'Dear girl, don't you know? Ain't I said, a hundred times— ?'
I begin to weep— in frustration, exhaustion. 'Why will you say it?' I cry, through my tears. 'Why will you? Isn't it enough, to have got me here? Why must you also love me? Why must you smother and torment me, with your grasping after my heart?'
I have raised myself up; but the cry takes the last of my strength and soon, I fall back.
She does not speak. She watches. She waits, until I have grown still. Then she turns her head and tilts it. I think, from the curve of her cheek, that she is smiling.
'How quiet the house is,' she says, 'now so many infants are gone! Ain't it?' She turns back to me. I hear her swallow. 'Did I tell you, dear girl,' she says softly, 'that I once bore an infant of my own, that died? Round about the time that that lady, Sue's mother, came?' She nods. 'So I said. So you'll hear it told, round here, if you ask. Babies do die. Who'd think that queer . . .?'
There is something to her voice. I begin to shake. She feels it, and reaches again to stroke my tangled head. 'There, now. Hush, now. You are quite safe, now . . .' Then the stroking stops. She has caught up a lock of hair. She smiles again. 'Funny thing,' she says, in a different tone, 'about your hair. Your eye I did suppose brown, and your colour white, and your waist and hands I knew would be
slender. Only your hair come out rather fairer than I had it pictured The words drop away. In reaching, she has moved her head: the light from the street- lamp, and from the sliver of tarnished moon, falls full upon her, and all at once I see her face— the brown of her own eye, and her own pale cheek— and her lip, that is plump and must, I understand suddenly, must once have been plumper . . . She wets her mouth. 'Dear girl,' she says. 'My own, my own dear girl— '
She hesitates another moment; then speaks, at last.
Part Three
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C h a p t e r F o u r t e e n
I shrieked. I shrieked and shrieked. I struggled like a fiend. But the more I twisted, the tighter I was held. I saw Gentleman fall back in his seat and the coach start up and begin to turn. I saw Maud put her face to the window of cloudy glass. At sight of her eyes, I shrieked again.
'There she is!' I cried, lifting my hand and pointing. 'There she is! Don't let her go!
Don't you fucking let her go— !'
But the coach drove on, the wheels throwing up dust and gravel as the horse got up its speed; and the faster it went, the harder I think I fought. Now the other doctor came forward, to help Dr Christie. The woman in the apron came, too. They were trying to pull me closer to the house. I wouldn't let them. The coach was speeding, growing smaller. 'They're getting away!' I cried. Then the woman got behind me and seized my waist. She had a grip on her like a man's. She lifted me up the two or three steps that led to the house's front door, as if I might be so many feathers in a bag.
'Now then,' she said as she hauled me. 'What's this? Kick your legs, will you, and trouble the doctors?'
Her mouth was close to my ear, her face behind me. I hardly knew what I was doing.
All I knew was, she had me there, and Gentleman and Maud were escaping. I felt her speak, bent my head forward, then took it sharply back.
'Oh!' she cried. Her grip grew slack. 'Oh! Oh!'
'She's becoming demented,' said Dr Christie. I thought he was talking about her. Then I saw he meant me. He took a whistle from his pocket and gave it a blow.
'For God's sake,' I cried, 'won't you hear me? They have tricked me, they have tricked me— !'
The woman grabbed me again— about the throat, this time; and as I turned in her arms she hit me hard, with the points of her fingers, in my stomach. I think she did it in such a way, the doctors did not see. I gave a jerk, and swallowed my breath. Then she did it again. 'Here's fits!' she said.
'Watch your hands!' called Dr Graves. 'She may snap.'
Meanwhile, they had got me into the hall of the house and the sound of the whistle had brought another two men. They were pulling on brown paper cuffs over their coat-sleeves. They did not look like doctors. They came and caught hold of my ankles.
'Keep her steady,' said Dr Graves. 'She's in a convulsion. She may put out her joints.'
I could not tell them that I was not in a fit, but only winded; that the woman had hurt me; that I was anyway not a lunatic, but sane as them. I could not say anything, for trying to find my breath. I could only croak. The men drew my legs straight, and my skirts rose to my knees. I began to be afraid of the skirts rising higher. That made me twist about, I suppose.
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'Hold her tight,' said Dr Christie. He had brought out a thing like a great flat spoon, made of horn. He came to my side and held my head, and put the spoon to my mouth, between my teeth. It was smooth, but he pushed it hard and it hurt me. I thought I should be choked: I bit it, to keep it from going down my throat. It tasted bad.
I still think of all the other people's mouths it must have gone in, before mine.
He saw my jaws close. 'Now she takes it!' he said. 'That's right. Hold her steady.' He looked at Dr Graves. 'To the soft room? I think so. Nurse Spiller?'
That was the woman that held me by the throat. I saw her nod to him, and then to the men in the cuffs, and they turned so that they might walk with me, further into the house. I felt them do it and began to struggle again. I was not thinking, now, of Gentleman and Maud. I was thinking of myself. I was growing horribly afraid. My stomach ached from the nurse's fingers. My mouth was cut by the spoon. I had an idea that, once they got me into a room, they would kill me.
'A thrasher, ain't she?' said one of the men, as he worked for a better grip on my ankle.
'A very bad case,' said Dr Christie. He looked into my face. 'The convulsion is passing, at least.' He raised his voice. 'Don't be afraid, Mrs Rivers! We know all about you. We are your friends. We have brought you here to make you well.'
I tried to speak. 'Help! Help!' I tried to say. But the spoon made me gobble like a bird.
It also made me dribble; and a bit of dribble flew out of my mouth and struck Dr Christie's cheek. Perhaps he thought I had spat it. Anyway, he moved quickly back, and his face grew grim. He took out his handkerchief.
'Very good,' he said to the men and the nurse, as he wiped his cheek. 'That will do.
Now you may take her.'
They carried me along a passage, through a set of doors and a room; then to a landing, another passage, another room— I tried to study the way, but they had me on my back: I could make out only so many drab-coloured ceilings and walls. After about a minute I knew they had got me deep into the house, and that I was lost. I could not cry out.
The nurse kept her arm about my throat, and I still had the spoon of horn in my mouth.
When we reached a staircase they took me down it, saying, 'To you, Mr Bates,' and,
'Watch this turn, it's a tight one!'— as if I might be, not a sack of feathers now, but a trunk or a piano. Not once did they look me in the face. Finally, one of the men began to whistle a tune, and to beat out the time of it, with his finger-ends, on my leg.
Then we reached another room, with a ceiling of a paler shade of drab; and here they stopped. 'Careful, now,' they said.
The men put down my legs. The woman took her arm from my neck and gave me a push. It was only a little push and yet, they had so pulled and shaken me about, I found I staggered and fell. I fell upon my hands. I opened my mouth and the spoon fell out. One of the men reached, quick, to take it. He shook the spit from it. 'Please,' I said.
'You may say please, now,' said the woman. Then she spoke to the men. 'Gave me a crack with her head, upon the steps. Look here. Am I bruised?' 'I believe you shall be.'
'Little devil!'
She put her foot to me. 'Now, does Dr Christie have you here to give us all bruises?
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Eh, my lady? Mrs What- is- your- name? Mrs Waters, or Rivers? Does he?'
'Please,' I said again. 'I ain't Mrs Rivers.' 'She ain't Mrs Rivers? Hear that, Mr Bates?