She waits. I do not answer, but she smiles again, moves from me, glances at Richard, then turns her back to him and fumbles for a second with the buttons of her gown. The taffeta rustles. When the bodice is part-way open she reaches inside— reaches, it 216
seems to me, into her very bosom, her very heart— and then draws out a folded paper.
'Kept this close,' she says, as she brings it to me, 'all these years. Kept this closer than gold! Look, here.'
The paper is folded like a letter, and bears a tilting instruction: To Be Opened on the Eighteenth Birthday of My Daughter, Susan Lilly.— I see that name, and shudder, and reach, but she holds it jealously and, like my uncle— not my uncle, now!— with an antique book, won't let me take it; she lets me touch it, however. The paper is warm, from the heat of her breast. The ink is brown, the folds furred and discoloured. The seal is quite unbroken. The stamp is my mother's— Sue's mother's, I mean; not mine, not mine—
M.L.
'You see it, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby says. The paper trembles. She draws it back to herself, with a miser's gesture and look— lifts it to her face and puts her lips to it, then turns her back and restores it to its place inside her gown. As she buttons her dress, she glances again at Richard. He has been watching, closely, curiously; but says nothing.
I speak, instead. 'She wrote it,' I say. My voice is thick, I am giddy. 'She wrote it. They took her. What then?'
Mrs Sucksby turns. Her gown is closed and perfectly smooth again, but she has her h a n d u p o n t h e b o d i c e , a s i f n u r s i n g t h e w o r d s b e n e a th. 'The lady?' she says, distractedly. 'The lady died, dear girl.' She sniffs, and her tone changes. 'Bust me, however, if she didn't linger on another month before she done it! Who would have thought? That month was against us. For now her pa and her brother, having got her home, made her change her will.— You can guess what to. No penny to go to the daughter— meaning you, dear girl, so far as they knew— till the daughter marries.
There's gentlemen for you— ain't it? She sent me a note to tell me, by a nurse. They'd got her into the madhouse by then, and you alongside her— well, that soon finished her off. It was a puzzle to her, she said, how things might turn out now; but she took her consolation from the
thought of my honesty. Poor girl!' She seems almost sorry.'— That was her slip.'
Richard laughs. Mrs Sucksby smooths her mouth, and begins to look crafty. 'As for me,' she says, '— well, I had seen from the first that the only puzzle was, how to get the whole of the fortune when I was only due to have half. My comfort must be, that I had eighteen years for figuring it out in. I thought many times of you.'
I turn my face. 'I never asked for your thoughts,' I say. 'I don't want them now.'
'Ungrateful, Maud!' says Richard. 'Here has Mrs Sucksby been, plotting so hard in your behalf, so long. Another girl— don't girls seek only to be the heroines of romance?— another girl might fancy herself distinguished.'
I look from him back to Mrs Sucksby, saying nothing. She nods. 'I thought often of you,' she says again, 'and wondered how you got on. I supposed you handsome. Dear girl, you are!' She swallows. 'I had two fears, only. The first was, that you might die.
The second was, that your grand-dad and uncle should take you away from England and have you married before the lady's secret come out. Then I read in a paper that your grand-dad died. Then I heard how your uncle lived quietly, in the country; and 217
had you with him, and kept you in a quiet way, too. There's my two fears both gone!'
She smiles. 'Meanwhile,' she says— and now her eyelids flutter— 'Meanwhile, here's Sue. You have seen, dear girl, how close and quiet I have kept the lady's word.' She pats her gown. 'Well, what was the word to me, without Sue to pin it to? Think how close and quiet I have kept her. Think how safe. Think how sharp such a girl might have grown, in a house like this one, in a street like ours; then think how hard Mr Ibbs and me have worked to keep her blunt. Think how deep I puzzled it over— knowing I must use her at the last, but never quite knowing how. Think how it begins to come clear, when I meets Gentleman— think how quick my fear that you might be secretly married, turns into my knowing that he is the chap that must secretly marry you . . .
It's the work of another minute, then, to look at Sue and know what ought to be done with her.' She shrugs. 'Well, and
now we've done it. Sue's you, dear girl. And what we brought you here for is— '
'Listen, Maud!' says Richard. I have closed my eyes and turned my head. Mrs Sucksby comes to me, lifts her hand, begins to stroke my hair.
'What we brought you here for,' she goes on, more gently, 'is for you to start being Sue.
Only that, dear girl! Only that.'
I open my eyes, and suppose look stupid.
'Do you see?' says Richard. 'We keep Sue as my wife in the madhouse, and with the opening of her mother's statement, her share of the fortune— Maud's share, I mean— comes to me. I should like to say I will keep every cent of it; but the scheme was Mrs Sucksby's after all, and half goes to her.' He makes a bow.
'That's fair, ain't it?' says Mrs Sucksby, still stroking my hair.
'But the other share,' Richard goes on, '— which is to say, Sue's real share— Mrs Sucksby stands also to get. The statement names her Sue's guardian; and guardians, I am afraid, are often less than scrupulous in the handling of their wards' fortunes . . .
That all means nothing, of course, if Sue herself has vanished. But then, it's Maud Lilly— the true Maud Lilly'— he blinks— 'by which I mean of course, the false Maud Lilly— who has vanished. Isn't that what you wanted? To vanish? You said, a minute ago, that you have excuse for anything now. What will it hurt you, then, to be passed off as Sue, and so make Mrs Sucksby rich?'
'Make us both rich, darling,' Mrs Sucksby says quickly. 'I ain't so heartless, dear, as to rob you quite of everything! You're a lady, ain't you, and handsome? Why, I shall need a handsome lady, to show me what's what when I comes into my fortune. I got plans for us both, sweetheart, that grand!'— She taps her nose.
I push myself up, away from her; but am too giddy, still, to stand. 'You are mad,' I say to them both. 'You are mad! I— Pass me off as Sue?'
'Why not?' says Richard. 'We need only convince a lawyer. I think we shall.'
'Convince him, how?'
'How? Why, here are Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs— that have been
like parents to you, and so might be supposed, I think, to know you, if anyone might.
And here are John and Dainty, too— they'll swear to any kind of mischief with money in, you may be sure. And here am I— that met you at Briar, when you were maid to Miss Maud Lilly, later my wife. You've seen, haven't you, what gentlemen's words are 218
worth?' He pretends to be struck with the thought. 'But of course you have! For in a madhouse in the country are a pair of doctors— they'll remember you, I think. For didn't you, only yesterday, give them your hand and make them a curtsey, and stand in a good light before them, for quite twenty minutes, answering questions to the name of Susan?'
He lets me consider that. Then he says, 'All we ask is that, when the moment arrives, you give the performance over again, before a lawyer. What have you to lose? Dear Maud, you have nothing: no friends in London, no money to your name— why, not so much as a name!'
I have put my fingers to my mouth. 'Suppose,' I say, 'I won't do it? Suppose, when your lawyer comes, I tell him— '
'Tell him what? Tell him how you plotted to swindle an innocent girl?— looked on, while the doctors dosed her and carried her off? Hmm? What do you think he will make of that?'
I sit and watch him speak. At last I say, in a whisper: 'Are you truly so wicked as this?'
He shrugs. I turn to Mrs Sucksby. 'And you,' I say. 'Are you so wicked? To think, of Sue— Are you so vile?'
She waves her hand before her face, says nothing. Richard snorts. 'Wickedness,' he says. 'Vileness. What terms! The terms of fiction. Do you think, that when women swap children, they do it, as nurses do it in the operettas— for comedy's sake? Look about you, Maud. Step to the window, look into the street. There is life, not fiction. It is hard, it is wretched. It would have been yours, but for Mrs Sucksby's kindness in keeping you from it.— Christ!' He moves from the door, puts his arms above his head and stretches. 'How tired I am! What a day's work I have done today— haven't I? One girl pressed into a madhouse; another— Well.' He looks me over, nudges my foot with his. 'No arguments?' he says. 'No bluster? That may come later, I suppose. No matter if it does. Sue's birthday
falls at the start of August. We have more than three months, to persuade you into our plot. I think three days— of Borough living, I mean— will do that.'
I am gazing at him, but cannot speak. I am thinking, still, of Sue. He tilts his head.
'Don't say we have broken your spirit, Maud,' he says, 'so quickly? I should be sorry to think it.' He pauses. Then: 'Your mother,' he adds, 'would have been sorry, also.'
'My mother,' I start to say.— I think of Marianne, with lunacy in her eye. Then I catch my breath. Through all of it, I have not thought of this. Richard watches, looks sly. He puts his hand to his collar and stretches his throat, and coughs, in a feeble, girlish and yet deliberate kind of way.
'Now, Gentleman,' says Mrs Sucksby anxiously as he does it, 'don't tease her.'
'Tease her?' he says. He still pulls at his collar as if it chafes him. 'I am only dry about the throat, from talking.'
'You have said too much, that's why,' she answers. 'Miss Lilly— I'll call you that, shall I, my dear? Seems natural, don't it?— Miss Lilly, don't mind him. We've plenty of time for talking of that.'
'Of my mother, you mean,' I say. 'My true mother, that you made out to be Sue's. That choked— you see, I know something!— that choked, on a pin.'