'Go to hell, will you?' I say.
He smiles. Mrs Sucksby colours, then laughs. 'Hark at that,' she says. 'Common girl says that, sounds awfully vulgar. Lady says it, sounds almost sweet. Still, dear'— here she leans across the table, drops her voice— 'I wish you mightn't speak so nasty.'
I hold her gaze. 'And you think,' I answer levelly, 'your wishes are something to me, do you?'
She flinches, and colours harder; her eyelids flutter and she looks away.
I drink my coffee, then, and don't speak again. Mrs Sucksby sits, softly beating her hands upon the table-top, her brows drawn together into a frown. John and Richard play again at dice, and quarrel over the game. Dainty washes napkins in a bowl of brown water, then sets them before the fire to steam and stink. I close my eyes. My stomach aches and aches. If I had a knife, I think again. Or an axe . . .
But the room is so stiflingly hot, and I am so weary and sick, my head falls back and I sleep. When I wake, it is five o'clock. The dice are put away. Mr Ibbs is returned. Mrs Sucksby is feeding babies, and Dainty is cooking a supper. Bacon, cabbage, crumbling pota-toes and bread: they give me a plate and, miserably picking free the strips of fat from the bacon, the crusts from the bread, as I pick bones from my breakfasts of fish, I eat it. Then they put out glasses. 'Care for some tipple, Miss Lilly?' Mrs Sucksby says. A stout, or a
sherry?'
A gin?' says Richard, some look of mischief in his eye.
I take a gin. The taste of it is bitter to me, but the sound of the silver spoon, striking the glass as it stirs, brings a vague and nameless comfort.
So that day passes. So pass the days that follow. I go early to bed— am undressed, every time, by Mrs Sucksby, who takes my gown and petticoats and locks them up, then locks up me. I sleep poorly, and wake, each morning, sick and clear- headed and afraid; and I sit in the little gold chair, running over the details of my confinement, working out my plan of escape. For I must escape. I will escape. I'll escape, and go to Sue. What are the names of the men who took her? I cannot remember. Where is their house? I do not know. Never mind, never mind, I shall find it out. First, though, I will go to Briar, beg money from my uncle— he'll still believe himself my uncle, of course— and if he'll give me none, I'll beg from the servants! I'll beg from Mrs Stiles!
Or, I'll steal! I'll steal a book from the library, the rarest book, and sell it— !
Or, no, I won't do that.— For the thought of returning to Briar makes me shudder, even now; and it occurs to me in time that I have friends in London, after all. I have Mr Huss and Mr Hawtrey. Mr Huss— who liked to see me climb a staircase. Could I go to him, put myself in his power? I think I could, I am desperate enough . . . Mr Hawtrey, however, was kinder; and invited me to his house, to his shop on Holywell Street.— I 230
think he'll help me. I am sure he will. And I think Holywell Street cannot be far— can it? I do not know, and there are no maps here. But I shall find out the way. Mr Hawtrey will help me, then. Mr Hawtrey will help me find Sue . . .
So my thoughts run, while the dawns of London break grubbily about me; while Mr Ibbs cooks bloaters, while his sister screams,
while Gentleman coughs in his bed, while Mrs Sucksby turns in hers, and snores, and sighs.
If only they would not keep me so close! One day, I think, each time a door is made fast at my back, one day they'll forget to lock it. Then I'll run. They'll grow tired of always watching.— But, they do not. I complain of the thick, exhausted air. I complain of the mounting heat. I ask to go, oftener than I need, to the privy: for the privy lies at the other end of that dark and dusty passage at the back of the house, and shows me daylight. I know I could run from there to freedom, if I had the chance; but the chance does not come: Dainty walks there with me every time, and waits until I come out.— Once I do try to run, and she easily catches me and brings me back; and Mrs Sucksby hits her, for letting me go.
Richard takes me upstairs, and hits me.
'I'm sorry,' he says, as he does it. 'But you know how hard we have worked for this.
All you must do is wait, for the bringing of the lawyer. You are good at waiting, you told me once. Why won't you oblige us?'
The blow makes a bruise. Every day I see how it has lightened, thinking, Before that bruise quite fades, I will escape!
I pass many hours in silence, brooding on this. I sit, in the kitchen, in the shadows at the edge of lamp- light— Perhaps they'll forget me, I think. Sometimes it almost seems that they do: the stir of the house goes on, Dainty and John will kiss and quarrel, the babies will shriek, the men will play at cards and dice. Now and then, other men will come— or boys, or else, more rarely, women and girls— with plunder, to be sold to Mr Ibbs and then sold on. They come, any hour of the day, with astonishing things— gross things, gaudy things— poor stuff, it seems to me, all of it: hats, handkerchiefs, cheap jewels, lengths of lace— once a hank of yellow hair still bound with a ribbon. A tumbling stream of things— not like the books that came to Briar, that came as if sinking to rest on the bed of a viscid sea, through dim and silent fathoms; nor like the things the books described, the things of convenience and purpose— the chairs, the pillows, the beds, the curtains, the ropes, the rods . . .
There are no books, here. There is only life in all its awful chaos. And the only purpose the things are made to serve, is the making of money.
And the greatest money- making thing of all, is me.
'Not chilly, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby will say. 'Not peckish? Why, how warm your brow is! Not taking a fever, I hope? We can't have you sick.' I do not answer. I have heard it all before. I let her tuck rugs about me, I let her sit and chafe my fingers and cheek. 'Are you rather low?' she'll say. 'Just look at them lips. They'd look handsome in a smile, they would. Not going to smile? Not even'— she swal- lows— 'for me? Only glance, dear girl, at the almanack.' She has scored through the days with crosses of black. 'There's a month nearly gone by already, and only two more to come. Then we 231
know what follows! That ain't so long, is it?'
She says it, almost pleadingly; but I gaze steadily into her face— as if to say that a day, an hour, a second, is too long, when passed with her.
'Oh, now!' Her fingers clench about my hand; then slacken, then pat. 'Still seems rather queer to you, does it, sweetheart?' she says. 'Never mind. What can we get you, that will lift your spirits? Hey? A posy of flowers? A bow, for your pretty hair? A trinket box? A singing bird, in a cage?' Perhaps I make some movement. Aha! Where's John? John, here's a shilling— it's a bad one, so hand it over fast— nip out and get Miss Lilly a bird in a cage.— Yellow bird, my dear, or blue?— No matter, John, so long as it's pretty . . .'
She winks. John goes, and returns in half an hour with a finch in a wicker basket.
They fuss about that, then. They hang it from a beam, they shake it to make it flutter; Charley Wag, the dog, leaps and whines beneath it. It will not sing, however— the room is too dark— it will only beat and pluck at its wings and bite the bars of its cage.
At last they forget it. John takes to feeding it the blue heads of matches— he says he plans, in time, to make it swallow a long wick, and then to ignite it.
Of Sue, no-one speaks at all. Once, Dainty looks at me as she puts out our suppers, and scratches her ear.
'Funny thing,' she says, 'how Sue ain't come back from the country, yet. Ain't it?'
Mrs Sucksby glances at Richard, at Mr Ibbs, and then at me. She wets her mouth.
'Look here,' she says to Dainty, 'I haven't wanted to talk about it, but you might as well know it, now. The truth is, Sue ain't coming back, not ever. That last little bit of business that Gentleman left her to see to had money in. More money than was meant for her share. She's up and cut, Dainty, with the cash.'