'Hauteur,' she repeats.
'Mersee,' says the boy, giving me a leer. 'I should hate, after all, to have mistook it for common bad manners, and punched her.'
He returns to the clasp of my bag. The man watches, and winces. 'Ain't you learned yet,' he says, 'the handling of a lock? Don't prise it, boy, and mash the levers. That's sweet little work. You are just about to bust it.'
The boy makes a final stab with his knife, his face darkening, ruck!' he says.— The first time I have ever heard the word used as
a curse. He takes the point of the blade from the lock and puts it to the leather beneath, 204
and before I can cry out and stop him he slices it, swiftly, in one long gash.
'Well, that's like you,' says the man complacently.
He has taken out a pipe, and lights it. The boy puts his hands to the slit in the leather. I watch him do it and, though my cheek is still burning from the heat of the fire, I grow cold. The cutting of the bag has shocked me, more than I can say. I begin to tremble.
'Please,' I say. 'Please give me back my things. I shall not trouble about the policeman, if you will only give back what is mine, and let me go.'
I suppose my voice has some new, piteous note to it; for now they all turn their heads and study me, and the woman comes close again and again strokes my hair.
'Not frightened, still?' she says amazedly. 'Not frightened, of John Vroom? Why, he is just being playful.— John, how dare you? Put your knife away and pass me Miss Lilly's bag.— There. Are you sorry for it, dear? Why, it's a creased old thing, that looks like it ain't been used in fifty years. We shall get you a proper one. Shan't we, though!'
The boy makes a show of grumbling but gives up the bag; and when the woman hands it to me I take it and hug it. There are tears, rising in my throat.
'Boo-hoo,' says the boy in disgust, when he sees me swallow. He leans and leers at me again. 'I liked you better,' he says, 'when you was a chair.'
I am sure he says that. The words bewilder me, and I shrink away. I twist to look at Richard. 'Please, Richard,' I say. 'For God's sake, isn't it enough to have tricked me?
How can you stand so coolly while they torment me?'
He holds my gaze, stroking his beard. Then he says to the woman: 'Haven't you a quieter place, for her to sit in?'
'A quieter place?' she answers. 'Why, I have a room made ready. I only supposed Miss Lilly should like to warm her face first down here. Should you like to come up, dear, now? Make your hair neat? Wash your hands?'
'I should like to be shown to the street, and a hackney,' I answer. 'Only that, only that.'
'Well, we shall put you at the window; and you shall see the street from there. Come up, my darling. Let me take that old bag.— Want to keep it? All right. Ain't your grip a strong one! Gentleman, you come along, too, why don't you? You'll take your old room, at the top?'
'I will,' he answers, 'if you'll have me. For the wait.'
They exchange a glance. She has put her hands upon me and, in drawing from her grasp, I have risen. Richard comes and stands close. I shrink from him, too, and between them— as a pair of dogs might menace a sheep into a pen— they guide me from the kitchen, through one of the doors, towards a staircase. Here it is darker and cooler, and I feel the draught perhaps of a street-door, and slow my steps; but I think, too, of what the woman has said, about the window: I imagine I might call from it, or drop from it— or fling myself from it— should they try to hurt me. The staircase is narrow, and bare of carpet; here and there, on the steps, are chipped china cups half- filled with water, holding floating wicks, casting shadows.
'Lift your skirts, dear, above the flames,' says the woman, going up before me.
Richard comes, very close, behind.
At the top there are doors, all shut: the woman opens the first, and shows me through it to a small square room. A bed, a wash- hand stand, a box, a chest of drawers, a 205
horse- hair screen— and a window, to which I instantly cross. It is narrow, and has a bleached net scarf hung before it. The hasp has been broken long ago: the sashes are fixed together with nails. The view is of a slip of muddy street, a house with ointment-coloured shutters with heart-shaped holes, a wall of brick, with loops and spirals marked upon it in yellow chalks.
I stand and study it all, my bag still clutched to me, but my arms growing heavy. I hear Richard pause, then climb a second set of stairs; then he walks about the room above my head. The woman crosses to the wash- hand stand and pours a little water from the jug mto the bowl. Now I see my mistake, in coming so quickly to the window: for she stands between me and the door. She is stout, and her arms are thick. I think I might push her aside, however, if I was to surprise her.
Perhaps she is thinking the same thing. Her hands are hovering about the wash- hand stand, her head is tilted, but she is watching me, in the same close, eager, half- awed, half- admiring way as before.
'Here's scented soap,' she says. 'And here's a comb. Here's a hairbrush.' I say nothing.
'Here's a towel for your face. Here's eau-de-Cologne.' She draws the stopper from the bottle and the liquid slops. She comes to me, her wrist bared and made wet with a sickening perfume. 'Don't you care,' she says, 'for lavender?'
I have stepped away from her, and look at the door. From the kitchen, the boy's voice comes very clearly: 'You tart!' 'I don't care,' I say, taking another step, 'to be tricked.'
She steps, too. 'What trickery, darling?'
'Do you think I meant to come here? Do you think I mean to stay?'
'I think you are only startled. I think you ain't quite yourself.' 'Not quite myself?
What's myself to you? Who are you, to say how I might or might not be?'
At that, her gaze falls. She draws her sleeve over her wrist, returns to the wash- hand stand, touches again the soap, the comb, the brush and towel. Downstairs, a chair is drawn across the floor, something is thrown or falls, the dog barks. Upstairs, Richard walks, coughs, mutters. If I am to run, I must do it now. Which way shall I go? Down, down, the way I have come. Which was the door, at the bottom, that they led me through?— the second, or the first? I am not sure. Never mind, I think. Go now! But I do not. The woman lifts her face, catches my eye, I hesitate; and in the moment of that hesitation Richard crosses his floor and steps heavily down the stairs. He comes into the room. He has a cigarette behind his ear. He has rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and his beard is dark with water.
He closes the door, and locks it. 'Take your cloak off, Maud,' he says. I think: He is going to strangle me.
T keep my cloak quite fastened, and move backwards, slowly, from him and from the woman, back to the window. I will
ash it with my elbow if I must. I will shriek into the street. Richard watches me and sighs. He makes his eyes wide. 'You need
t' he says, 'look so like a rabbit. Do you think I would bring you all this way, to hurt you?'
'And do you think,' I answer, 'I will trust you not to? You told me vourself, at Briar, what lengths you will go to, for money's sake. I wish I had listened harder, then! Tell 206
me now you don't mean to cheat me of all my fortune. Tell me you shan't get it, through Sue. I suppose you will fetch her, after some slight delay. She will be cured, I suppose.' My heart contracts. 'Clever Sue. Good girl.'
'Shut up, Maud.'
'Why? So you may kill me in silence? Go on and do it. Then live with the deed upon your conscience. I suppose you have one?'
'Not one,' he says, quickly and lightly, 'that would be troubled by the murder of you, I assure you.' He presses his fingers to his eyes. 'Mrs Sucksby, however, would not like it.'
'Her,' I say, with a glance at the woman. She is still gazing at the soap, the brush, not speaking. 'You do everything, at her word?'
' E v e r y t h i n g i n t h i s c a s e . ' H e s a y s i t m e a n i n g f u l l y ; a n d w h e n I h e s i t a t e , n o t understanding, he goes on: 'Listen to me, Maud. The scheme was hers, all of it. From start to finish, hers. And, villain that I am, I am not so great a swindler that I would swindle her of that.'
His face seems honest— but then, it has seemed honest to me before. 'You are lying,' I say.
'No. This is the truth.'
'Her scheme.' I cannot believe it. 'She that sent you to Briar, to my uncle? And before that, to Paris? To Mr Hawtrey?'