tell the truth?' says Richard, coming forward, speaking at last. 'I dare swear his sister was honest enough, before her ruin, and only unlucky; but that's the sort of unluckiness— well, that a man doesn't care to talk about too freely . . .'
I gaze again at the ring. There is a cut upon it I liked, as a girl, to suppose made by a bayonet. Now the gold feels light, as if pierced and made hollow.
'My mother,' I say, doggedly, 'was mad. She bore me, strapped to a table.— No.' I put my hands to my eyes. 'That part, perhaps, was my own fancy. But not the rest. My mother was mad— was kept in the cell of a madhouse; and I was made to be mindful of her example, lest I should follow it.'
'She was certainly, once they had got her, put in a cell,' says Richard; 'as we know girls are, from time to time, for the satisfaction of gentlemen.— Well, no more of that, just yet.' He has caught Mrs Sucksby's eye. 'And you were certainly kept in fear of following her, Maud. And what did that do to you?— save make you anxious, obedient, careless of your own comforts— in other words, exactly fit you to your uncle's fancy?
Didn't I tell you once, what a scoundrel he was?'
'You are wrong,' I say. 'You are wrong, or mistaken.'
'No mistake,' answers Mrs Sucksby.
'You may be lying, even now. Both of you!'
'We may be.' She taps her mouth. 'But you see, dear girl, we ain't.'
'My uncle,' I say again. 'My uncle's servants. Mr Way, Mrs Stiles . . .'
But I say it, and I feel— the ghost of a pressure— Mr Way's shoulder against my ribs, his finger in the crook of my knee: Fancy yourself a lady, do you?— And then, and then, Mrs Stiles's hard hands on my pimpling arms and her breath against my cheek: Why your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash— /
I know it, I know it. I still hold the ring. Now, with a cry, I throw it to the floor— as I once, as a furious child, threw cups and saucers.
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'Damn him!' I say. I think of myself at the foot of my uncle's bed, the razor in my hand, his unguarded eye. Confidence Abused. 'Damn him!' Richard nods. I turn upon him, then. And damn you, with him! You knew this, all along? Why not tell me, at Briar?
Don't you think it would have made me the likelier to go with you? Why wait, and bring me here— to this foul place!— to trick and surprise me?'
'Surprise you?' he says, with a curious laugh. 'Oh, Maud, sweet Maud, we haven't begun to do that.'
I d o n ' t u n d e r s t a n d h i m . I h a r d l y t r y t o . I a m t h i n k i n g s t i l l o f m y u n c l e , m y mother— my mother, ill, ruined, coming here . . . Richard puts his hand to his chin, works his lips. 'Mrs Sucksby,' he says, 'do you keep any drink up here? I find myself rather dry about the
mouth. It's the anticipation, I think, of sensation. I am the same at the casino, at the spinning of the wheel; and at the pantomime, when they're about to let fly the fairies.'
Mrs Sucksby hesitates, then goes to a shelf, opens a box, lifts out a bottle. She produces three short tumblers with gold about the rim- She wipes them, on a fold of her skirt.
'I hope, Miss Lilly, you won't suppose this sherry,' she says, as she pours. The scent of the liquid comes sharp and sickly upon the close air of the room. 'Sherry in a lady's chamber I could never agree to; but a bit of honest brandy, meant for use now and then as a bracer— well, you tell me, where's the harm in that?'
'No harm at all,' says Richard. He holds a glass to me and, so confused am I— so dazed and enraged— I take it at once, and sip it as if it were wine. Mrs Sucksby watches me swallow.
'Got a good mouth for spirits,' she says approvingly.
'Got a mouth for them,' says Richard, 'when they're marked up, Medicine. Hey, Maud?'
I will not answer. The brandy is hot. I sit, at last, upon the edge of the bed and unfasten the cord of my cloak. The room is darker than before: the day is turning into night. The horse- hair screen looms black, and casts shadows. The walls— that are papered here in a pattern of flowers, there in muddy diamonds— are gloomy and close.
The scarf stands out against the window: a fly is caught behind it, and buzzes in hopeless fury against the glass.
I sit with my head in my hands. My brain, like the room, seems hedged about with darkness; my thoughts run, but run uselessly. I do not ask— as I would, I think, if this were some other girl's story and I was only reading it or hearing it told— I do not ask why they have got me here; what they mean to do with me now; how they plan to profit from the cheating and stunning of me. I only rage, still, against my uncle. I only think, over and over: My mother, ruined, shamed, coming here, lying bleeding in a house of thieves. Not mad, not mad . . .