第二章_荆棘之城

The bookish old man, it turned out, was called Christopher Lilly. The niece's name was Maud. They lived west of London, out Maidenhead-way, near a village named Marlow, and in a house they called Briar. Gentleman's plan was to send me there alone, by train, in two days' time. He himself, he said, must stay in London for another week at least, to do the old man's business over the bindings of his books.

But he answered, that there were about a hundred girls between the Strand and Piccadilly, who dined very handsomely off that story, five nights a week; and if the hard swells of London could be separated from their shillings by it, then how much kinder wasn't Miss Maud Lilly likely to be, all alone and unknowing and sad as she was, and with no-one to tell her any better?

But Gentleman said I must go soon, in case the lady -- Miss Lilly -- should spoil our plot, by accidentally taking another girl to be her servant. The day after he came to Lant Street he sat and wrote her out a letter. He said he hoped she would pardon the liberty of his writing, but he had been on a visit to his old nurse -- that had been like a mother to him, when he was a boy -- and he had found her quite demented with grief, over the fate of her dead sister's daughter. Of course, the dead sister's daughter was meant to be me: the story was, that I had been maiding for a lady who was marrying and heading off for India, and had lost my place; that I was looking out for another mistress, but was meanwhile being tempted on every side to go to the bad; and that if only some soft-hearted lady would give me the chance of a situation far away from the evils of the city -- and so on.

I said, "If she'll believe bouncers like those, Gentleman, she must be even sillier than you first told us."

"You'll see," he said. And he sealed the letter and wrote the direction, and had one of our neighbours' boys run with it to the post.

Then, so sure was he of the success of his plan, he said they must begin at once to teach me how a proper lady's maid should be.

First, they washed my hair. I wore my hair then, like lots of the Borough girls wore theirs, divided in three, with a comb at the back and, at the sides, a few fat curls. If you turned the curls with a very hot iron, having first made the hair wet with sugar-and-water, you could make them hard as anything; they would last for a week like that, or longer. Gentleman, however, said he thought the style too fast for a country lady: he made me wash my hair till it was perfectly smooth, then had me divide it once -- just the once -- then pin it in a plain knot at the back of my head. He had Dainty wash her hair, too, and when I had combed and re-combed mine, and pinned and re-pinned it, until he was satisfied, he made me comb and pin hers in a matching style, as if hers was the lady's, Miss Lilly's. He fussed about us like a regular girl. When we had finished, Dainty and I looked that plain and bacon-faced, we might have been trying for places in a nunnery. John said if they would only put pictures of us in the dairies, it would be a new way of curdling milk.

John laughed. "I likes to see her cry," he said. "It makes her sweat the less."

"Can't you do anything to that girl of yours," said Mr Ibbs to John, "but make her cry?"

He was an evil boy, all right.

When Dainty heard that she pulled the pins from her hair and threw them at the fire. Some had hair still clinging to them, and the flames set it hissing.

But he was quite caught up in Gentleman's plot, despite himself. We all were. For the first time I ever knew, Mr Ibbs kept the blind pulled down on his shop door and let his brazier go cold. When people came knocking with keys to be cut, he sent them away. To the two or three thieves that brought poke, he shook his head. "Can't do it, my son. Not to-day. Got a little something cooking."

He only had Phil come, early in the morning. He sat him down and ran him through the points of a list that Gentleman had drawn up the night before; then Phil pulled his cap down over his eyes, and left. When he came back two hours later it was with a bag and a canvas-covered trunk, that he had got from a man he knew, who ran a crooked warehouse at the river.

The trunk was for me to take to the country. In the bag was a brown stuff dress, more or less my size; and a cloak, and shoes, and black silk stockings; and on top of it all, a heap of lady's real white underthings.

"Naked?" said Gentleman. "Why, as a nail. What else? She must take off her clothes when they grow foul; she must take them off to bathe. It will be your job to receive them when she does. It will be your job to pass her her fresh ones."

"The drawers?" I said. "You don't mean, she's naked?"

"Now, Sue," he said, "suppose this chair's Miss Lilly. How shall you dress her? Let's say you start with the stockings and drawers."

Mr Ibbs only undid the string at the neck of the bag, peeped in, and saw the linen; then he went and sat at the far side of the kitchen, where he had a Bramah lock he liked sometimes to take apart, and powder, and put back together. He made John go with him and hold the screws. Gentleman, however, took out the lady's items one by one, and placed them flat upon the table. Beside the table he set a kitchen chair.

Dainty put her hand to her mouth and tittered. She was sitting at Mrs Sucksby's feet, having her hair re-curled.

I tossed my head, to show I wasn't. He nodded, then took up a pair of the stockings, and then a pair of drawers. He placed them, dangling, over the seat of the kitchen chair.

"Her chemise, you must call it," he said. "And you must make sure to warm it, before she puts it on."

"What next?" he asked me.

I had not thought of this. I wondered how it would be to have to stand and hand a pair of drawers to a strange bare girl. A strange bare girl had once run, shrieking, down Lant Street, with a policeman and a nurse behind her. Suppose Miss Lilly took fright like that, and I had to grab her? I blushed, and Gentleman saw. "Come now," he said, almost smiling. "Don't say you're squeamish?"

I shrugged. "Her shimmy, I suppose."

"Now, her corset," he said next. "She will want you to tie this for her, tight as you like. Come on, let's see you do it."

He took the shimmy up and held it close to the kitchen fire. Then he put it carefully above the drawers, over the back of the chair, as if the chair was wearing it.

He put the corset about the shimmy, with the laces at the back; and while he leaned upon the chair to hold it fast, he made me pull the laces and knot them in a bow. They left lines of red and white upon my palms, as if I had been whipped.

"Do you care for it, miss, with a ruffle or a flounce?" and,

After the corset came a camisole, and after that a dicky; then came a ninehoop crinoline, and then more petticoats, this time of silk. Then Gentleman had Dainty run upstairs for a bottle of Mrs Sucksby's scent, and he had me spray it where the splintered wood of the chair-back showed between the ribbons of the shimmy, that he said would be Miss Lilly's throat.

"Oh! Forgive me if I pinch."

"Will you raise your arms, miss, for me to straighten this frill?" and,

"Should you like it to be tighter?"

"Why don't she wear the kind of stays that fasten at the front, like a regular girl?" said Dainty, watching.

"Are you ready for it now, miss?"

And all the time I must say:

"Do you like it drawn tight?"

"Because then," said Gentleman, "she shouldn't need a maid. And if she didn't need a maid, she shouldn't know she was a lady. Hey?" He winked.

At last, with all the bending and the fussing, I grew hot as a pig. Miss Lilly sat before us with her corset tied hard, her petticoats spread out about the floor, smelling fresh as a rose; but rather wanting, of course, about the shoulders and the neck.

John said, "Don't say much, do she?" He had been sneaking glances at us all this time, while Mr Ibbs put the powder to his Bramah.

He squatted at the side of the chair and smoothed his fingers over the bulging skirts; then he dipped his hand beneath them, reaching high into the layers of silk. He did it so neatly, it looked to me as if he knew his way, all right; and as he reached higher his cheek grew pink, the silk gave a rustle, the crinoline bucked, the chair quivered hard upon the kitchen floor, the joints of its legs faintly shrieking. Then it was still.

John still watched us, saying nothing, only blinking and jiggling his leg. Dainty rubbed her eye, her hair half curled, smelling powerfully of toffee.

"She's a lady," said Gentleman, stroking his beard, "and naturally shy. But she'll pick up like anything, with Sue and me to teach her. Won't you, darling?"

"There, you sweet little bitch," he said softly. He drew out his hand and held up a stocking. He passed it to me, and yawned. "Now, let's say it's bed-time."

Then Gentleman sent me upstairs, to put on the dress that Phil had got for me. It was a plain brown dress, more or less the colour of my hair; and the walls of our kitchen being also brown, when I came downstairs again I could hardly be seen. I should have rathered a blue gown, or a violet one; but Gentleman said it was the perfect dress for a sneak or for a servant -- and so all the more perfect for me, who was going to Briar to be both.

"Will you just lift your foot, miss, for me to take this from you?"

I began at the ribbons at the waist of the dickies, then let loose the laces of the corset and eased it free.

He kept me working like that for an hour or more. Then he warmed up a flatiron.

"Will you breathe a little softer, miss? and then it will come."

"Spit on this, will you, Dainty?" he said, holding it to her. She did; and when the spit gave a sizzle he took out a cigarette, and lit it on the iron's hot base. Then, while he stood by and smoked, Mrs Sucksby -- who had once, long ago, in the days before she ever thought of farming infants, been a mangling-woman in a laundry -- showed me how a lady's linen should be pressed and folded; and that, I should say, took about another hour.

We laughed at that; and then, when I had walked about the room to grow used to the skirt (which was narrow), and to let Dainty see where the cut was too large and needed stitching, he had me stand and try a curtsey. This was harder than it sounds. Say what you like about the kind of life I was used to, it was a life without masters: I had never curtseyed before to anyone. Now Gentleman had me dipping up and down until I thought I should be sick. He said curtseying came as natural to ladies' maids, as passing wind. He said if I would only get the trick, I should never forget it -- and he was right about that, at least, for I can still dip a proper curtsey, even now. -- Or could, if I cared to.

"Ain't it Susan?" I said.

"Ain't it Susan, sir. You must remember, I shan't be Gentleman to you at Briar. I shall be Mr Richard Rivers. You must call me sir; and you must call Mr Lilly sir; and the lady you must call miss or Miss Lilly or Miss Maud, as she directs you. And we shall all call you Susan." He frowned. "But, not Susan Trinder. That may lead them back to Lant Street if things go wrong. We must find you a better second name --"

Well. When we had finished with the curtseys he had me learn my story. Then, to test me, he made me stand before him and repeat my part, like a girl saying a catechism.

"Ain't it Susan, what?"

"Now then," he said. "What is your name?"

"Ain't it Susan Trinder?"

"I know real girls named Valentine!" I said.

"Perfect," he said; "-- if we were about to put you on the stage."

"Valentine," I said, straight off. What can I tell you? I was only seventeen. I had a weakness for hearts. Gentleman heard me, and curled his lip.

"Certainly not," said Gentleman. "A fanciful name might ruin us. This is a lifeand-death business. We need a name that will hide you, not bring you to everyone's notice. We need a name" -- he thought it over -- "an untraceable name, yet one we shall remember… Brown? To match your dress? Or -- yes, why not? Let's make it, Smith. Susan Smith." He smiled. "You are to be a sort of smith, after all. This sort, I mean."

"That's true," said Dainty. "Floy Valentine, and her two sisters. Lord, I hates those girls though. You don't want to be named for them, Sue."

I bit my finger. "Maybe not."

He let his hand drop, and turned it, and crooked his middle finger; and the sign, and the word he meant -- fingersmith -- being Borough code for thief, we laughed again.

He nodded. "Very good as to detail. Not so good, however, as to style. Come now: I know Mrs Sucksby raised you better than that. You're not selling violets. Say it again."

"The lady that used to be your nurse when you were a boy, sir."

I said it, with the sir after.

"Very good. And what is your home?"

"Oh, sir! Gratitude ain't in it!"

"With a kind lady, sir, in Mayfair; who, being lately married and about to go to India, will have a native girl to dress her, and so won't need me."

I pulled a face; but then said, more carefully,

"Better, better. And what was your situation, before this?"

"My home is at London, sir," I said. "My mother being dead, I live with my old aunty; which is the lady what used to be your nurse when you was a boy, sir."

"Dear me. You are to be pitied, Sue."

"I believe so, sir."

At last he coughed, and wiped his eyes. "Dear me, what fun," he said. "Now, where had we got to? Ah, yes. Tell me again. What is your name?"

"And are you grateful to Miss Lilly, for having you at Briar?"

"And what is your object, that no-one but we must know?"

"I must wake her in the mornings," I said, "and pour out her tea. I must wash her, and dress her, and brush her hair. I must keep her jewellery neat, and not steal it. I must walk with her when she has a fancy to walk, and sit when she fancies sitting. I must carry her fan for when she grows too hot, her wrap for when she feels nippy, her eau-de-Cologne for if she gets the headache, and her salts for when she comes over queer. I must be her chaperon for her drawinglessons, and not see when she blushes."

"Violets again!" He waved his hand. "Never mind, that will do. But don't hold my gaze so boldly, will you? Look, rather, at my shoe. That's good. Now, tell me this. This is important. What are your duties while attending your new mistress?"

"Splendid! And what is your character?"

"Honest as the day."

"That she will love you, and leave her uncle for your sake. That she will make your fortune; and that you, Mr Rivers, will make mine."

I took hold of my skirts and showed him one of those smooth curtseys, my eyes all the time on the toe of his boot.

"Three thousand pounds, Sue. Oh, my crikey! Dainty, pass me an infant, I want something to squeeze."

Gentleman stepped aside and lit a cigarette. "Not bad," he said. "Not bad, at all. A little fining down, I think, is all that's needed now. We shall try again later."

"Later?" I said. "Oh, Gentleman, ain't you finished with me yet? If Miss Lilly will have me as her maid for the sake of pleasing you, why should she care how fined down I am?"

Dainty clapped me. Mrs Sucksby rubbed her hands together and said,

"Mr Way!" said John with a snort. "Do they call him Milky?"

"She may not mind," he answered. "I think we might put an apron on Charley Wag and send him, for all she will mind or wonder. But it is not only her that you will have to fool. There is the old man, her uncle; and besides him, all his staff."

I said, "His staff?" I had not thought of this.

"Of course," he said. "Do you think a great house runs itself? First of all there's the steward, Mr Way --"

"No," said Gentleman. He turned back to me. "Mr Way," he said again. "I should say he won't trouble you much, though. But there is also Mrs Stiles, the housekeeper -- she may study you a little harder, you must be careful with her. And then there is Mr Way's boy Charles, and I suppose one or two girls, for the kitchen work; and one or two parlourmaids; and grooms and stable-boys and gardeners -- but you shan't see much of them, don't think of them."

A detail? That was like him. Telling you half of a story and making out you had it all.

Mrs Sucksby had a baby and was rolling it like dough. "Be fair now, Gentleman," she said, not looking over. "You did keep very dark about the servants last night."

I looked at him in horror. I said, "You never said about them before. Mrs Sucksby, did he say about them? Did he say, there will be about a hundred servants, that I shall have to play the maid for?"

He shrugged. "A detail," he said.

He got it at the post-office in the City. Our neighbours would have wondered what was up, if we'd had a letter come to the house. He got it, and brought it back, and opened it while we looked on; then we sat in silence, to hear it -- Mr Ibbs only drumming his fingers a little on the table-top, by which I knew that he was nervous; and so grew more nervous myself.

But it was too late now, for a change of heart. The next day Gentleman worked me hard again; and the day after that he got a letter, from Miss Lilly.

The letter was a short one. Miss Lilly said, first, what a pleasure it was, to have received Mr Rivers's note; and how thoughtful he was, and how kind to his old nurse. She was sure, she wished more gentlemen were as kind and as thoughtful as him!

Gentleman read on.

"God bless the Irish!" said Mr Ibbs, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his head.

Her uncle got on very badly, she said, now his assistant was gone. The house seemed very changed and quiet and dull; perhaps this was the weather, which seemed to have turned. As for her maid -- Here Gentleman tilted the letter, the better to catch the light. -- As for her maid, poor Agnes: she was pleased to be able to tell him that Agnes looked set not to die after all --

We heard that and drew in our breaths. Mrs Sucksby closed her eyes, and I saw Mr Ibbs give a glance at his cold brazier and reckon up the business he had lost in the past two days. But then Gentleman smiled. The maid was not about to die; but her health was so ruined and her spirits so low, they were sending her back to Cork.

"I shall be glad to see the girl you speak of," Miss Lilly wrote. "I should be glad if you would send her to me, at once. I am grateful to anyone for remembering me. I am not over-used to people thinking of my comforts. If she be only a good and willing girl, then I am sure I shall love her. And she will be the dearer to me, Mr Rivers, because she will have come to me from London, that has you in it."

The supper was a pig's head, stuffed at the ears -- a favourite of mine, and got in my honour. Mr Ibbs took the carving-knife to the back-door step, put up his sleeves, and stooped to sharpen the blade. He leaned with his hand on the doorpost, and I watched him do it with a queer sensation at the roots of my hair: for all up the post were cuts from where, each Christmas Day when I was a girl, he had laid the knife upon my head to see how high I'd grown. Now he drew the blade back and forth across the stone, until it sang; then he handed it to Mrs Sucksby and she dished out the meat. She always carved, in our house. An ear apiece, for Mr Ibbs and Gentleman; the snout for John and Dainty; and the cheeks, that were the tenderest parts, for herself and for me. It was all got, as I've said, in my honour. But, I don't know -- perhaps it was seeing the marks on the door-post; perhaps it was thinking of the soup that Mrs Sucksby would make, when I wouldn't be there to eat it, with the bones of the roast pig's head; perhaps it was the head itself -- which seemed to me to be grimacing, rather, the lashes of its eyes and the bristles of its snout gummed brown with treacly tears -- but as we sat about the table, I grew sad. John and Dainty wolfed their dinner down, laughing and quarrelling, now and then firing up when Gentleman teased, and now and then sulking. Mr Ibbs went neatly to work on his plate, and Mrs Sucksby went neatly to work on hers; and I picked over my bit of pork and had no appetite.

He smiled again, raised the letter to his mouth, and passed it back and forth across his lips. His snide ring glittered in the light of the lamps. It had all turned out, of course, just as the clever devil had promised. That night -- that was to be my last night at Lant Street, and the first night of all the nights that were meant to lead to Gentleman's securing of Miss Lilly's fortune -- that night Mr Ibbs sent out for a hot roast supper, and put irons to heat in the fire, for making flip, in celebration.

We sat, and everyone talked and laughed, saying what a fine thing it would be when Gentleman was made rich, and I came home with my cool three thousand; and still I kept rather quiet, and no-one seemed to notice. At last Mrs Sucksby patted her stomach and said, "Won't you give us a tune, Mr Ibbs, to put the baby to bed by?"

I gave half to Dainty. She gave it to John. He snapped his jaws and howled, like a dog. And then, when the plates were cleared away Mr Ibbs beat the eggs and the sugar and the rum, to make flip. He filled seven glasses, took the irons from the brazier, waved them for a second to take the sting of the heat off, then plunged them in. Heating the flip was like setting fire to the brandy on a plum pudding -- everyone liked to see it done and hear the drinks go hiss. John said, "Can I do one, Mr Ibbs?" -- his face red from the supper, and shiny like paint, like the face of a boy in a picture in a toy-shop window.

Mr Ibbs could whistle like a kettle, for an hour at a go. He put his glass aside and wiped the flip from his moustache, and started up with "The Tarpaulin Jacket". Mrs Sucksby hummed along until her eyes grew damp, and then the hum got broken. Her husband had been a sailor, and been lost at sea.-- Lost to her, I mean. He lived in the Bermudas.

"Handsome," she said, when the song was finished. "But let's have a lively one next, for heaven's sake! -- else I shall be drove quite maudlin. Let's see the youngsters have a bit of a dance."

Mr Ibbs struck up with a quick tune then, and Mrs Sucksby clapped, and John and Dainty got up and pushed the chairs back. "Will you hold my earrings for me, Mrs Sucksby?" said Dainty. They danced the polka until the china ornaments upon the mantelpiece jumped and the dust rose inches high about their thumping feet. Gentleman stood and leaned and watched them, smoking a cigarette, calling "Hup!" and "Go it, Johnny!", as he might call, laughing, to a terrier in a fight he had no bet on.

When they asked me to join them, I said I would not. The dust made me sneeze and, after all, the iron that had warmed my flip had been heated too hard, and the egg had curdled. Mrs Sucksby had put by a glass and a plate of morsels of meat for Mr Ibbs's sister, and I said I would carry them up.-- "All right, dear girl," she said, still clapping out the beat. I took the plate and the glass and a candle, and slipped upstairs.

It was like stepping out of heaven, I always thought, to leave our kitchen on a winter's night. Even so, when I had left the food beside Mr Ibbs's sleeping sister and seen to one or two of the babies, that had woken with the sounds of the dancing below, I did not go back to join the others. I walked the little way along the landing, to the door of the room I shared with Mrs Sucksby; and then I went up the next pair of stairs, to the little attic I had been born in.

This room was always cold. Tonight there was a breeze up, the window was loose, and it was colder than ever. The floor was plain boards, with strips of drugget on it.

The walls were bare, but for a bit of blue oil-cloth that had been tacked to catch the splashes from a wash-stand. The stand, at the moment, was draped with a waistcoat and a shirt, of Gentleman's, and one or two collars. He always slept here, when he came to visit; though he might have made a bed with Mr Ibbs, down in the kitchen. I know which place I would have chosen. On the floor sagged his high leather boots, that he had scraped the mud from and shined. Beside them was his bag, with more white linen spilling from it. On the seat of a chair were some coins from his pocket, a packet of cigarettes, and sealing-wax. The coins were light. The wax was brittle, like toffee.

The glass of the window had the first few blooms of a new frost upon it, and I held my finger to it, to make the ice turn to dirty water. I could still catch Mr Ibbs's whistle and the bounce of Dainty's feet, but before me the streets of the Borough were dark. There was only here and there a feeble light at a window like mine, and then the lantern of a coach, throwing shadows; and then a person, running hard against the cold, quick and dark as the shadows, and as quickly come and gone. I thought of all the thieves that must be there, and all the thieves' children; and then of all the regular men and women who lived their lives -- their strange and ordinary lives -- in other houses, other streets, in the brighter parts of London. I thought of Maud Lilly, in her great house. She did not know my name -- I had not known hers, three days before. She did not know that I was standing, plotting her ruin, while Dainty Warren and John Vroom danced a polka in my kitchen.

The bed was roughly made. There was a red velvet curtain upon it, with the rings taken off, for a counterpane: it had been got from a burning house, and still smelt of cinders. I took it up and put it about my shoulders, like a cloak. Then I pinched out the flame of my candle and stood at the window, shivering, looking out at the roofs and chimneys, and at the Horsemonger Lane Gaol where my mother was hanged.

Then there came the opening of the kitchen door and the sound of footsteps on the stair, and then Mrs Sucksby's voice, calling for me. I didn't answer. I heard her walk to the bedrooms below, and look for me there; then there was a silence, then her feet again, upon the attic stairs, and then came the light of her candle. The climb made her sigh a little -- only a little, for she was very nimble, for all that she was rather stout.

But, she was very dark. Gentleman had said that the other Maud, his Maud, was fair and rather handsome. But when I thought of her, I could picture her only as thin and brown and straight, like the kitchen chair that I had tied the corset to.

I tried another curtsey. The velvet curtain made me clumsy. I tried again. I began to sweat, in sudden fear.

What was she like? I knew a girl named Maud once, she had half a lip. She used to like to make out that the other half had been lost in a fight; I knew for a fact, however, she had been born like that, she couldn't fight putty. She died in the end -- not from fighting, but through eating bad meat. Just one bit of bad meat killed her, just like that.

She shook her head and smiled. "Now, then," she said. She led me to the bed, and we sat and she drew down my head until it rested in her lap, and she put back the curtain from my cheek and stroked my hair. "Now, then."

"Are you here then, Sue?" she said quietly. "And all on your own, in the dark?"

She looked about her, at all that I had looked at -- at the coins and the sealingwax, and Gentleman's boots and leather bag. Then she came to me, and put her warm, dry hand to my cheek, and I said -- just as if she had tickled or pinched me, and the words were a chuckle or a cry I could not stop -- I said: "What if I ain't up to it, Mrs Sucksby? What if I can't do it? Suppose I lose my nerve and let you down? Hadn't we ought to send Dainty, after all?"

She drew free a strand of hair that was caught about my ear.

"Ain't it a long way to go?" I said, looking up at her face.

"Shall you think of me, while I am there?"

"Every minute," she said, quietly. "Ain't you my own girl? And won't I worry? But you shall have Gentleman by you. I should never have let you go, for any ordinary villain."

"Not so far," she answered.

She held my gaze, then raised her eyes and nodded to the view beyond the window. She said, "I know she would have done it, and not given it a thought. And I know what she would feel in her heart -- what dread, but also what pride, and the pride part winning -- to see you doing it now."

That made me thoughtful. For a minute, we sat and said nothing. And what I asked her next was something I had never asked before -- something which, in all my years at Lant Street, amongst all those dodgers and thieves, I had never heard anyone ask, not ever. I said, in a whisper, "Do you think it hurts, Mrs Sucksby, when they drop you?"

That was true, at least. But still my heart beat fast. I thought again of Maud Lilly, sitting sighing in her room, waiting for me to come and unlace her stays and hold her nightgown before the fire. Poor lady, Dainty had said. I chewed at the inside of my lip. Then: "Ought I to do it, though, Mrs Sucksby?" I said. "Ain't it a very mean trick, and shabby?"

Her hand, that was smoothing my hair, grew still. Then it started up stroking, sure as before. She said, "I should say you don't feel nothing but the rope about your neck. Rather ticklish, I should think it."

"Ticklish?"

"Say then, pricklish."

Still her hand kept smoothing.

"But when the drop is opened?" I said. "Wouldn't you say you felt it then?"

She shifted her leg. "Perhaps a twitch," she admitted, "when the drop is opened."

I thought of the men I had seen fall at Horsemonger Lane. They twitched, all right. They twitched and kicked about, like monkeys on sticks.

I looked up at her again. She had set her candle on the floor, and the light striking her face all from beneath, it made her cheeks seem swollen and her eyes seem old. I shivered, and she moved her hand to my shoulder and rubbed me, hard, through the velvet.

"But it comes that quick at the last," she went on then, "that I rather think the quickness must take the pain clean out of it. And when it comes to dropping a lady -- well, you know they place the knot in such a way, Sue, that the end comes all the quicker?"

Then she tilted her head. "There's Mr Ibbs's sister, quite bewildered again," she said, "and calling on her mother. She has been calling on her, poor soul, these fifteen years. I shouldn't like to come to that, Sue. I should say that, of all the ways a body might go, the quick and the neat way might, after all, be best." She said it; and then she winked.

But I didn't think that then. I only rose and kissed her, and made my hair neat where she had stroked it loose; and then came the thud of the kitchen door again, and this time heavier feet upon the stairs, and then Dainty's voice.

She said it, and seemed to mean it.

"Where are you, Sue? Ain't you coming for a dance? Mr Ibbs has got his wind up, we're having a right old laugh down here."

I do sometimes wonder, however, whether she mightn't only have said it to be kind.

Her shout woke half the babies, and that half woke the other. But Mrs Sucksby said that she would see to them, and I went back down, and this time I did dance, with Gentleman as my partner. He held me in a waltz-step. He was drunk and held me tight. John danced again with Dainty, and we bumped about the kitchen for a half-an-hour -- Gentleman all the time still calling, "Go it, Johnny!" and "Come up, boy! Come up!", and Mr Ibbs stopping once to rub a bit of butter on his lips, to keep the whistle sweet.

Next day, at midday, was when I left them. I packed all my bits of stuff into the canvas-covered trunk and wore the plain brown dress and the cloak and, over my flat hair, a bonnet. I had learned as much as Gentleman could teach me after three days' work. I knew my story and my new name -- Susan Smith. There was only one more thing that needed to be done, and as I sat taking my last meal in that kitchen -- which was bread and dried meat, the meat rather too dried, and clinging to my gums -- Gentleman did it. He brought from his bag a piece of paper and a pen and some ink, and wrote me out a character. He wrote it off in a moment. Of course, he was used to faking papers. He held it up for the ink to dry, then read it out. It began:

"What do you think, Mrs S?" he said, smiling. "Will that get Sue her situation?"

But Mrs Sucksby said she couldn't hope to judge it.

"To whom it might concern. Lady Alice Dunraven, of Whelk Street, Mayfair, recommends Miss Susan Smith" -- and it went on like that, I forget the rest of it, but it sounded all right to me. He placed it flat again and signed it in a lady's curling hand. Then he held it to Mrs Sucksby.

"You know best, dear boy," she said, looking away.

Of course, if we ever took help at Lant Street, it wasn't character we looked for so much as lack of it. There was a little dwarfish girl that used to come sometimes, to boil the babies' napkins and to wash the floors; but she was a thief. We couldn't have had honest girls come. They would have seen enough in three minutes of the business of the house to do for us all. We couldn't have had that.

So Mrs Sucksby waved the paper away, and Gentleman read it through a second time, then winked at me, then folded it and sealed it and put it in my trunk. I swallowed the last of my dried meat and bread, and fastened my cloak. There was only Mrs Sucksby to say good-bye to. John Vroom and Dainty never got up before one. Mr Ibbs was gone to crack a safe at Bow: he had kissed my cheek an hour before, and given me a shilling. I put my hat on. It was a dull brown thing, like my dress. Mrs Sucksby set it straight. Then she put her hands to my face and smiled.

But then her smile grew awful. I had never been parted from her before, for more than a day. She turned away, to hide her falling tears.

The day was a miserable one. Even so, it was not so often I got to cross the water, and I said I should like to walk as far as Southwark Bridge, to look at the view. I had thought I should see all of London from there; but the fog grew thicker the further we went. At the bridge it seemed worst of all. You could see the black dome of St Paul's, the barges on the water; you could see all the dark things of the city, but not the fair -- the fair were lost or made like shadows.

"God bless you, Sue!" she said. "You are making us rich!"

"Take her quick," she said to Gentleman. Take her quick, and don't let me see it!"

And so he put his arm about my shoulders and led me from the house. He found a boy to walk behind us, carrying my trunk. He meant to take me to a cabstand and drive me to the station at Paddington, and see me on my train.

"Queer thing, to think of the river down there," said Gentleman, peering over the edge. He leaned, and spat.

We had not bargained on the fog. It made the traffic slow to a crawl, and though we found a cab, after twenty minutes we paid the driver off and walked again. I had been meant to catch the one o'clock train; now, stepping fast across some great square, we heard that hour struck out, and then the quarter, and then the half -- all maddeningly damp and half-hearted, they sounded, as if the clappers and the bells that rung them had been wound about with flannel.

"Had we not rather turn around," I said, "and try again tomorrow?"

But after all, when we got to Paddington at last we found the trains all delayed and made slow, just like the traffic: we had to wait another hour then, until the guard should raise the signal that the Bristol train -- which was to be my train as far as Maidenhead, where I must get off and join another -- was ready to be boarded. We stood beneath the ticking clock, fidgeting and blowing on our hands. They had lit the great lamps there, but the fog having come in and mixed with the steam, it drifted from arch to arch and made the light very poor. The walls were hung with black, from the death of Prince Albert; the crape had got streaked by birds. I thought it very gloomy, for so grand a place. And of course, there was a vast press of people beside us, all waiting and cursing, or jostling by, or letting their children and their dogs run into our legs.

But Gentleman said there would be a driver and a trap sent out to Marlow, to meet my train there; and I had better be late, he thought, than not arrive at all.

"Fuck this," said Gentleman in a hard peevish voice, when the wheel of a bathchair ran over his toe. He stooped to wipe the dust from his boot, then straightened and lit up a cigarette, then coughed. He had his collar turned high and wore a black slouch hat. His eyes were yellow at the whites, as if stained with flip. He did not, at that moment, look like a man a girl would go silly over.

He coughed again. "Fuck this cheap tobacco, too," he said, pulling free a strand that had come loose on his tongue. Then he caught my eye and his face changed. "Fuck this cheap life, in all its forms -- eh, Suky? No more of that for you and me, soon."

I looked away from him, saying nothing. I had danced a fast waltz with him the night before; now, away from Lant Street and Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, amongst all the men and women that were gathered grumbling about us, he seemed just another stranger, and I was shy of him. I thought, You're nothing to me. And again I almost said that we ought to turn round and go home; but I knew that if I did he would grow more peevish and show his temper; and so, I did not.

He finished his smoke, then smoked another. He went off for a piddle, and I went off for a piddle of my own. I heard a whistle blown as I was tidying my skirts; and when I got back, I found the guard had sent out the word and half the crowd had started up and was making in a great sweating rush for the waiting train. We went with them, Gentleman leading me to a second-class coach, then handing up my trunk to the man who was fixing the bags and boxes on the roof. I took a place beside a white-faced woman with a baby on her arm; across from her were two stout farmer-types. I think she was glad to see me get on, for of course, me being dressed so neat and comely, she couldn't tell -- ha ha! -- that I was a thieving Borough girl. Behind me came a boy and his old dad, with a canary in a cage. The boy sat beside the farmers. The old dad sat by me. The coach tilted and creaked, and we all put back our heads and stared at the bits of dust and varnish that tumbled from the ceiling where the luggage thumped and slithered about above.

Then the porter climbed down from the roof, there came another whistle, the train gave a horrible lurch and began to move off.

The door hung open another minute and then was closed. In all the fuss of getting aboard I had hardly looked at Gentleman. He had handed me on, then turned to talk with the guard. Now he came to the open window and said,

"I'm afraid you may be very late, Sue. But I think the trap will wait for you at Marlow. I am sure it will wait. You must hope that it will."

I knew at once that it would not, and felt a rush of misery and fear. I said quickly, "Come with me, can't you? And see me to the house?"

Gentleman lifted up his hat and followed until the engine got up its speed; then he gave it up -- I saw him turn, put his hat back on, twist up his collar. Then he was gone. The coach creaked harder and began to sway. The woman and the men put their hands to the leather straps; the boy put his face to the window. The canary put its beak to the bars of its cage. The baby began to cry. It cried for half an hour.

But how could he do that? He shook his head and looked sorry. The two farmer-types, the woman, the boy and the old dad all watched us -- wondering I suppose what house we meant, and what a man in a slouch hat, with a voice like that, was doing talking to a girl like me about it.

"Gin?" she said -- like I might have said, poison. Then she made a mouth, and showed me her shoulder -- not so pleased to have me sitting by her, the uppity bitch, after all.

"Ain't you got any gin?" I said to the woman at last.

What with her and the baby, and the fluttering bird; and the old dad -- who fell asleep and snorted; and the boy -- who made paper pellets; and the farmertypes -- who smoked and grew bilious; and the fog -- that made the train jerk and halt and arrive at Maidenhead two hours later than its time, so that I missed one Marlow train and must wait for the next one -- what with all that, my journey was very wretched. I had not brought any food with me, for we had all supposed I should arrive at Briar in time to take a servant's tea there. I had not had a morsel since that dinner of bread and dried meat, at noon: it had stuck to my gums then, but I should have called it wonderful at Maidenhead, seven hours later. The station there was not like Paddington, where there were coffee-stalls and milk-stalls and a pastry-cook's shop. There was only one place for vittles, and that was shut up and closed. I sat on my trunk. My eyes stung, from the fog. When I blew my nose, I turned a handkerchief black. A man saw me do it. "Don't cry," he said, smiling.

It was one thing to flirt in town, however. But I wasn't in town now. I wouldn't answer.

He winked, then asked me my name.

When the train came for Marlow I sat at the back of a coach, and he sat at the front, but with his face my way -- he tried for an hour to catch my eye. I remembered Dainty saying that she had sat on a train once, with a gentleman near, and he had opened his trousers and showed her his cock, and asked her to hold it; and she had held it, and he had given her a pound. I wondered what I would do, if this man asked me to touch his cock -- whether I would scream, or look the other way, or touch it, or what.

"I ain't crying!" I said.

Anyway, money like that was hard to move on. Dainty had never been able to spend hers for fear her father should see it and know she'd been gay. She hid it behind a loose brick in the wall of the starch works, and put a special mark on the brick, that only she would know. She said she would tell it on her death-bed, and we could use the pound to bury her.

But then, I hardly needed the pound, where I was headed!

I told him there was supposed to be a man with a trap, to take me up to Briar. He said, Did I mean the trap that came to fetch the post? That would have been and gone, three hours before. He looked me over. "Come down from London, have you?" he said. Then he called to the driver, who was looking from his cab. "She've come down from London, meant for Briar. I told her, the Briar trap will have come and gone."

Well, the man on my train watched me very hard, but if he had his trousers open I never saw; and at last he tilted his hat to me and got off. There were more stops after that, and at every one someone else got off, from further down along the train; and no-one got on. The stations grew smaller and darker, until finally there was nothing at them but a tree -- there was nothing to see anywhere, but trees, and beyond them bushes, and beyond them fog -- grey fog, not brown -- with the black night sky above it. And when the trees and the bushes seemed just about at their thickest, and the sky was blacker than I should have thought a sky naturally could be, the train stopped a final time; and that was Marlow.

Here no-one got off save me. I was the last passenger of all. The guard called the stop, and came to lift down my trunk. He said, "You'll want that carrying. Is there no-one come to meet you?"

"That'll have come and gone, that will," called the driver. "That'll have come and gone, I should say three hours back."

I stood and shivered. It was colder here than at home. It was colder and darker and the air smelt queer, and the people -- didn't I say it? -- the people were howling simpletons. I said, "Ain't there a cab-man could take me?"

"A cab-man?" said the guard. He shouted it to the driver. "Wants a cab-man!"

They laughed until they coughed. The guard took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, saying, "Dearie me, oh! dearie, dearie me. A cab-man, at Marlow!"

"A cab-man!"

"Oh, fuck off," I said. "Fuck off, the pair of you."

And I caught up my trunk and walked with it to where I could see one or two lights shining, that I thought must be the houses of the village. The guard said, "Why, you hussy! -- I shall let Mr Way know about you. See what he thinks -- you bringing your London tongue down here --!"

I can't say what I meant to do next. I did not know how far it was to Briar. I did not even know which road I ought to take. London was forty miles away, and I was afraid of cows and bulls.

He was an oldish man and his name was William Inker. He was Mr Lilly's groom. He took my trunk and helped me into the seat beside his own, and geed up the horse; and when -- being struck by the breeze as we drove -- he felt me shiver, he reached for a tartan blanket for me to put about my legs. It was six or seven miles to Briar, and he took it at an easy sort of trot, smoking a pipe. I told him about the fog -- there was still something of a mist, even now, even there -- and the slow trains.

"You'll be Susan Smith," he said, "come down from London. Miss Maud've been fretting after you all day."

But after all, country roads aren't like city ones. There are only about four of them, and they all go to the same place in the end. I started to walk, and had walked a minute when there came, behind me, the sound of hooves and creaking wheels. And then a cart drew alongside me, and the driver pulled up and lifted up a lantern, to look at my face.

He said, "That's London. Known for its fogs, ain't it? Been much down to the country before?"

Now, I only knew one Frenchman -- a housebreaker, they called him Jack the German, I don't know why. He was tall enough; but I said, to please William Inker, "Shortish, I suppose."

"Once or twice," I said.

"I expect so," he said.

"Short kind of chaps, the French chaps, I expect? In the leg, I mean."

"That's the Briar bell, sounding the hour," said William Inker. We sat in silence after that, and in a little time we reached a high stone wall and took a road that ran beside it. Soon the wall became a great arch, and then I saw behind it the roof and the pointed windows of a greyish house, half-covered with ivy. I thought it a grand enough crib, but not so grand nor so grim perhaps as Gentleman had painted it. But when William Inker slowed the horse and I put the blanket from me and reached for my trunk, he said, "Wait up, sweetheart, we've half a mile yet!" And then, to a man who had appeared with a lantern at the door of the house, he called: "Good night, Mr Mack. You may shut the gate behind us. Here is Miss Smith, look, safe at last."

I took a second, smoothing the blanket out over my lap.

"Been maiding in the city, have you? Good place, your last one?"

"Pretty good," I said.

"Rum way of speaking you've got, for a lady's maid," he said then. "Been to France ever?"

The road was perfectly quiet and perfectly dark, and I imagined the sound of the horse, and the wheels, and our voices, carrying far across the fields. Then I heard, from rather near, the slow tolling of a bell -- a very mournful sound, it seemed to me at that moment, not like the cheerful bells of London. It tolled nine times.

"Not much," I said.

The building I had thought was Briar was only the lodge! I stared, saying nothing, and we drove on past it, between two rows of bare dark trees, that curved as the road curved, then dipped into a kind of hollow, where the air -- that had seemed to clear a little, on the open country lanes -- grew thick again. So thick it grew, I felt it, damp, upon my face, upon my lashes and lips; and closed my eyes.

Then the dampness passed away. I looked, and stared again. The road had risen, we had broken out from between the lines of trees into a gravel clearing, and here -- rising vast and straight and stark out of the woolly fog, with all its windows black or shuttered, and its walls with a dead kind of ivy clinging to them, and a couple of its chimneys sending up threads of a feeble-looking grey smoke -- here was Briar, Maud Lilly's great house, that I must now call my home.

We did not cross before the face of it, but kept well to the side, then took up a lane that swung round behind it, where there was a muddle of yards and outhouses and porches, and more dark walls and shuttered windows and the sound of barking dogs. High in one of the buildings was the round white face and great black hands of the clock I had heard striking across the fields. Beneath it, William Inker pulled the horse up, then helped me down. A door was opened in one of the walls and a woman stood gazing at us, her arms folded against the cold.

Mrs Stiles said, "Well, you're about as late as you could be. Any longer and you should've had to stay at the village. We keep early hours here."

The door led to a passage, and this led to a great, bright kitchen, about five times the size of our kitchen at Lant Street, and with pots set in rows upon a whitewashed wall, and a few rabbits hanging on hooks from the beams of the ceiling. At a wide scrubbed table sat a boy, a woman and three or four girls -- of course, they looked very hard at me. The girls studied my bonnet and the cut of my cloak. Their frocks and aprons being only servants' wear, I didn't trouble myself to study them.

"There's Mrs Stiles, heard the trap come," said William. We crossed the yard to join her. Up above us, at a little window, I thought I saw a candle-flame shine, and flutter, and then go out.

She was about fifty, with a white cap with frills and a way of not quite looking in your eye as she spoke to you. She carried keys about her, on a chain at her waist. Plain, old-fashioned keys, I could have copied any one of them.

"Has she," said Mrs Stiles.

The girls at the table tittered to hear me speak. The woman who sat with them -- the cook, it turned out -- got up and set about making me a supper-tray. William Inker said, "Miss Smith've come from a pretty fine place in London, Mrs Stiles. And she've been several times in France."

"Only one or two times," I said. Now everyone would suppose I had been boasting.

I made her half a curtsey. I did not say -- which I might have -- that she should be thankful I had not turned back at Paddington; that I wished I had turned back; and that for anyone to have had the time that I had had, in trying to get forty miles from London, perhaps went to prove that London wasn't meant to be left -- I did not say that. What I said was: "I'm sure, I'm very grateful that the trap was sent at all."

"She said the chaps there are very short in the leg."

Mrs Stiles gave a nod. The girls at the table tittered again, and one of them whispered something that made the boy grow red. But then my tray was made, and Mrs Stiles said, "Margaret, you can carry this through to my pantry. Miss Smith, I suppose I should take you to where you might splash your hands and face."

I took this to mean that she would show me to the privy, and I said I wished she would. She gave me a candle and took me down another short passage, to another yard, that had an earth closet in it with paper on a spike.

Then she took me to her own little room. It had a chimney-piece with white wax flowers on it, and a picture of a sailor in a frame, that I supposed was Master Stiles, gone off to Sea; and another picture, of an angel, done entirely in black hair, that I presumed was Mr Stiles, gone off to Glory. She sat and watched me take my supper. It was mutton, minced, and bread-and-butter; and you may imagine that, being so hungry as I was, I made very short work of it. As I ate, there came the slow chiming of the clock that I had heard before, sounding half-past nine. I said, "Does the clock chime all night?"

Mrs Stiles nodded. "All night, and all day, at the hour and the half. Mr Lilly likes his days run very regular. You'll find that out."

"And Miss Lilly?" I said, picking crumbs from the corner of my mouth. "What does she like?"

She smoothed her apron. "Miss Maud likes what her uncle likes," she answered.

Then she rearranged her lips. She said, "You'll know, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud is quite a young girl, for all that she's mistress of this great house. The servants don't trouble her, for the servants answer to me. I should have said I had been a housekeeper long enough to know how to secure a maid for my own mistress -- but there, even a housekeeper must do as she is bid, and Miss Maud've gone quite over my head in this matter. Quite over my head. I shouldn't have thought that perfectly wise, in a girl of her years; but we shall see how it turns out."

She said, "I have a great staff of servants, to make sure that it does. This is a well-kept house, Miss Smith, and I hope you will take to it. I don't know what you might be used to in your last place. I don't know what might be considered a lady's maid's duties, in London. I have never been there" -- she had never been to London! -- "so cannot say. But if you mind my other girls, then I am sure they will mind you. The men and the stable-boys, of course, I hope I shall never see you talking with more than you can help…"

I said, "I am sure whatever Miss Lilly does must turn out well."

She went on like that for a quarter of an hour -- all the time, as I have mentioned, never quite catching my eye. She told me where I might walk in the house, and where I must take my meals, and how much sugar I should be allowed for my own use, and how much beer, and when I could expect my underclothes laundered. The tea that was boiled in Miss Maud's teapot, she said, it had been the habit of the last lady's maid to pass on to the girls in the kitchen. Likewise the wax-ends from Miss Maud's candle-sticks: they were to be given to Mr Way. And Mr Way would know how many wax-ends to expect, since it was him who doled out the candles. Corks went to Charles, the knife-boy. Bones and skins went to Cook.

"The pieces of soap that Miss Maud leaves in her wash-stand, however," she said, "as being too dry to raise a lather from: those you may keep."

Well, that's servants for you -- always grubbing over their own little patch. As if I cared, about candle-ends and soap! If I had never quite felt it before, I knew then what it was, to be in expectations of three thousand pounds.

Then she said that if I had finished my supper she would be pleased to show me to my room. But she would have to ask me to be very quiet as we went, for Mr Lilly liked a silent house and couldn't bear upset, and Miss Maud had a set of nerves that were just like his, that wouldn't allow of her being kept from her rest or made fretful.

Her voice and her tread grew softer the higher we went. At last, when we had climbed three pairs of stairs, she took me to a door, that she said in a whisper was the door to my room. Putting her finger before her lips, she slowly turned the handle.

So she said; and then she took up her lamp, and I took up my candle, and she led me out into the passage and up a dark staircase. "This is the servants' way," she said as we walked, "that you must always take, unless Miss Maud directs you otherwise."

I had never had a room of my own before. I did not particularly want one, now. But, since I must have one, this one I supposed would do. It was small and plain -- would have looked better, perhaps, for a paper garland or two, or a few plaster dogs. But there was a looking-glass upon the mantel and, before the fire, a rug. Beside the bed -- William Inker must have brought it up -- was my canvas trunk.

Near the head of the bed there was another door, shut quite tight and with no key in it.

"Where does that lead?" I asked Mrs Stiles, thinking it might lead to another passage or a closet.

"That's the door to Miss Maud's room," she said.

Perhaps I said it rather loud; but Mrs Stiles gave a shudder, as if I might just have shrieked or sprung a rattle.

"Miss Maud sleeps very poorly," she answered quietly. "If she wakes in the night, then she likes her girl to go to her. She won't call out for you, since you are a stranger to her now: we will put Margaret in a chair outside her door, and Margaret shall take her her breakfast tomorrow, and dress her for the day. After that, you must be ready to be called in and examined."

I said, "Miss Maud is through there, asleep in her bed?"

She said she hoped Miss Maud would find me pleasing. I said I did, too. She left me, then. She went very softly, but at the door she paused, to put her hand to the keys at her chain. I saw her do it, and grew quite cold: for she looked all at once like nothing so much as the matron of a gaol. I said, before I could stop myself:

"You're not going to lock me in?"

I said I didn't know. She looked me over, drew in her chin, then shut the door and left me.

Then I sat upon the bed. It was hard. I wondered if the sheets and blankets had been changed since the last maid left with the scarlatina. It was too dark to see. Mrs Stiles had taken her lamp and I had set my candle down in a draught: the flame of it plunged about and made great black shadows. I unfastened my cloak, but kept it draped about my shoulders. I ached, from the cold and the travelling; and the mince I had eaten had come too late -- it sat in my stomach and hurt. It was ten o'clock. We laughed at people who went to bed before midnight, at home.

"Lock you in?" she answered, with a frown. "Why should I do that?"

I might as well have been put in gaol, I thought. A gaol would have been livelier. Here, there was only an awful silence: you listened, and it troubled your ears. And when you got up and went to the window and looked outside, you nearly fainted to see how high you were, and how dark were the yard and the stables, how still and quiet the land beyond.

I held up my thumb. Kiss that! I thought.

If I had been a crying sort of girl, I should certainly have cried then, imagining that.

I thought that her needle had left the scent there, of John Vroom's dog-skin coat. I thought of the soup that Mrs Sucksby would have made, from the bones of that pig's head; and it was quite as strange as I knew it would be, to imagine them all sitting eating it, perhaps thinking of me, perhaps thinking of something else entirely.

I opened my trunk, to look at all the things that I had brought with me from Lant Street -- but then, none of them were really mine, they were only the petticoats and shimmies that Gentleman had made me take. I took off my dress, and for a second held it against my face. The dress was not mine, either; but I found the seams that Dainty had made, and smelled them.

I remembered the candle I had seen, fluttering at a window as I walked with William Inker. I wondered which room it was that that light had shone from.

But I was never a girl for tears. I changed into my nightgown, put my cloak back on above it, and stood in my stockings and my unbuttoned shoes. I looked at the shut door at the head of the bed, and at the key-hole in it. I wondered if Maud kept a key on her side and had it turned. I wondered what I would see, if I went and bent and looked -- and who can think a thing like that, and not go and do it? But when I did go, on tiptoe, and stoop to the lock, I saw a dim light, a shadow -- nothing clearer than that, no sign of any kind of sleeping or wakeful or fretful girl, or anything.

Beyond that, there was nothing -- though I listened for a minute, maybe two. Then I gave it up. I took off my shoes and my garters and got into bed: the sheets were cold and felt damp, like sheets of pastry. I put my cloak over the bed-clothes -- for extra warmth; and also so that I might quickly seize it, if someone came at me in the night and I wanted to run. You never knew. The candle I left burning. If Mr Way was to complain that that was one stub less, too bad. Even a thief has her weak points. The shadows still danced about. The pastry sheets stayed cold. The great clock sounded half-past ten -- eleven -- halfpast eleven -- twelve. I lay and shivered, and longed with all my heart for Mrs Sucksby, Lant Street, home.

I wondered, though, if I might hear her breathing. I straightened up, and held my breath, and put my ear flat to the door. I heard my heart-beat, and the roaring of my blood. I heard a small, tight sound, that must have been the creeping of a worm or a beetle in the wood.