'Rather ill, sir.'
'I can see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?'
'Threw them aside, sir. Wouldn't have them.'
My uncle comes 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 children's 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 Stiles's 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 fingers to my mouth and begin to weep.
My uncle winces at the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.
'Keep silence, girl!' he says. I shake and cannot. Mrs Stiles pinches the 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 shan't forget the gloves in future, hmm?'
I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. 'You'll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I can't have storms and tantrums, here. Very well.' He waves his hand. 'Now, leave her with me. Don't stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild.'
Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and— under cover of plucking 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.'
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I put my crimson fingers to 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 place and turns it. The cover is black, by which I recognise 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 advance in thought.
My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.
'Do you see this title, girl?— Don't 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 tears return.
'Ha!' cries my uncle, seeing my distress. 'I should say you can'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 consultation with an oculist— an eye-doctor. These are uncommon 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 innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready.
You understand me, hmm?'
I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book back in 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 innocence; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.
After my uncle has spoken he seems to forget 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 you're hungry,' she says, as we walk. 'Little girls always are. I should say you'd be grateful for a white egg now.'
I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings for a girl to come, 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 watching. Then they leave me quite alone. The 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 recently 119
tolled. I believe it is seven or eight o'clock.
I say, 'I should like, if you please, to be taken home now.'
Mrs Stiles laughs. 'Do you mean to that house, with those rough 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. Come here. It's 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, 'You've no right to hurt me! You're nothing to me! I want my mothers, that love me!'
'Here's your mother,' she says, plucking at the portrait at my throat. 'That's all the mother you'll have here. Be grateful you have that, to know her face by. Now, stand and be steady. You must wear this, to give you the figure of a lady.'
She has taken the stiff buff dress from me, and all the linen beneath. 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 coming hard upon my cheek. 'I had a little daughter once, that died. She had a fine black head of curling hair and a temper like a lamb's. Why dark-haired, gentle-tempered children should be made to die, and peevish pale girls like you to thrive, I cannot 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, then lets down the curtains. There is a door beside the chimney-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 to forgive you.'
Then she takes 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 black of my 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 comfort I can from my idea that somewhere in the house walk lunatics, and with them watchful nurses. Then I begin to wonder over the habits of the place.
Perhaps here they give their lunatics licence to wander; perhaps a madwoman will come to my room, mistaking it for another? Perhaps the wicked-tempered girl that sleeps next door is herself demented, and will come and throttle me with her hard hand! Indeed, no sooner has this idea risen in me, than I begin to hear the smothered 120
sounds of movement, close by— unnaturally close, they seem to me to be: I imagine a thousand skulking figures with their faces at the curtain, a thousand searching hands. I begin to cry. The corset I wear makes the tears come 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 imagine the throttling hand has come at last, and jerk in a convulsion and, I suppose, shriek.
There comes the sound of an opening door, a light between the