'You don't know anything, Maud,' he answers. He tries to draw my hands from his coat. I will not let him. I think, if he does that, they will certainly kill me. For a second 201
we struggle. Then: 'The stitching, Maud!' he says. He plucks my fingers free. I catch at his arm instead.
'Take me back,' I say. I say it, thinking: Don't let them see you are afraid! But my voice has risen higher and I cannot make it firm. 'Take me back, at once, to the streets and hackneys.'
He shakes his head, looks away. 'I can't do it.'
'Take me now. Or I go, alone. I shall make my way— I saw the route! I studied it, hard!— and I shall find out a— a policeman!'
The boy, the pale man, the woman and girl, all flinch or wince. The dog barks.
'Now now,' says the man, stroking his moustache. 'You must be careful how you talk, dear, in a house like this.'
'It is you who must be careful!' I say. I look from one face to another. 'What is it you think you shall have from this? Money? Oh, no. It is you who must be careful. It is all of you! And you, Richard— you— who must be most careful of all, should I once find a policeman and begin to talk.'
But Richard looks and says nothing. 'Do you hear me?' I cry.
The man winces again, and puts his finger to his ear as if to clear it of wax. 'Like a blade,' he says, to no-one, to everyone. 'Ain't it?'
'Damn you!' I say. I look wildly about me for a moment, then make a sudden grab at my bag. Richard reaches it first, however, he hooks it with his long leg and kicks it across the floor, almost playfully. The boy takes it up, and holds it in his lap. He produces a knife and begins to pick at the lock. The blade flashes.
Richard folds his arms. 'You see you cannot leave, Maud,' he says simply. 'You cannot go, with nothing.'
He has moved to the door, to stand before it. There are other doors, that lead, perhaps to a street, perhaps only into other dark rooms. I shall never choose the right one. 'I am sorry,' he says.
The boy's knife flashes again. Now, I think, they will kill me. The thought itself is like a blade, and astonishingly sharp. For haven't I willed my life away, at Briar? Haven't I felt it rising from me, and been glad? Now I suppose they mean to kill me; and I am more afraid than I have imagined it possible to be, of anything, anything at all.
You fool, I say to myself. But to them I say: 'You shan't. You shan't!' I run one way, and then another; finally I dart, not for the door at Richard's back, but for the slumbering, swollen- headed baby. I seize it, and shake it, and put my hand to its neck.
'You shan't!' I say again. 'Damn you, do you think I have come so far, for this?' I look at the woman. 'I shall kill your baby first!'— I think I would do it.— 'See, here! I shall stifle it!'
The man, the girl, the boy, look interested. The woman looks sorry. 'My dear,' she says,
'I have seven babies about the place, just now. Make it six, if you want. Make it'— with a gesture to the tin box beneath the table— 'make it five. It is all the same to me. I fancy I am about to give the business up, anyway.'
The creature in my arms slumbers on, but gives a kick. I feel the rapid palpitation of its heart beneath my fingers, and there is a
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fluttering at the top of its swollen head. The woman still watches. The girl Puts ^er hand to her neck, and rubs. Richard searches in his pocket for a cigarette. He says, as he does it, 'Put the damn child down, Maud, won't you?'
He says it mildly; and I become aware of myself, my hands at a baby's throat. I set the child carefully down upon the table, among the plates and china cups. At once, the boy takes his knife from the lock of my bag and waves it over its head.
'Ha-ha!' he cries. 'The lady wouldn't do it. John Vroom shall have him— lips, nose and ears!'
The girl squeals, as if tickled. The woman says sharply, 'That's enough. Or are all my infants to be worried out of their cradles, into their graves? Fine farm I should be left with then. Dainty, see to little Sidney before he scalds himself, do. Miss Lilly will suppose herself come among savages. Miss Lilly, I can see you're a spirited girl. I expected nothing less. But you don't imagine we mean to hurt you?' She comes to me again. She cannot stand without touching me— now she puts her hand upon me and strokes my sleeve. 'You don't imagine you ain't more welcome here, than anyone?'
I still shake, a little. 'I can't imagine,' I say, pulling myself away from her hands, 'that you mean me any kind of good, since you persist in keeping me here, when I so clearly wish to leave.'
She tilts her head. 'Hear the grammar in that, Mr Ibbs?' she says. The man says he does. She strokes me again. 'Sit down, my darling. Look at this chair: got from a very grand place, it might be waiting for you. Won't you take off your cloak, and your bonnet? You shall swelter, we keep a very warm kitchen. Won't you slip off your gloves?— Well, you know best.'
I have drawn in my hands. Richard catches the woman's eye. 'Miss Lilly,' he says quietly, 'is rather particular about the fingers. Was made to wear gloves, from an early age'— he lets his voice drop still further, and mouths the last few words in an exaggerated way— 'by her uncle.'
The woman looks sage.
'Your uncle,' she says. 'Now, I know all about him. Made you look at a lot of filthy French books. And did he touch you, dear,
where he oughtn't to have? Never mind it now. Never mind it, here. Better your own uncle than a stranger, I always say.— Oh, now ain't that a shame?'
I have sat, to disguise the trembling of my legs; but have pushed her from me. My chair is close to the fire and she is right, it is hot, it is terribly hot, my cheek is burning; but I must not move, I must think. The boy still picks at the lock. 'French books,' he says, with a snigger. The red-haired girl has the fingers of the baby's hands in her mouth and is sucking on them, idly. The man has come nearer. The woman is still at my side. The light of the fire picks out her chin, her cheek, an eye, a lip. The lip is smooth. She wets it.
I turn my head, but not my gaze. 'Richard,' I say. He doesn't answer. 'Richard!' The woman reaches to me and unfastens the string of my bonnet and draws it from my head. She pats my hair, then takes up a lock of it and rubs it between her fingers.
'Quite fair,' she says, in a sort of wonder. 'Quite fair, like gold almost.'
'Do you mean to sell it?' I say then. 'Here, take it!' I snatch at the lock she has caught 203
up and rip it from its pins. 'You see,' I say, when she winces, 'you cannot hurt me as much as I can hurt myself. Now, let me go.'
She shakes her head. 'You are growing wild, my dear, and spoiling your pretty hair.
Haven't I said? We don't mean to harm you. Here is John Vroom, look; and Delia Warren, that we call Dainty: you shall think them cousins, I hope, in time. And Mr Humphry Ibbs: he has been waiting for you— haven't you, Mr Ibbs? And here am I.
I've been waiting for you, hardest of all. Dear me, how hard it has been.'
She sighs. The boy looks up at her and scowls. 'Jigger me,' he says, 'if I know which way the wind is blowing now.' He nods to me. 'Ain't she meant to be'— he hugs his arms about himself, shows his tongue, lets his eyes roll— 'on a violent ward?'
The woman lifts her arm, and he winks and draws back. 'You watch your face,' she says savagely. And then, gazing gently at me: 'Miss Lilly is throwing in her fortunes with ours. Miss Lilly
don't know her own mind just yet— as who would, in her place? Miss Lilly, I daresay you ain't had a morsel of food in hours. What we got, that will tempt you?' She rubs her hands together. 'Should you care for a mutton chop? A piece of Dutch cheese? A supper of fish? We got a stall on the corner, sells any kind of fish— you name me the breed, Dainty shall slip out, bring it back, fry it up, quick as winking. What shall it be?
We got china plates, look, fit for royalty. We got silver forks— Mr Ibbs, pass me one of them forks. See here, dear. A little rough about the handle, ain't it? Don't mind it, darling. That's where we takes the crest off. Feel the weight of it, though. Ain't them prongs very shapely? There's a Member of Parliament had his mouth about those.
Shall it be fish, dear? Or the
chop?'
She stands, bending to me, with the fork close to my face. I push it aside.
'Do you suppose,' I say, 'I mean to sit and eat a supper with you? With any of you?
Why, I should be ashamed to call you servants! Throw in my fortunes with yours? I should rather be beggared. I should rather die!'
There is a second of silence; then: 'Got a dander,' says the boy. 'Don't she?'
But the woman shakes her head, looks almost admiring. 'Dainty's got a dander,' she answers. 'Why, I've got one myself. Any ordinary girl can have one of them. What a lady has, they call something else. What do they call it, Gentleman?' She says this to Richard, who is leaning tiredly to tug upon the ears of the slavering dog.