'No.'
Then they brought in men to say they had seen her, at different times, with different bits of poke; and— what was worse— found women who swore they had given her babies that had very soon afterwards died . . .
Then John Vroom spoke. They had put him in a suit like a clerk's, and combed and shined his hair; he looked more like an infant than ever. He said he h a d s e e n everything that took place in the Lant Street kitchen, on the fatal night. He had seen Mrs Sucksby put in the knife. She had cried, 'You blackguard, take that!' And he had seen her with the knife in her hand, for at least a minute, before she did.
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'At least a minute?' the lawyer said. 'You are quite sure? You know how long a minute is? Look at that clock, there. Watch the movement of the hand ..."
We all watched it sweep. The court fell still, to do it. I never knew a minute so long.
The lawyer looked back at John.
As long as that?' he said.
John began to cry. 'Yes, sir,' he said, through his tears.
Then they brought the knife out, for him to say it was the one. The crowd broke out in murmurs when they saw it; and when John wiped his eyes and looked, and nodded, a lady swooned. The knife was shown to all the men of the jury then, one by one, and the lawyer said they must be sure to note how the blade was sharpened, more than it naturally would have been for a knife of that kind— that it was the sharpening of it that made Gentleman's wound so bad. He said that broke in pieces Mrs Sucksby's story about the quarrel, by showing evidence of forethought—
I nearly started out of my seat, when I heard that. Then I caught Mrs Sucksby's eye.
She shook her head, and looked so pleadingly at me to be silent, I fell back; and it never came out that the knife was sharp not because she had sharpened it, but because I had. They never called me to the stand. Mrs Sucksby would not let them. They did call Charles; but he wept so hard, and shook so
badly, the judge declared him unfit. He was sent back to his aunty's.
No-one was told about me, and Maud. No-one mentioned Briar or old Mr Lilly.
No-one came forward to say that Gentleman was a villain— that he had tried to rob heiresses— that he had ruined people through the selling of counterfeit stock. They made out that he was a decent young man with a promising future; they said that Mrs Sucksby had robbed him of it through simple greed. They even found out his family, and brought his parents to the trial— and you'll never believe it, but it turned out that all his tales of being a gentleman's son were so much puff. His father and mother ran a small kind of draper's shop, in a street off the Holloway Road. His sister taught piano.
His real name was not Richard Rivers or even Richard Wells; it was Frederick Bunt.
They drew his picture in the papers. Girls all over England were said to have cut it out and worn it next to their hearts.
But when I looked at that picture— and when I heard people talk of the awful murder of Mr Bunt, and of vices, and sordid trades— it seemed to me as though they must be talking of something else, something else entirely, not of Gentleman, being hurt, by mistake, in my own kitchen, with my own people all about. Even when the judge sent off the jury, and we waited, and watched the newspapermen getting ready to run with the verdict as soon as it came; even when the jury, after an hour, returned, and one of them stood and gave back their answer in a single word; even when the judge covered up his horse- hair wig with a cloth of black, and hoped that God would have mercy on Mrs Sucksby's soul— even then, I did not really feel it as you would suppose I might, did not believe, I think, that so many dark and sober gentlemen speaking so many grave and monotonous words could pinch out the spirit and the heat and the colour from the lives of people like me and Mrs Sucksby.
Then I looked at her face; and saw the spirit and heat and colour half- gone from it, already. She was looking dully about her, at the murmuring crowd— looking for me, I 332
thought, and I rose, and lifted my hand. But she caught my eye, and her gaze, as it had before, moved on: I watched it roam about the room, as if looking for someone or something else— finally it settled and seemed to clear, and I followed it and picked out, at the back of the rows of watchers, a girl dressed all in black, with a veil, that she was just putting down— It was Maud. I saw her, not expecting to see her: and I'll tell you this, my heart flew open; then I remembered everything, and my heart flew shut. She looked miserable— that was something, I thought. She was sitting alone. She made no sort of sign— to me, I mean; and none to Mrs Sucksby.
Then our lawyer called me to him, to shake my hand and say he was sorry. Dainty was weeping and needed my arm to help her walk. When I looked at Mrs Sucksby again, her head was sunk upon her breast; and when I looked for Maud, she had gone.
The week that passed after that I remember, now, as not a week at all, but as a single great endless day. It was a day without sleep— for how could I sleep, when sleep might take away thoughts of Mrs Sucksby, who was so soon to die? It was a day, almost, without darkness— for they kept lights in her cell, that burned all through the night; and in the hours I could not be with her, I kept lights burning at Lant Street— every light I could find in the house, and every light I could borrow. I sat alone, with blazing eyes. I sat and watched, as though she might be ill at my side. I hardly ate. I hardly changed my clothes. When I walked, it was to walk quickly to Horsemonger Lane, to be with her; or to walk slowly back, having left her there.
They had her now, of course, in the condemned cell, and one or other of a pair of matrons was always with her. They were kind enough, I suppose; but they were great stout women, like the nurses at Dr Christie's, and they wore similar canvas aprons, and carried keys: I would catch their eyes and flinch, and all my old bruises would seem to start up aching. Then again, I could never quite find it in my heart to like them, on their own accounts— for surely, if they were truly worth liking, they would open the door and let Mrs Sucksby go? Instead they were keeping her there, for men to come and hang her.
I tried not to think of that, however— or rather, like before, I found I could not think of it, could not believe it. How much Mrs Sucksby brooded upon it, I can't say. I know they sent the prison chaplain to her and she spent some hours with him; but she never told me what he said to her, or if it brought her any comfort. Now more than ever, she seemed to like not to speak at all, only to feel the gentle holding of my hand in hers; though now more than ever, too, her gaze as she looked at me would seem sometimes to grow cloudy, and she would colour, and struggle as if with the awful burden of things unsaid . . .
But she said only one thing to me, that she meant for me to remember; and that was on the day before her last— the final time I ever saw her. I went to her, with my heart almost breaking, and thought I should find her pacing her cell or plucking at the bars on her window— in fact, she was calm. It was me who wept, and she sat in her prison chair and let me kneel with my head in her lap, and she put her fingers to my hair— taking the pins from it and letting it fall, until it lay across her knee. I had not had the heart to curl it. It seemed to me that I should never have heart enough, ever again.
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'How shall I do, Mrs Sucksby, without you?' I said.
I felt some tremor pass through her. Then: 'Better, dear girl,' she whispered, 'than with me.'
'No!'
She nodded. 'Better, by far.'
'How can you say it? When, if I had stayed with you— if I had never gone with Gentleman to Briar— Oh, I should never have left your side!'
I hid my face in the folds of her skirt, and wept again.
'Hush, now,' she said. She stroked my head. 'Hush, now . . .' Her gown was rough upon my cheek, the prison chair hard against my side. But I sat and let her soothe me, as though I might be a child; and at last we both fell silent. There was a little window, high in the wall of her cell, that let in two or three strips of sunlight: we watched them creep across the stone flags of the floor. I never knew light could creep like that. It crept, like fingers. And when it had crept almost from one wall to another, I heard a step, then felt the
matron lean to lay her hand upon my shoulder.— 'It's time,' she murmured. 'Say your good-byes, now. All right?'
We stood. I looked at Mrs Sucksby. Her gaze was clear still, but her cheek, in a moment, had changed— was grey, and damp, like clay. She began to tremble.
'Dear Sue,' she said, 'you have been good to me— ' She drew me to her, and put her mouth against my ear. It was cold as the mouth on a corpse, already; but twitched, like it might have been palsied. 'Dear girl— ' she began, in a broken whisper. I almost drew back. Don't say it! I thought.— Though I do not know if I could have said what it was I wished she would not say; I only knew I was suddenly afraid. Don't say it! She gripped me tighter. 'Dear girl— ' Then the whisper grew fierce. 'Watch me, tomorrow,'
she said. 'Watch me. Don't cover your eyes. And then, if you should ever hear hard things of me when I am gone, think back— '
'I will!' I said. I said it, half in terror, half in relief. 'I will!'— Those were my last words to her. Then the matron I suppose must have touched me again; must have led me, stumbling, into the passage beyond the gate.— I don't recall. What I remember next is passing through the prison yard, feeling the sun come upon my face— and giving a cry, turning away— thinking, how queer and wrong and awful it was, that the sun should shine, still shine, even now, even there . . .
There came a keeper's voice. I heard the rumble of it, but not the words. He was asking something of the matron at my side. She nodded.
'One of 'em,' she said, with a glance at me. 'The other came this morning I only wondered later what she meant. For now, I was too dazed and miserable to wonder anything. I walked, in a sort of trance, back to Lant Street— only keeping, as much as I could, to the shadows, out of the blazing sun. At the door to Mr Ibbs's shop I found boys, chalking nooses on the step— they saw me come and ran off, shrieking.
I was used to that, however, and let them run; but kicked the nooses away. Inside, I stood a minute to get my breath, and to look about me— at the locksmith's counter, streaked with dust; and
the tools and key-blanks, that had lost their shine; and the hanging baize curtain, that 334
had got torn from its loops and was drooping. When I walked through to the kitchen, my footsteps crunched: for sometime— I couldn't say when— the brazier had been knocked from its stand, and coals and cinders still lay scattered on the floor. It seemed too ordinary a thing to do, to sweep them up, set the brazier right; and anyway, the floor was ruined— broken and gaping, from where the police had torn up boards.
Underneath it seemed dark, till you brought a light: then you could see earth, two feet below— damp earth, with bones and oyster shells in it, and beetles and wriggling worms.
The table had been pushed to the corner of the room. I went and sat at it, in Mrs Sucksby's old chair. Charley Wag lay beneath it— poor Charley Wag, he had not barked since Mr Ibbs had jerked so hard on his collar: he saw me now, and beat his tail, and came and let me tug his ears; but then he slunk away and lay with his head on his paws.
I sat, as still and quiet as him, for almost an hour; then Dainty came. She had brought us a supper. I didn't want it, and neither did she; but she had stolen a purse to buy it, and so I got out bowls and spoons and we ate it slowly, in silence, looking all the time, as we did, at the clock— the old Dutch clock on the mantel— that we knew was steadily ticking, ticking away the last few hours of Mrs Sucksby's life ... I meant to feel them, if I. could. I meant to feel each minute, each second. 'Won't you let me stay?' said Dainty, when it came time for her to go. 'It don't seem right, you being here all on your own.' But I said that that was how I wanted it; and finally she kissed my cheek and went; and then it was just me and Charley Wag again, and the house, growing dark about us. I lit more lights. I thought of Mrs Sucksby, in her bright cell. I thought of her, in all the ways I had seen her, not there, but here, in her own kitchen: dosing babies, sipping tea, lifting up her face so I might kiss it. I thought of her carving meat, wiping her mouth, and yawning . . . The clock ticked on— quicker, and louder, it seemed to me, than it had ever ticked before. I put my head upon the table, upon my arms. How tired I was! I closed my eyes. I could not help it. I meant to keep awake; but I closed my eyes, and slept.
I slept, for once, without dreaming; and I was woken by a curious sound: the tramping and scuffing of feet, and the rising and falling of voices, in the street outside. I thought, in my half- sleep: 'It must be a holiday today, there must be a fair. What day is it?'— Then I opened my eyes. The candles I had lit had burned to puddles of wax, and their flames were like so many ghosts; but the sight of them made me remember where I was. It was seven o'clock in the morning. Mrs Sucksby was going to be h a n g e d i n t h r e e h o u r s ' t i m e . T h e p e o p l e I c o u l d h e a r w e r e o n t h e i r w a y t o Horsemonger Lane, to get their places for watching. They had come down Lant Street first, for a look at the house.
There came more of them, as the morning went on. 'Was it here?' I could hear them say. And then: 'Here's the very identical spot. They say the blood ran so fast and so hard, the walls were painted in it.'— 'They say the murdered chap called out against heaven.'— 'They say the woman stifled babies.'— ' T h e y s a y h e ' d b i l k e d h e r o f rent.'— 'Puts you into a creep, don't it?'— 'Serves him right.'— 'They say— '
They would come, and stop a minute, and then pass on; some found their way to the 335