Part II Chapter Seven
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The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.I imagiable, slick with blood. The blood is my mothers. There is too much of it. There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beh, the women have set down a bowls; and so the silences between my mothers cries are filled—drip drop! drip drop!—with what might be the staggered beating of clocks. Beyond the beat e other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; arap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the
house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood— drip drop! drip, drop!—the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mothers bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.
I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.
I pass my first ten years a daughter to the nurses of the house. I believe they love me. There is a tabby cat upon the wards, and I think they keep me, rather as they keep that cat, a thing to pet and dress with ribbons. I wear a slate-grey gown cut like their oron and a cap; they give me a belt with a ring of miniature keys upon it, and call me little nurse. I sleep with each of them in turn, in their own beds, and follow them in their duties upon the madhouse wards. The house is a large one—seems larger to me, I suppose—and divided in two: one side for female lunatics, one side for male. I see only the female. I never mind them. Some of them kiss a me, as the nurses do. Some of them touch my hair and weep. I remind them of their daughters. Others are troublesome, and these I am enced to stand before and strike with a wooden wand, cut to my hand, until the nurses laugh and say they never saw anything so droll.
Thus I learn the rudiments of discipline and order; and ially apprehend the attitudes of insanity. This will all prove useful, later.
When I am old enough to reason I am given a g said to be my fathers, the portrait of a lady called my mother, and uand I am an orphan; but, never having knoarents love—or rather, having known the favours of a score of mothers—I am not greatly troubled by the news. I think the nurses clothe and feed me, for my own sake. I am a plain-faced child but, in that childless world, pass for a beauty. I have a sweet singing void an eye for letters. I I suppose I shall live out all my days a nurse, tentedly teasing lunatitil I die.
So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoo the nurses parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she
greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her—a gentleman, she says—but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time. Step closer, the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a e with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by a pair of classes. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one. I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.
Shes undersize, he says; but makes enough h her feet, for all that. Hows her voice?
His own voice is low, tremulous, plaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.
Say a word to the gentleman, says the matron quietly. Say how you are.
I am very well, I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.
That will do, he says, raising his hand. Then: I hope you whisper? I hope you od?
I nod. Oh yes.
I hope you be silent?
I .
Be silent, then.—Thats better. He turns to the matron. I see she wears her mothers likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mothers fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I dont care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shant want a thick-legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?
The matron colours. It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the e of the house.
Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?
He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, How well does she read?
How fair is her hand? e, give her a piece of text a her demonstrate.
The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. Softly! he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.
A girls hand, he says, when I have finished, and burdened with serifs. But he sounds pleased, heless.
I am also pleased. I uand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blotted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stid tilts his head so low I see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.
Well, miss, he says, how should you like to e and live in my house? Dont push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to e to me, and lear ways and plaiers?
He might have struck me. I should like it not at all, I say at once.
The matron says, For shame, Maud!
The gentleman snorts. Perhaps, he says, she has her mothers unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall fet to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that—hmm?
He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instru to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.
I will not go! I cry. He shall not make me!
The matron draws me to her. I have seeake a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.
Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mothers brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to
take me home and make me ready for the roast. All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff—a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my plaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it es time for her to take me, they kiss me and hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their olud grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They read squabble over the falling tresses like gulls— their voices rousing the lunati their own close rooms, making them shriek. My uncles servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.
What a place to raise a girl in! she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.
I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath e quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle—at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, platly. Got a temper, have you? she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the st of it. The third egg she play lap. I will it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. Tut tut, she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage. The hoes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees. Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.
I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grimness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncles house that bewilders and frightehat first day. The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle
into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within ao tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat. Thats Mr Way, your ueward, says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease—for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkhat seems to lap at my buff gown. When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silehat my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and fl creepers.
The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall. e up, child, says the woman when I do that; and now whes her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightehe higher we go. For the house seems awful to me—the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half-hidden—like expet grubs, in the cells of a hive—there stand servants, e to see me make my progress through the house.
I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurses. I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.
Why do they watch? I say to the woman.
Why, to see your face, she answers. To see if you turned out handsome as your mother.
I have twenty mothers, I say at that; and am handsomer than any of them.
The woman has stopped before a door. Handsome is as hand-
some does, she says. I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours.
She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it. The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire—I am too small to see my fa the glass above—and stand and shiver.
Should have kept your mittens, says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands. Mr Inkers daughter shall have those. She takes my cloak from me, then draws the ribbons from my hair and brushes it with a broken b. Tug all you like, she says as I pull away. It shall only hurt you, it shant harm me. Why, what a busihose women made of your head! Anyone would have supposed them savages. How Im to see you , after their work, I t say. Now, look here. She reaches beh the bed. Lets see you use your chamber-pot. e along, no foolish modesty. Do you think I never saw a little girl lift up her skirts and piddle?
She folds her arms and watches me, and thes a cloth with water and washes my fad hands.
I saw them do this for your mother, when I arlourmaid here, she says, pulling me about. She was a deal gratefuller than you are. Didnt they teaanners, in that house of yours?
I long for my little wooden wand: I would show her all Id learned of manners, then! But I have observed lunatics, too, and know how tle while only seeming to stand limp. At length she steps from me and wipes her hands.
Lord, what a child! I hope your uncle knows his business, bringing you here. He seems to think hell make a lady of you.
I dont want to be a lady! I say. My uncle ake me.
I should say he do what he likes, in his own house, she answers. There now! How late youve made us.
There has e the stifled ringing of a bell, three times. It is a clock; I uand it, however, as a signal to the house, for I have been raised to the sound of similar bells, that told the lunatics to rise, to dress, to say their prayers, to take their dinners. I think,
Now I shall see them!, but when we go from the room the house is still and quiet as before. Evechful servants have retired. Again my boots cat the carpets. Walk softly! says the woman in a whisper, ping my arm. Heres your uncles room, look.
She knocks, then takes me in. He has had paint put on the windows years before, and the winter sun striking the glass, the room is lit strangely. The walls are dark with the spines of books. I think them a kind of frieze or carving. I know only two books, and one is blad creased about the spihat is the Bible. The other is a book of hymns thought suitable for the demented; and that is pink. I suppose all printed words to be true ones.
The womas me very he door and stands at my back, her hands like claws upon my shoulders. The man they have called my uncle rises from behind his desk; its surface is hidden by a mess of papers. Upon his head is a velvet cap with a swinging tassel on a fraying thread. Before his eyes is another, paler, pair of classes.
So, miss, he says, stepping towards me, moving his jaw. The woman makes a curtsey. How is her temper, Mrs Stiles? he asks her.
Rather ill, sir.
I see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?
Threw them aside, sir. Wouldnt have them.
My uncle es close. An unhappy beginning. Give me your hand, Maud.
I will not give it. The woman catches my arm about the wrist and lifts it. My hand is small, and plump at the knuckles. I am used to washing with madhouse soap, which is not kind. My nails are dark, with madhouse dirt. My uncle holds my finger-ends. His own hand has a smear or two of ink upon it. He shakes his head.
Now, did I want a set of coarse fingers upon my books, he says, I should have had Mrs Stiles bring me a nurse. I should not have given her a pair of gloves, to make those coarse hands softer. Your hands I shall have soft, however. See here, how we make childrens hands soft, that are kept out of their gloves. He puts his own hand to the pocket of his coat, and uncoils from it—one of those things,
that bookmen use—a line of metal beads, bound tight with silk, for keeping down springing pages. He makes a loop of it, seeming to weigh it; then he brings it smartly down upon my dimpling knuckles. Then, with Mrs Stiless assistance, he takes my other hand and does the same to that.
The beads sting like a whip; but the silk keeps the flesh from breaking. At the first blow I yelp, like a dog—in pain, in rage and sheer astonishment. Then, Mrs Stiles releasing my wrists, I put my fio my mouth and begin to weep.
My uncle wi the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.
Keep silence, girl! he says. I shake and rs Stiles pihe flesh of my shoulder, and that makes me cry harder. Then my uncle draws forth the beads again; and at last I grow still.
Well, he says quietly. You shant fet the gloves in future, hmm?
I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. Youll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I t have storms and tantrums, here. Very well. He waves his hand. Now, leave her with me. Dont stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild.
Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and—under cover of plug my trembling shoulder as if to keep it from falling into a slouch—gives me another pinch. The yellow window grows bright, then dim, then bright again, as the wind sends clouds across the sun.
Now, says my uncle, when the housekeeper has gone. You know, do you not, why I have brought you here.
I put my crimson fio my face, to wipe my nose.
To make a lady of me.
He gives a quick, dry laugh.
To make a secretary of you. What do you see here, all about these walls?
Wood, sir.
Books, girl, he says. He goes and draws one from its plad turns it. The cover is black, by which I reise it as a Bible. The others, I deduce, hold hymns. I suppose that hymn-books, after all,
might be bound in different hues, perhaps as suiting different qualities of madness. I feel this, as a great advan thought.
My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.
Do you see this title, girl?—Dont take a step! I asked you to read, not to prance.
But the book is too far from me. I shake my head, and feel my tea<tt></tt>rs return.
Ha! cries my uncle, seeing my distress. I should say you t! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after sultation with an oculist—an eye-doctor. These are unon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same—I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innoce here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready. You uand me, hmm?
I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book ba its place, lingering a moment over the-aligning of the spine upon the shelf.
The spine is a fine one, and—I will know it well, in time—a favourite of his. The title is—
But now I run ahead of my own innoce; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.
After my uncle has spoken he seems tet me. I stand for another quarter-hour before he lifts his head and catches sight of me, and waves me from the room. I struggle a moment with the iron handle of his door, making him wince against the grinding of the lever; and when I close it, Mrs Stiles darts from the gloom to lead me back upstairs. I suppose youre hungry, she says, as we walk. Little girls always are. I should say youd be grateful for a white egg now.
I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings firl to e, and the girl brings a biscuit and a glass of sweet red wine. She sets them down before me, and smiles; and the smile is harder to
bear, somehow, than a slap would have been. I am afraid I will weep again. But I swallow my tears with my dry biscuit, and the girl and Mrs Stiles stand together, whispering and watg. Then they leave me quite alohe room grows dark. I lie upon the sofa with my head upon a cushion, and pull my own little cloak over myself, with my own little whipped, red hands. The wine makes me sleep. When I wake again, I wake to shifting shadows, and to Mrs Stiles at the door, bringing a lamp. I wake with a terrible fear, and a sense of many hours having passed. I think the bell has retly tolled. I believe it is seven ht oclock.
I say, I should like, if you please, to be taken home now.
Mrs Stiles laughs. Do you mean to that house, with thh women? What a plaqe to call your home!
I should think they miss me.
I should say they are glad to be rid of you—the nasty, pale-faced little thing that you are. e here. Its your bed-time. She has pulled me from the sofa, and begins to unlace my gown. I tug away from her, and strike her. She catches my arm and gives it a twist.
I say, Youve nht to hurt me! Youre nothing to me! I want my mothers, that love me!
Heres your mother, she says, plug at the portrait at my throat. Thats all the mother youll have here. Be grateful you have that, to know her face by. Now, stand aeady. You must wear this, to give you the figure of a lady.
She has takeiff buff dress from me, and all the lineh. Now she laces me tight in a girlish corset that grips me harder than the gown. Over this she puts a nightdress. On to my hands she pulls a pair of white skin gloves, which she stitches at the wrists. Only my feet remain bare. I fall upon the sofa and kick them. She catches me up and shakes me, then holds me still.
See here, she says, her face crimson and white, her breath ing hard upon my cheek. I had a little daughter ohat died. She had a fine black head of curling hair and a temper like a lambs. Why dark-haired, geempered children should be made to die, and peevish pale girls like you to thrive, I ot say. Why
your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash and perished, while I must live to keep your fingers smooth and see you grow into a lady, is a puzzle. Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.
She catches me up and takes me to the dressing-room, makes me climb into the great, high, dusty bed, thes down the curtains. There is a door beside the ey-breast: she tells me it leads to another chamber, and a bad-tempered girl sleeps there. The girl will listen in the night, and if I am anything but still and good and quiet, she will hear; and her hand is very hard.
Say your prayers, she says, and ask Our Father tive you.
Theakes up the lamp and leaves, and I am plunged in an awful darkness.
I think it a terrible thing to do to a child; I think it terrible, even now. I lie, in an agony of misery and fear, straining my ears against the silence—wide awake, sick, hungry, cold, alone, in a dark so deep the shifting blay own eye-lids seems the brighter. My corset holds me like a fist. My knuckles, tugged into their stiff skin gloves, are starting out in bruises. Now and then the great clock shifts its gears, and chimes; and I draw what fort I from my idea that somewhere in the house walk lunatics, and with them watchful hen I begin to wonder over the habits of the place. Perhaps here they give their lunatics lice to wander; perhaps a madwoman will e to my room, mistaking it for another? Perhaps the wicked-tempered girl that sleeps door is herself demented, and will e and throttle me with h.9９ｌib.er hard hand! Indeed, no sooner has this idea risen ihan I begin to hear the smothered sounds of movement, close by—unnaturally close, they seem to me to be: I imagihousand skulking figures with their faces at the curtain, a thousand searg hands. I begin to cry. The corset I wear makes the tears e strangely. I long to lie still, so the lurking women shall not guess that I am there; but the stiller I try to be, the more wretched I grow. Presently, a spider or a moth brushing my cheek, I imagihe throttling hand has e at last, and jerk in a vulsion and, I suppose, shriek.
There es the sound of an opening door, a light between the
seams of the curtain. A face appears, close to my own—a kind faot the face of a lunatic, but that of the girl who earlier brought my little tea of biscuits and sweet wine. She is dressed in her nightgown, and her hair is let down.
Now, then, she says softly. Her hand is not hard. She puts it to my head and strokes my face, and I grow calmer. My tears flow naturally I say I have been afraid of lunatics, and she laughs.
There are no lunatics here, she says. You are thinking of that other plaow, arent you glad, to have left there? I shake my head. She says, Well, it is only strange for you here. You will soon grow used to it.
She takes up her light. I see her do it, and begin at once again to cry.—Why, you shall be asleep in a moment! she says.
I say I do not like the darkness. I say I am frighteo lie alone. She hesitates, thinking perhaps of Mrs Stiles. But I dare say my bed is softer than hers; and besides, it is winter, and fearfully cold. She says at last that she will lie with me until I sleep. She snuffs her dle, I smell the smoke upon the darkness.
She tells me her name is Barbara. She lets me rest my head against her. She says, Now, isnt this nice as your old home? And shant you like it here?
I say I think I shall like it a little, if she will lie with me every night; and at that she laughs again, theles herself more fortably upon the feather mattress.
She sleeps at once, and heavily, as housemaids do. She smells of a violet face-cream. Her gown has ribbons upon it, at the breast, and I find them out with my gloved hands and hold them while I wait for sleep to e—as if I am tumbling into the perfect darkness and they are the ropes that will save me.
I am telling you this so that you might appreciate the forces that work upon me, making me what I am.
day, I am kept to my two bleak rooms and made to sew. I fet my terrors of the darkness of t<u>?9９lib.</u>he night, then. My gloves make me clumsy, the needle pricks my fingers. I shant do it! I cry,
tearing the cloth. Then Mrs Stiles beats me. My gown and corset being so stiff, she hurts her palm iriking of my back. I take what little solation I might, from that.
I am beaten often, I believe, in my first days there. How could it be otherwise? I have known lively habits, the clamour of the wards, the dotings of twenty women; now the hush and regularity of my uncles house drives me to fits and foaming tempers. I am an amiable child, I think, made wilful by restraint. I dash cups and saucers from the table to the floor. I lie and kick my legs until the boots fly from my heels. I scream until my throat bleeds. My passions are met with punishments, each fiercer than the last. I am bound about the wrists and mouth. I am shut into lonely rooms, or into cupboards. Oime—having overturned a dle ahe flame lap at the fringes of a chair until they smoke—I am taken by Mr Way into the park and carried, along a lonely path, to the ice-house. I dont remember, now, the chill of the place; I remember the blocks of grey ice—I should have supposed them clear, like crystal—that ti the wintry silence, like so many clocks. They tick for three hours. When Mrs Stiles es to release me I have made myself a kind of and ot be uncurled, and am as weak as if they had drugged me.
I think that frightens her. She carries me back quietly, by the servants stairs, and she and Barbara bathe me, then rub my arms with spirits.
If she loses the use of her hands, my God, hell have our characters for ever!
It is something, to see her made afraid. I plain of pains in my fingers, and weakness, for a day or two after that, and watch her flutter; then I fet myself, and pinch her—and by that, she knows my grip is a strong one, and soon punishes me again.
This makes a period of, perhaps a month; though to my childish mind it seems longer. My uncle waits, all that time, as he might wait for the breaking of a horse. Now and then he has Mrs Stiles duct me to his library, and questions her as to my progress.
How do we do, Mrs Stiles?
Still badly, sir.
Still fierce?
Fierce, and snappish.
Youve tried your hand?
She nods. He sends us away. Then ore shows of temper, mes and tears. At night, Barbara shakes her head.
What a dot of a girl, to be so naughty! Mrs Stiles says she never saw such a little Tartar as you. Why t you be good?
I was good, in my last home—and see how I was rewarded! m I upturn my chamber-pot and tread the mess into the carpet. Mrs Stiles throws up her hands and screams; then strikes my face. Then, half-clad and dazed as I am, she drags me from my dressing-room to my uncles door.
He flinches from the sight of us. Good God, what is it?
Oh, a frightful thing, sir!
Not more of her violence? And do y her here, where she might break out, among the books?
But he lets her speak, looking all the time at me. I stand very stiff, with a hand at my hot face, my pale hair loose about my shoulders.
At length he takes off his spectacles and closes his eyes. His eyes appear o me, and very soft at the lids. He raises his thumb and smudged forefio the bridge of his nose, and pinches.
Well, Maud, he says as he does it, this is sorry news. Here is Mrs Stiles, and here am I, and here are all my staff, all waiting on yood manners. I had hoped the nurses had raised you better than this. I had hoped to find you biddable. He es towards me, blinking, and puts his hand upon my face. Dont shrink so, girl! I want only to examine your cheek. It is hot, I think. Well, Mrs Stiless hand is a large one. He looks about him. e, what have we that is cool, hmm?
He has a slim brass knife, blunt-edged, for cutting pages. He stoops and puts the blade of it against my face. His manner is mild, and frightens me. His voice is soft as a girls. He says, I am sorry to see you hurt, Maud. Indeed I am. Do you suppose I want you harmed? Why should I want that? It is you who must want it, since you provoke it so. I think you must like to be struck.—That is cooler, is it not? He has turhe blade. I shiver. My bare arms
creep with cold. He moves his mouth. All waiting, he repeats, on yood manners. Well, we are good at that, at Briar. We wait, and wait, and wait again. Mrs Stiles and my staff are paid to do it; I am a scholar, and ined to it by nature. Look about you here, at my colle. Do you suppose this the work of an impatient man? My books e to me slowly, from obscure sources. I have tentedly passed many tedious weeks in expectation of poorer volumes than you! He laughs, a dry laugh that might once have been moist; moves the point of the ko a spot beh my ; tilts up my fad looks it over. Thes the knife fall, and moves away. He tucks the wires of his spectacles behind his ears.
I advise you to whip her, Mrs Stiles, he says, if she prove troublesome again.
Perhaps children are like horses after all, and may be broken. My uurns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely bay sewing. It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patiehere is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at easks—veying sand from one leaking cup into another; ting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they beelemen, and ristead of women—then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and aaffs.—I ot say. And of course, these are thoughts that e to me later, when I know the full measure of my uncles particular mania. That day, in my childish way, I glimpse only its surface. But I see that it is dark, and know that it is silent—indeed, its substance is the substance of the darkness and the silence which fills my uncles house like water or like wax.
Should I struggle, it will draw me deep into itself, and I will drown.
I do not wish, then, to do that.
I cease struggling at all, and surrender myself to its viscid, circular currents.
That is the first day, perhaps, of my education. But day, at
eight, begin my lessons proper. I never have a governess: my uors me himself, having Mr Way set a desk and a stool for me close to the pointing finger on his library floor. The stool is high: my legs swing from it and the weight of my shoes makes them tingle and finally grow numb. Should I fidget, however—should I cough, or shen my uncle will e and snap at my fingers with the rope of silk-covered beads. His patience has curious lapses, after all; and though he claims to be free of a desire to harm me, he harms me pretty often.
Still, the library is kept warmer than my own room, to ward off mould from the books; and I find I prefer to write, than to sew. He gives me a pencil with a soft lead that moves silently upon paper, and a green-shaded reading-lamp, to save my eyes.
The lamp smells, as it heats, of smouldering dust: a curious smell—I shall grow to hate it!—the smell of the parg of my own youth.
My work itself is of the most tedious kind, and sists chiefly of copying pages of text, from antique volumes, into a leather-bound book. The book is a slim one, and when it is filled my job is to re blank again with a piece of india-rubber. I remember this task, more than I remember the pieatter I am made to copy: for the pages, from endless fri, grow smudged and fragile and liable to tear; and the sight of a smudge on a leaf of text, or the sound of tearing paper, is more than my uncle, in his delicacy, bear. They say children, as a rule, fear the ghosts of the dead; what I fear most as a child are the spectres of past lessons, imperfectly erased.
I call them lessons; but I am not taught as irls are. I learn to recite, softly and clearly; I am aught to sing. I never learn the names of flowers and birds, but am schooled instead in the hides with which books are bound—as say, morocco, russia, calf, chagrin; and their papers—Dutch, a, motley, silk. I learn inks; the cutting of pens; the uses of pouhe styles and sizes of founts: sans-serif, antique, Egyptian, pica, brevier, emerald, ruby, Pearl. . . They are named for jewels. It is a cheat. For they are hard and dull as ders in a grate.
But I learn quickly. The season turns. I am made small rewards: new gloves, soft-soled slippers, a gown—stiff as the first, but of velvet. I am allowed to take my supper in the dining-room, at one end of a great oak table, set with silver. My us at the other end. He keeps a reading-easel beside his place, and speaks very seldom; but if I should be so unlucky as to let fall a fork, or to jar my knife against my plate, then he will raise his fad fix me with a damp and terrible eye. Have you some weakness about the hands, Maud, that obliges you to grind your silver in that way?
The knife is toe and too heavy, Uncle, I answer him fretfully once.
Then he has my kaken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, as, and calves feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson—as if reverting to the substahey were made from. My appetite leaves me. I care most for the wine. I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial. They are to keep me mindful, not of my name, but of that of my mother; which was Marianne.
She is buried in the lo spot of all that lonely park—hers a solitary grey stone among so many white. I am taken to see it, and made to keep the tomb .
Be grateful that you may, says Mrs Stiles, watg me trim the springiery grass, her arms folded across her bosom. Who shall tend my grave? I shall be all but fotten.
Her husband is dead. Her son is a sailor. She has taken all her little daughters curling black hair to make ors with. She brushes my own hair as if the locks are thorns and might cut her; I wish they were. I think she is sorry not to whip me. She still bruises my arms with pinches. My obedienrages her more than ever my passions did; and seeing that, I grow meeker, with a hard, artful meekhat, receiving the edge of her sorrow, keeps it sharp. That provokes her to the pihey are profitless enough— and to scolds, which pay more, as being revealing of her griefs. I take her often to the graves, and make certain to sigh, to the full strength of my lungs, over my mothers stone. In time—so ing
am I!—I find out the name of her dead daughter; then, the kit cat giving birth to a litter of kittens, I take one for a pet, and for her. I make sure to call it loudest when Mrs Stiles is near: e, Polly! Oh, Polly! What a pretty child you are! How fine your black fur is! e, kiss your mama.
Do you see, what circumstances make of me?
Mrs Stiles trembles and winks at the words.
Take the filthy creature arid have Mr Inker drown it! she says to Barbara, when she bear it no more.
I run and hide my face. I think of my lost home, and the hat loved me, and the thought brings the hot tears coolly to my eyes.
Oh, Barbara! I cry. Say you shant! Say you wouldnt!
Barbara says she never could. Mrs Stiles sends her away.
Youre a sly, hateful child, she says. Dont think Barbara dont know it. Dont think she t see through you and your designing ways.
But it is she who cries then, i hard sobs; and my own eyes soon dry iudying of hers. For what is she, to me? What is anyone now? I had thought my mothers, the nurses, might send to save me; six months go by—another six, another—and they send nothing. I am assured they have fottehink of you? says Mrs Stiles, with a laugh. Why, I dare say your place at the madhouse has been filled by a new little girl with a happier temper. I am sure, they were glad to be rid of you. In time, I believe her. I begin tet. My old life grows shadowy in proportion to the new—or, sometimes emerges to darken or trouble it, in dreams and half-memories, just as those smudged strokes of fotten lessons now and then start out upon the pages of my copy-book.
My proper mother I hate. Didnt she forsake me, before anyone? I keep her portrait in a little wooden box beside my bed; but her sweet white face has nothing of me in it, and I grow to loathe it. Let me kiss mama good-night, I say oime, unlog my box. But I do it only to torment Mrs Stiles. I raise the picture to my lips and, while she looks on, thinking me sorry—I hate you, I whisper, my breath tarnishing the gold. I do it that night, and the night which
follows, and the night which follows that; at last, as a ust tick tular beat, I find I must do it or lie fretful in my bed. And then, the portrait must be set dowly, with its ribbon quite uncreased. If the frame strikes the velvet lining of the wooden box too hard, I will take it out a down carefully again.
Mrs Stiles watches me do it, with a curious expression. I never lie quite still until Barbara es.
Meanwhile my uncle observes my work and finds my letters, my hand, my voice, greatly improved. He is used occasionally to eainilemen at Briar: now he has me stand for them and read. I read from fs, not uanding the matter I am made to recite; and the gentlemen—like Mrs Stiles—watch me strangely. I grow used to that. When I have finished, at my uncles instru I curtsey. I curtsey well. The gentlemen clap, then e to shake or stroke my hand. They tell me, often, how rare I am. I believe myself a kind y, and pink uheir gazes.
So white blooms blush, before they curl and tumble. One day I arrive at my uncles room to find my little desk removed, and a place made ready for me among his books. He sees my look, and bee to him.
Take off yloves, he says. I do, and shudder to touch the surfaces of on things. It is a cold, still, sunless day. I have been at Briar, then, two years. My cheek is round as a childs, and my voice is high. I have not yet begun to bleed as women do.
Well, Maud, says my u last you cross the finger of brass, and e to my books. You are about to learn the proper quality of your vocation. Are you afraid?
A little, sir.
You do well to be. For here is fearful matter. You think me a scholar, hmm?
Yes, sir.
Well, I am more than that. I am a curator of poisons. These books—look, mark them! mark them well!—they are the poisons I mean. And this— Here he reverently puts his hand upon the great pile of ink-stained papers that litter his desk—this is their Index.
This will guide others in their colle and proper study. There is no work on the subject so perfect as this will be, when it is plete. I have devoted many years to its stru and revision; and shall devote many more, as the work requires it. I have laboured so long among poisons I am immuo them, and my aim has been to make you immuhat you might assist me. My eyes—do you look at my eyes, Maud. He takes off his spectacles and brings his faine; and I flinch, as once before, from the sight of his soft and naked face—yet see now, too, what the coloured lenses hide: a certain film, or milkiness, upon the surface of his eye. My eyes grow weak, he says, replag his glasses. Yht shall save my own. Your hand shall be my hand. For you e here with naked fingers, while in the ordinary world—the onplace world, outside this chamber—the men who hariol and arsenic must do so with their flesh guarded. You are not like them. This is your proper sphere. I have made it so. I have fed you poison, by scruple and grain. Now es the larger dose.
He turns and takes a book from his shelves, then hands it to me, pressing my fingers hard about it.
Keep this from others. Remember the rareness of our work. It will seem queer, to the eyes and ears of the untutored. They will think you tainted, should you tell. You uand me? I have touched your lip with poison, Maud. Remember.
The book is called The Curtain Drawn Up, or the Education of Laura. I sit alone, and turn the cover; and uand at last the matter I have read, that has provoked applause from gentlemen.
The world calls it pleasure. My uncle collects it—keeps it , keeps it ordered, on guarded shelves; but keeps it strangely—not for its own sake, no, never for that; rather, as it provides fuel for the satisfying of a curious lust.
I mean, the lust of the bookman.
See here, Maud, he will say to me softly, drawing back the glass doors of his presses, passing his fingers across the covers of the texts he has exposed. Do you he marbling upon these papers, the morocco of this spihe gilt edge? Observe this tooling, look. He
tilts the book to me but, jealously, will not let me take it. Not yet not yet! Ah, see this one, also. Black-letter; the titles, look, picked out ihe capitals flowered, the margin as broad as the text. What extravagance! And this! Plain board; but see here, the frontispiece— the picture is of a lady reed on a couch, a gentleman beside her, his member bare and crimson at the tip—doer Borel, most rare. I had this as a young man from a stall at Liverpool, for a shilling. I should not part with it now, for fifty pounds.—e, e! He has seen me blush. No schoolgirl modesty here! Did I bring you to my house, and teach you the ways of my colle, to see you colour? Well, no more of that. Here is work, not leisure. You will soon fet the substance, in the scrutiny of the form.
So he says to me, many times. I do not believe him. I am thirteen. The books fill me, at first, with a kind of horror: for it seems a frightful thing, that children, in being women and men, should do as they describe—get lusts, grow secret limbs and cavities, be proo fevers, to crises, seek nothing but the endless joining together of smarting flesh. I imagine my mouth, stopped up with kisses. I imagihe parting of my legs. I imagine myself fingered and pierced ... I am thirteen, as I have said. The fear gives way to restlessness: I begin to lie eaight at Barbaras side, wakeful while she sleeps on; oime I put back the blao study the curve of her breast. Then I take to watg her as she bathes and dresses. Her legs—that I know from my uncles books should be smooth—are dark with hair; the place between them—which I know should be , and fair—darkest of all. That troubles me. Then at last, one day, she catches me gazing. What are you looking at? she says. Your t, I answer. Why is it so black? She starts away from me as if in horror, lets her skirt fall, puts her hands before her breast. Her cheek flares crimson. Oh! she cries. I never did! Where did you learn such words? From my uncle, I say.
Oh, you liar! Your uncles a gentleman. Ill tell Mrs Stiles! She does. I think Mrs Stiles will hit me; instead, like Barbara, she starts back. But then, she takes up a block of soap and, while
Barbara holds me, she presses the soap into my mouth—presses it hard, then passes it bad forth ay lips and tongue.
Speak like a devil, will you? she says as she does it. Like a slut and a filthy beast? Like your own trash mother? Will you? Will
you?
Thes me fall, and stands and wipes her hands vulsively upon her apron. She has Barbara keep to her own bed, from that night on; and she makes her keep the door between our rooms ajar, and put out a light.
Thank God she wears gloves, at least, I hear her say. That may keep her from further mischief ..."
I wash my mouth, until my tongue grows cracked, and bleeds; I weep and weep; but still taste lavender. I think my lip must have poison in it, after all.
But soon, I do not care. My t grows dark as Barbaras, I uand my uncles books to be filled with falsehoods, and I despise myself for having supposed them truths. My hot cheek cools, my colour dies, the heat quite fades from my limbs. The restlessurns all to s. I bee what I was bred to be. I bee a librarian.
The Lustful Turk, my uncle might say, looking up from his papers. Where do we have it?
We have it here, Uncle, I will answer.—For within a year I know the place of every book upon his shelves. I know the plan of his great index—his Universal Bibliography of Priapus and Venus. For to Priapus and Venus he has devoted me, as irls are appreo the needle or the loom.
I know his friends—those gentlemen who visit, and still hear me recite. I know them now for publishers, collectors, aueers— enthusiasts of his work. They send him books—more books each week—aers:
"Mr Lilly: on the Cleland. Grivet of Paris claims no knowledge of the lost, sodomitical matter. Shall I pursue?"
My uncle hears me read, his eyes creased hard behind their lenses.
What think you, Maud? he says. —Well, never mind it now. We must leave the Cleland to languish, and hope for more in the spring. So, so. Let me see . . . He divides the slips of paper upon his desk. Now, The Festival of the Passions. Have we still the sed volume, on loan from Hawtrey? You must copy it, Maud ..."
I will, I say.
You think me meek. How else should I answer? Once, early on, I fet myself, and yawn. My uudies me. He has taken his pen from his page, and slowly rolls its nib.
It appears you find your occupation dull, he says at last. Perhaps you would like to return to your room. I say nothing. Should you like it?
Perhaps, sir, I say, after a moment.
Perhaps. Very good. Put back your book then, and go. But, Maud— This last, as I cross to the door. Do you instruct Mrs Stiles to keep the fuel from your fire. You dont suppose I shall pay, to keep you warm in idleness, hmm?
I hesitate, then go. This is, again, in wi seems always wihere! I sit ed in my coat until made to dress for dinner. But at the table, when Mr Way brings the food to my plate, my uops him. , he says, laying a napkin across his lap, for idle girls. Not in this house.
Then Mr Way takes the platter away. Charles, his boy, looks sorry. I should like to strike him. Instead I must sit, twisting my hands into the fabriy skirt, biting down my rage as I once swallowed tears, hearing the sliding of the meat upon my uncles ink-staiongue, until I am dismissed.
day at eight oclock, I return to my work; and am careful o yawn again.
I grow taller, in the months that follow. I bee slender and more pale. I bee handsome. I outgrow my skirts and gloves and slippers.—My ues it, vaguely, and instructs Mrs Stiles to cut me new gowns to the pattern of the old. She does, and makes me sew them. I believe she must take a sort of malicious pleasure from the dressing of me to suit his fancy; then again, perhaps in her grief for
her daughter she has fotten that little girls are meant to turn out women. Anyway, I have been too long at Briar, and draw a fort, now, frularity. I have growo my gloves and my hard-boned gowns, and flinch at the first unloosening of the strings. Undressed, I seem to feel myself as naked and unsafe as one of my uncles lenseless eyes.
Asleep, I am sometimes oppressed by dreams. Once I fall into a fever, and a surgeon sees me. He is a friend of my uncles and has heard me read. He fihe soft flesh beh my jaw, puts his thumbs to my cheeks, draws down my eye-lids. Are you troubled, he says, with unon thoughts? Well, we must expect that. You are an unon girl. He strokes my hand and prescribes me a medie—a single drop to be taken in a cup of water—for restlessness. Barbara puts out the mixture, while Mrs Stiles looks on.
Then Barbara leaves me, to be married, and I am given another maid. Her name is Agnes. She is small, and slight as a bird—one of those little, little birds that men bring down with s. She has red hair and white skin marked with freckles, like paper foxed with damp. She is fifteen, i as butter. She thinks my uncle kind. She thinks me kind, at first. She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it. When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behiears, keeps still its look of mine. I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.
So my life passes. You might suppose I would not know enough of ordinary things, to know it queer. But I read other books besides my uncles; and overhear the talk of servants, and catch their looks, and so, by that—by the curious and pitying glances of parlourmaids and grooms!—I see well enough the oddity I have bee.
I am as worldly as the grossest rakes of fi; but have never, since I first came to my uncles house, been further than the walls of its park. I know everything. I know nothing. You must remember this, in what follows. You must remember what I ot do, what I have not seen. I ot, for example, sit a horse, or dance. I have
never held a in order to spend it. I have never seen a play, a railway, a mountain, or a sea.
I have never seen London; a, I think I know it, too. I know it, from my uncles books. I know it lies upon a river—which is the same river, grown very much broader, that runs beyond his park. I like to walk beside the water, thinking of this. There is an a, overturned punt there, half rotted away—the holes in its hull a perpetual mockery, it seems to me, of my fi; but I like to sit upon it, gazing at the rushes at the waters edge. I remember the Bible story, of the child that laced in a basket and was found by the daughter of a king. I should like to find a child. I should like it, not to keep it!—but to take its pla the basket and leave it at Briar to grow up to be me. I think often of the life I would have, in London; and of who might claim me.
That is when I am still young, and given to fancies. When I am older I do not walk by the river so much as stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncles library I one day, with my finger-nail, make a small and perfect crest, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye—like a curious wife at the keyhole of a et of secrets.
But I am ihe et, and long to get out. . .
I am seventeen when Richard Rivers es to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who be fooled into helping me do it.
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