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 place. Now, aren't 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 frightened to 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 candle, 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, isn't this nice as your old home? And shan't 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, then settles herself more comfortably 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 come— 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.
Next day, I am kept to my two bleak rooms and made to sew. I forget my terrors of the darkness of the night, then. My gloves make me clumsy, the needle pricks my fingers.
'I shan't do it!' I cry,
tearing the cloth. Then Mrs Stiles beats me. My gown and corset being so stiff, she hurts her palm in the striking of my back. I take what little consolation 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 uncle's 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 121
last. I am bound about the wrists and mouth. I am shut into lonely rooms, or into cupboards. One time— having overturned a candle and let the 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 don't remember, now, the chill of the place; I remember the blocks of grey ice— I should have supposed them clear, like crystal— that tick in the wintry silence, like so many clocks. They tick for three hours. When Mrs Stiles comes to release me I have made myself a kind of nest and cannot 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, he'll have our characters for ever!'
It is something, to see her made afraid. I complain of pains in my fingers, and weakness, for a day or two after that, and watch her flutter; then I forget 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 conduct 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.'
'You've tried your hand?'
She nods. He sends us away. Then come more shows of temper, more rages 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 can't you be good?'
I was good, in my last home— and see how I was rewarded! Next morning 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 uncle's 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 you bring 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 naked to me, and very soft at the lids. He raises his thumb and smudged forefinger to 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 your good manners. I had hoped the nurses had raised you better than this. I had hoped to find you biddable.' He comes towards me, blinking, and puts his hand upon my face. 'Don't shrink so, girl! I want only to 122
examine your cheek. It is hot, I think. Well, Mrs Stiles's hand is a large one.' He looks about him. 'Come, 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 girl's.
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 turned the blade. I shiver. My bare arms
creep with cold. He moves his mouth. 'All waiting,' he repeats, 'on your good manners.
Well, we are good at that, at Briar. We can wait, and wait, and wait again. Mrs Stiles and my staff are paid to do it; I am a scholar, and inclined to it by nature. Look about you here, at my collection. Do you suppose this the work of an impatient man? My books come to me slowly, from obscure sources. I have contentedly 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 knife to a spot beneath my chin; tilts up my face and looks it over. Then he lets 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 uncle returns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely back to my sewing. It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patience. There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks— conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich— instead of women— then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs.— I cannot say.
And of course, these are thoughts that come to me later, when I know the full measure of my uncle's 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 uncle's 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.