Fingersmith (26 page)

The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall. 'Come up, child,' says the woman when I do that; and now when she puts her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightened, the higher we go. For the house seems awful to me— the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half-hidden—like expectant grubs, in the cells of a hive—there stand servants, come to see me make my progress through the house.

I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurses. I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.

'Why do they watch?' I say to the woman.

'Why, to see your face,' she answers. To see if you turned out handsome as your mother.'

'I have twenty mothers,' I say at that; 'and am handsomer than any of them.'

The woman has stopped before a door. 'Handsome is as handsome does,' she says. 'I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours.'

She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it. The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire—I am too small to see my face in the glass above—and stand and shiver.

'Should have kept your mittens,' says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands. 'Mr Inker's daughter shall have those.' She takes my cloak from me, then draws the ribbons from my hair and brushes it with a broken comb. Tug all you like,' she says as I pull away. 'It shall only hurt you, it shan't harm me. Why, what a business those women made of your head! Anyone would have supposed them savages. How I'm to see you neat, after their work, I can't say. Now, look here.' She reaches beneath the bed. 'Let's see you use your chamber-pot. Come along, no foolish modesty. Do you think I never saw a little girl lift up her skirts and piddle?'

She folds her arms and watches me, and then she wets a cloth with water and washes my face and hands.

'I saw them do this for your mother, when I was parlourmaid here,' she says, pulling me about. 'She was a deal gratefuller than you are. Didn't they teach you manners, in that house of yours?'

I long for my little wooden wand: I would show her all I'd learned of manners, then! But I have observed lunatics, too, and know how to struggle while only seeming to stand limp. At length she steps from me and wipes her hands.

'Lord, what a child! I hope your uncle knows his business, bringing you here. He seems to think he'll make a lady of you.'

'I don't want to be a lady!' I say. 'My uncle cannot make me.'

'I should say he can do what he likes, in his own house,' she answers. 'There now! How late you've made us.'

There has come the stifled ringing of a bell, three times. It is a clock; I understand it, however, as a signal to the house, for I have been raised to the sound of similar bells, that told the lunatics to rise, to dress, to say their prayers, to take their dinners. I think,
Now I shall see them
!, but when we go from the room the house is still and quiet as before. Even the watchful servants have retired. Again my boots catch on the carpets. 'Walk softly!' says the woman in a whisper, pinching my arm. 'Here's your uncle's room, look.'

She knocks, then takes me in. He has had paint put on the windows years before, and the winter sun striking the glass, the room is lit strangely. The walls are dark with the spines of books. I think them a kind of frieze or carving. I know only two books, and one is black and creased about the spine— that is the Bible. The other is a book of hymns thought suitable for the demented; and that is pink. I suppose all printed words to be true ones.

The woman sets me very near the door and stands at my back, her hands like claws upon my shoulders. The man they have called my uncle rises from behind his desk; its surface is hidden by a mess of papers. Upon his head is a velvet cap with a swinging tassel on a fraying thread. Before his eyes is another, paler, pair of coloured glasses.

'So, miss,' he says, stepping towards me, moving his jaw. The woman makes a curtsey. 'How is her temper, Mrs Stiles?' he asks her.

'Rather ill, sir.'

'I can see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?'

'Threw them aside, sir. Wouldn't have them.'

My uncle comes close. 'An unhappy beginning. Give me your hand, Maud.'

I will not give it. The woman catches my arm about the wrist and lifts it. My hand is small, and plump at the knuckles. I am used to washing with madhouse soap, which is not kind. My nails are dark, with madhouse dirt. My uncle holds my finger-ends. His own hand has a smear or two of ink upon it. He shakes his head.

'Now, did I want a set of coarse fingers upon my books,' he says, 'I should have had Mrs Stiles bring me a nurse. I should not have given her a pair of gloves, to make those coarse hands softer.
Your
hands I shall have soft, however. See here, how we make children's hands soft, that are kept out of their gloves.' He puts his own hand to the pocket of his coat, and uncoils from it— one of those things, that bookmen use—a line of metal beads, bound tight with silk, for keeping down springing pages. He makes a loop of it, seeming to weigh it; then he brings it smartly down upon my dimpling knuckles. Then, with Mrs Stiles's assistance, he takes my other hand and does the same to that.

The beads sting like a whip; but the silk keeps the flesh from breaking. At the first blow I yelp, like a dog—in pain, in rage and sheer astonishment. Then, Mrs Stiles releasing my wrists, I put my fingers to my mouth and begin to weep.

My uncle winces at the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.

'Keep silence, girl!' he says. I shake and cannot. Mrs Stiles pinches the flesh of my shoulder, and that makes me cry harder. Then my uncle draws forth the beads again; and at last I grow still.

'Well,' he says quietly. 'You shan't forget the gloves in future, hmm?'

I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. 'You'll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I can't have storms and tantrums, here. Very well.' He waves his hand. 'Now, leave her with me. Don't stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild.'

Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and—under cover of plucking my trembling shoulder as if to keep it from falling into a slouch—gives me another pinch. The yellow window grows bright, then dim, then bright again, as the wind sends clouds across the sun.

'Now,' says my uncle, when the housekeeper has gone. 'You know, do you not, why I have brought you here.'

I put my crimson fingers to my face, to wipe my nose.

'To make a lady of me.'

He gives a quick, dry laugh.

'To make a secretary of you. What do you see here, all about these walls?'

'Wood, sir.'

'Books, girl,' he says. He goes and draws one from its place and turns it. The cover is black, by which I recognise it as a Bible. The others, I deduce, hold hymns. I suppose that hymn-books, after all, might be bound in different hues, perhaps as suiting different qualities of madness. I feel this, as a great advance in thought.

My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.

'Do you see this title, girl?—Don't take a step! I asked you to read, not to prance.'

But the book is too far from me. I shake my head, and feel my tears return.

'Ha!' cries my uncle, seeing my distress. 'I should say you can't! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after consultation with an oculist—an eye-doctor. These are uncommon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same—I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready. You understand me, hmm?'

I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book back in its place, lingering a moment over the aligning of the spine upon the shelf.

The spine is a fine one, and—I will know it well, in time—a favourite of his. The title is—

But now I run ahead of my own innocence; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.

After my uncle has spoken he seems to forget me. I stand for another quarter-hour before he lifts his head and catches sight of me, and waves me from the room. I struggle a moment with the iron handle of his door, making him wince against the grinding of the lever; and when I close it, Mrs Stiles darts from the gloom to lead me back upstairs. 'I suppose you're hungry,' she says, as we walk. 'Little girls always are. I should say you'd be grateful for a white egg now.'

I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings for a girl to come, and the girl brings a biscuit and a glass of sweet red wine. She sets them down before me, and smiles; and the smile is harder to bear, somehow, than a slap would have been. I am afraid I will weep again. But I swallow my tears with my dry biscuit, and the girl and Mrs Stiles stand together, whispering and watching. Then they leave me quite alone. The room grows dark. I lie upon the sofa with my head upon a cushion, and pull my own little cloak over myself, with my own little whipped, red hands. The wine makes me sleep. When I wake again, I wake to shifting shadows, and to Mrs Stiles at the door, bringing a lamp. I wake with a terrible fear, and a sense of many hours having passed. I think the bell has recently tolled. I believe it is seven or eight o'clock.

I say, 'I should like, if you please, to be taken home now.'

Mrs Stiles laughs. 'Do you mean to that house, with those rough women? What a place to call your home!'

'I should think they miss me.'

'I should say they are glad to be rid of you—the nasty, pale-faced little thing that you are. Come here. It's your bed-time.' She has pulled me from the sofa, and begins to unlace my gown. I tug away from her, and strike her. She catches my arm and gives it a twist.

I say, 'You've no right to hurt me! You're nothing to me! I want my mothers, that love me!'

'Here's your mother,' she says, plucking at the portrait at my throat. 'That's all the mother you'll have here. Be grateful you have that, to know her face by. Now, stand and be steady. You must wear this, to give you the figure of a lady.'

She has taken the stiff buff dress from me, and all the linen beneath. Now she laces me tight in a girlish corset that grips me harder than the gown. Over this she puts a nightdress. On to my hands she pulls a pair of white skin gloves, which she stitches at the wrists. Only my feet remain bare. I fall upon the sofa and kick them. She catches me up and shakes me, then holds me still.

'See here,' she says, her face crimson and white, her breath coming hard upon my cheek. 'I had a little daughter once, that died. She had a fine black head of curling hair and a temper like a lamb's. Why dark-haired, gentle-tempered children should be made to die, and peevish pale girls like you to thrive, I cannot say. Why your mother, with all her fortune, should have turned out trash and perished, while I must live to keep your fingers smooth and see you grow into a lady, is a puzzle. Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.'

She catches me up and takes me to the dressing-room, makes me climb into the great, high, dusty bed, then lets down the curtains. There is a door beside the chimney-breast: she tells me it leads to another chamber, and a bad-tempered girl sleeps there. The girl will listen in the night, and if I am anything but still and good and quiet, she will hear; and her hand is very hard.

'Say your prayers,' she says, 'and ask Our Father to forgive you.'

Then she takes up the lamp and leaves, and I am plunged in an awful darkness.

I think it a terrible thing to do to a child; I think it terrible, even now. I lie, in an agony of misery and fear, straining my ears against the silence—wide awake, sick, hungry, cold, alone, in a dark so deep the shifting black of my own eye-lids seems the brighter. My corset holds me like a fist. My knuckles, tugged into their stiff skin gloves, are starting out in bruises. Now and then the great clock shifts its gears, and chimes; and I draw what comfort I can from my idea that somewhere in the house walk lunatics, and with them watchful nurses. Then I begin to wonder over the habits of the place. Perhaps here they give their lunatics licence to wander; perhaps a madwoman will come to my room, mistaking it for another? Perhaps the wicked-tempered girl that sleeps next door is herself demented, and will come and throttle me with her hard hand! Indeed, no sooner has this idea risen in me, than I begin to hear the smothered sounds of movement, close by—unnaturally close, they seem to me to be: I imagine a thousand skulking figures with their faces at the curtain, a thousand searching hands. I begin to cry. The corset I wear makes the tears come strangely. I long to lie still, so the lurking women shall not guess that I am there; but the stiller I try to be, the more wretched I grow. Presently, a spider or a moth brushing my cheek, I imagine the throttling hand has come at last, and jerk in a convulsion and, I suppose, shriek.

There comes the sound of an opening door, a light between the seams of the curtain. A face appears, close to my own—a kind face, not the face of a lunatic, but that of the girl who earlier brought my little tea of biscuits and sweet wine. 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.'