'That's right,' I said, when I saw that. 'You shake.'
She swallowed. 'You had much better not have come here, Sue,' she said. 'You had much better have stayed away'
'You can say so!' I cried. Her voice was clear, and sweet. I remembered hearing it, now, in my dreams at the madhouse. 'You can say so, you cheat, you snake, you viper!'
'Girl- fight!' cried John, with a clap of his hands.
'Hey! hey!' said Mr Ibbs. He had taken out a handkerchief and was wiping his brow.
He looked at Mrs Sucksby. She still had her arms about me, and I could not see her face. But I felt her grip grow slack as she reached to take the knife from my hands.
'Why, he's a sharp one, ain't he?' she said, with a nervous laugh. She put the knife gently on the table. I leaned and snatched it up again.
'Don't leave it,' I said, 'where she might get it! Oh, Mrs Sucksby, you don't know what a devil she is!'
'Sue, listen to me,' said Maud.
'Dear girl,' said Mrs Sucksby again, over her words. 'This is so astonishingly queer.
This is so— Only look at you! Like a regular— ha, ha!— soldier.' She wiped her mouth. 'What say you sit down, now, and be nice? What say we send Miss Lilly upstairs, if looking at her upsets you? Eh? And there's John and Dainty: let's ask them, shall we?'— she jerked her head— 'to slip upstairs, too?'
'Don't let them go!' I cried, as Dainty began to move. 'Not her, not them!' I waved the knife. 'You, John Vroom, stay,' I said. And then, to Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs: 'They'll go for Gentleman! Don't trust them!'
'She's lost her mind,' said John, rising from his chair. I made a swipe at the sleeve of 313
his coat.
'I said, stay!' I cried.
He looked at Mrs Sucksby. She looked at Mr Ibbs.
'Sit down, son,' Mr Ibbs said quietly. John sat. I nodded to Charles.
'Charles, stand behind me, by the door to the shop. Keep them from running to it, should they try'
He had taken off his cap, and was biting the band of it. He went to the door, his face so pale, in the shadows, it seemed to glow.
John looked at him and laughed.
'You leave him alone,' I said at once. 'He has been a friend to me, more ever than you were. Mrs Sucksby, I should never have got back to you, without him. I should never have got free of— of the madhouse.'
She put her fingers to her cheek. 'Helped you so far as that, did he?' she said, with her eyes on Charles. She smiled. 'Then he's a dear boy; and we shall be sure to pay him out. Shan't we, Mr Ibbs?'
Mr Ibbs said nothing. Maud leaned from her chair.
'You must go, Charles,' she said, in her clear, low voice. 'You must go from here.' She looked at me. The look was strange. 'You must both go, before Gentleman comes back.'
I curled my lip at her. 'Gentleman,' I said. 'Gentleman. You have learned Borough habits very quick.'
The blood rose in her cheek. 'I am changed,' she murmured. 'I am not what I was.'
'You are not,' I said.
She lowered her eyes. She looked at her hands. And then, as if seeing that they were bare— and as if one could cover the bareness of the other— she put them awkwardly together. There came the faint jingle of metal: she had, upon her wrist, two or three thin silver bangles, of a kind I had used to like to wear. She held them, to make them be still; then lifted her head again and caught my gaze. I said, in a hard, steady voice:
'Was being a lady not enough for you, that you must come to the Borough and take the things that were ours?'
She did not answer.
'Well?' I said.
She began to try to draw free the bangles. 'Take them,' she said. 'I don't want them!'
'You think / want them?'
Mrs Sucksby stepped forward, her own hands darting towards Maud's.
'Let them stay!' she cried.
Her voice was hoarse. She looked at me, then gave an awkward sort of laugh. 'Dear girl,' she said, moving back, 'what's silver, in this house? What's silver, compared with the joy of seeing your face?' She put one hand to her throat, and leaned with the other upon the back of a chair. She leaned heavily, and the chair- legs grated on the floor.
'Dainty,' she said, 'fetch me out a tumbler of brandy, will you? This turn of things've quite undone me.'
Like Mr Ibbs, she took out a handkerchief and passed it over her face. Dainty gave her her drink, and she sipped it, and sat.
314
'Come beside me,' she said to me. 'Put down that old knife, won't you?' And then, when I hesitated: 'What, afraid of Miss Lilly? With me and Mr Ibbs— and your own pal Charles— to mind you? Come, sit.'
I looked again at Maud. I had thought her a viper, but, in the bringing and pouring of the brandy the lamp had got moved about, and I saw in the light of it how slight and pale and tired she was. At Mrs Sucksby's cry, she had fallen still; her hands still shook, however, and she rested her head against the high back of her chair, as if the weight of it hurt her. Her face was damp. A few strands of hair clung to it. Her eyes were darker than they ought to have been, and seemed to glitter.
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— !'