by Sarah Waters
Then I was alone again. I called for the gas to be lit & then went out to them, but I shook so hard I could hardly walk. They saw that, & laid me flat upon the sofa. Mrs Brink rang the servant’s bell & first Jenny came, then Ruth, Ruth saying ‘O, what has happened? Was it marvellous? Why does Miss Dawes look so pale?’ When I heard her voice I shook worse than ever &, Mrs Brink noticing that, she took my hands & rubbed them, saying ‘You are not too weakened?’ & Ruth drew the slippers from me & put her hands about my feet, then bent & breathed on them. Finally however, the elder Miss Adair said to her ‘That will do, let me see to her now.’ Then she sat beside me & another lady held my hand. Miss Adair said quietly ‘O Miss Dawes, I never saw anything to match that spirit! What was it like, when he came to you in the darkness?’
When they went, 2 or 3 of them left money for me with Ruth, I heard them putting the coins into her hand. I was so tired however, I could not have cared if they had been pennies or pounds, I should only have been glad to be able to creep into some dark place & lay my head there. I kept upon the sofa, hearing Ruth putting the bolt across, & Mrs Brink stepping about the floor of her room, then getting into her bed & waiting. Then I knew who she was waiting for. I went to the stairs & put my hand to my face, & Ruth looked at me once & nodded. ‘Good girl,’ she said.
Part Three
5 November 1874
It was two years, yesterday, since my own dear father died; and to-day my sister Priscilla was married at last, at Chelsea church, to Arthur Barclay. She has gone from London until at least the start of next year’s season. They are to have ten weeks upon the honeymoon then travel straight from Italy to Warwickshire, and there is talk of us holidaying with them there, from January until the spring—though I don’t care to think of that, just yet. I sat in the church with Mother and Helen, and Pris came with Stephen, one of the Barclay children carrying her flowers in a basket. She wore a white lace veil, and when she walked from the vestry and Arthur had turned it back—well, the straight face she has been maintaining for the past six weeks clearly had its effect, for I don’t believe I ever saw her so handsome. Mother put her handkerchief to her eyes, and I heard Ellis weeping at the door of the church. Pris has a girl of her own now, of course, sent to her by the housekeeper at Marishes.
I had thought it might be hard, to see my sister pass me in the church. It was not; I was only a little moodish when it came time to kiss them both farewell, and I saw their boxes tied and labelled, Priscilla brilliant in a mustard-coloured cloak—the family’s first piece of colour, of course, in twenty-four months—and promising us parcels from Milan. I thought that there were one or two curious or pitying glances cast my way—but not so many, I am sure, as there were at Stephen’s wedding. Then, I suppose, I was my mother’s burden. Now I am become her consolation. I heard people say it, at the breakfast: ‘You must be thankful you have Margaret, Mrs Prior. So like her father! She will be a comfort to you now.’
I am not a comfort to her. She doesn’t want to see her husband’s face and habits, on her daughter! When all the wedding guests had gone I found her wandering about the house, shaking her head and sighing—‘How quiet it seems!’—as if my sister had been a child, and she missed the sound of her shrieks upon the staircase. I followed her to the door of Priscilla’s bedroom, and gazed with her at the empty shelves. It has all been boxed and sent to Marishes, even the little girlish things—which I suppose Pris will want for her own daughters. I said, ‘We are becoming a house of empty rooms,’ and Mother sighed again.
Then she stepped to the bed and pulled one of the curtains from it, and then the counterpane, saying they must not be left to grow damp and moulder. She rang for Vigers and had her strip the mattress, then take the rugs and beat them, and scour the grate. We heard the unfamiliar bustle as we sat together in the drawing-room—Mother exclaiming peevishly that Vigers was ‘clumsy as a calf’; or glancing at the mantel clock to sigh again and say, ‘Priscilla will be at Southampton now’ or ‘Now they will be upon the Channel . . .’
‘How loud the clock sounds!’ she said, another time; and then, turning to gaze at the spot where the parrot had used to sit: ‘How quiet it is, now Gulliver has gone.’
She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.
The clock beat on. We spoke of the wedding and the guests, and of the rooms at Marishes, and of Arthur’s handsome sisters and their gowns; and in time Mother took out a piece of sewing and began to work at it. Then at nine or so I rose, as usual, to bid her good-night—and when I did that she gave me a sharp, odd look. She said, ‘You won’t leave me alone, I hope, to grow stupid. Go on and fetch your book, and bring it here. You can read it to me, I have had no-one read to me since your father died.’ I said, in a rising kind of miserable panic, that she knew she would not care for any book of mine. She answered, that I must fetch her something she would care for, a novel or a book of letters; and, while I still stood staring at her, she rose and went to the case beside the fireplace, and took a book from that, quite randomly. It turned out to be the first volume of Little Dorrit.
And so I read to her, and she sat and pricked at her sewing, and threw more glances at the clock, and rang for cake and tea, and tutted when Vigers tipped the cup; and from Cremorne there came the fitful cracking of fireworks, and from the street occasional shouts and bursts of laughter. I read—she didn’t seem to listen very hard, she didn’t smile or frown or tilt her head—yet when I paused she would nod and say, ‘Go on, Margaret. Go on, to the next chapter.’ I read, and watched her from beneath my lashes—and I had a clear and terrible vision.
I saw her ageing. I saw her growing old and stooped and querulous—perhaps, a little deaf. I saw her growing bitter, because her son and her favourite daughter had homes elsewhere—had gayer homes, with children and footsteps and young men and new gowns in them; homes which, were it not for the presence of her spinster daughter—her consolation, who preferred prisons and poetry to fashion-plates and dinners, and was therefore no consolation at all—she would certainly be invited to share. Why hadn’t I guessed it would be like this when Pris left? I had thought only of my own envy. Now I sat and watched my mother, and felt fearful, and ashamed of my own fear.
And when once she rose and went to her room I walked to the window and stood at the glass. They were still sending up rockets, behind the trees at Cremorne, even when it rained.
That was to-night. To-morrow night Helen is to come with her friend Miss Palmer. Miss Palmer is soon to be married.
I am twenty-nine. In three months’ time I shall be thirty. While Mother grows stooped and querulous, how shall I grow?
I shall grow dry and pale and paper-thin—like a leaf, pressed tight inside the pages of a dreary black book and then forgotten. I came across just such a leaf yesterday—it was a piece of ivy—amongst the books upon the shelves behind Pa’s desk. I went there, telling Mother I meant to begin to look through his letters; but I went only to think of him. The room is kept just as he left it, with his pen upon the blotter, his seal, the knife for his cigars, the looking-glass . . .
I remember him standing before that, two weeks after they first found the cancer in him, and turning his face from it with a ghastly smile. His nurse had told him, when he was a boy, that invalids should not gaze at their own reflections, for fear their souls would fly into the glass and kill them.
Now I stood a long time before that mirror, looking for him in it—looking for anything in it from the days before he died. There was only myself.
10 November 1874
I went down this morning to find three of Pa’s hats upon the hat-stand, and his cane in its old place against the wall. For a moment I stood quite ill with fear, remembering my locket. I thought, ‘Selina has done this, and now, how am I to account for it to the house?’ Then Ellis appeared, looked queerly at me, and explained. Mother said for the things to be put there: she believes it will
frighten off burglars, if they think we have a gentleman with us! She has asked for a policeman, too, to patrol the Walk, and now, when I go out, I see him looking and he touches his cap to me—‘Good afternoon, Miss Prior.’ Next I suppose she will be making Cook sleep with loaded pistols beneath her pillow, like the Carlyles. And then Cook will roll over in the night and get shot in the head, and Mother will say, what a shame, there never was a cook could turn out cutlets and ragout like Mrs Vincent . . .
But, I have grown cynical. Helen told me so. She was here this evening, with Stephen. I left them both talking with Mother, but Helen came tapping at my door a little later—she often does that, she comes to wish me good-night, I am quite used to it. This time when she came, however, I saw that she had something in her hand, that she held awkwardly. It was my phial of chloral. She said, not looking at me, ‘Your mother saw that I was coming to you and asked me would I bring your medicine? I said I thought you wouldn’t like it. But she complains about the extra stairs—that they make her legs ache. She said that she would rather trust the task to me than to a servant.’
I think I would rather Vigers brought it than Helen. I said, ‘She will have me standing in the drawing-room next, taking it from a spoon, before company. And did she let you fetch it from her room, alone? You are honoured, to know where she keeps it. She won’t tell me.’
I watched her taking pains over the mixing of the powder in the glass. When she brought it to me I put it on my desk and let it sit there, and she said, ‘I must stay until you drink it.’ I told her I would take it in a moment. I said she must not worry: I would not keep it there, only to make her stay. At that she blushed, and turned her head from me.
We had a letter from Pris and Arthur this morning, posted at Paris, and now we spoke a little of that. I said, ‘Do you know how stifled I have felt here, since the wedding? Do you think me selfish for it?’ She hesitated. Then she said, that this would of course be a difficult time for me, with my sister married . . .
I gazed at her, and shook my head. Oh, I said, I had heard words like that, so many times! When Stephen went to school when I was ten: they said that that would be ‘a difficult time’, because of course I was so clever, and would not understand why I must keep my governess. When he went to Cambridge it was the same; and then, when he came home and was called to the bar. When Pris turned out so handsome they said that would be difficult, we must expect it to be difficult, because of course I was so plain. And then, when Stephen was married, when Pa died, when Georgy was born—it had been one thing leading to another, and they had said only, always, that it was natural, it was to be expected that I should feel the sting of things like that; that older, unmarried sisters always did. ‘But Helen, Helen,’ I said, ‘if they expect it to be hard, why don’t they change things, to allow it to be easier? I feel, if I might only have a little liberty—’
Liberty, she asked me then, to do what? And when I could not answer her, she only said, that I must go more to Garden Court.
‘To look at you and Stephen,’ I said flatly. ‘To look at Georgy.’ She said, that when Pris returned, then there was sure to be an invitation to Marishes, and that would make a change to my routines.—‘Marishes!’ I cried. ‘And they will put me, at supper, beside the curate’s son; and I shall spend my days with Arthur’s spinster cousin—helping her fix black beetles to a green baize board.’
She studied me. It was then she said I had grown cynical. I said, that I had always been cynical—she had only never called it that. She had said rather that I was brave. She had called me an original. She had seemed to admire me for it.
That made her colour again; but it also made her sigh. She walked from me and stood at the bed—and I said at once, ‘Don’t go too near the bed! Don’t you know it’s haunted, by our old kisses? They’ll come and frighten you.’
‘Oh!’ she cried then, and she beat her fist against the bed-post, then sat upon the bed and put her hands before her face. She said, would I torment her for ever? She had thought me brave—she thinks me brave, even now. But I, she said, had thought her brave, too—‘And I was never that, Margaret, not enough, not for what you wanted. And now, when you might still be my dear friend—oh! I want so much to be your friend! But you make it like a battle! I am so weary of it.’
She shook her head, and closed her eyes. I felt her weariness then, and with it, my own. I felt it dark and heavy upon me, darker and heavier than any drug they ever gave me—it seemed heavy as death. I looked at the bed. I have seemed to see our kisses there sometimes, I’ve seen them hanging in the curtains, like bats, ready to swoop. Now, I thought, I might jolt the post and they would only fall, and shatter, and turn to powder.
I said, ‘I am sorry.’ I said—though I did not feel it, have never felt it, will never be glad of it—I said, ‘I am glad that Stephen has you, of any man. I think he must be kind.’
She answered, that he was the kindest man she ever knew. Then she hesitated, then said that she wished—she thought, if I might move a little more in company—that, there were other kind men . . .
They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you.
But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something—something ordinary and mild, I cannot think what. And after a time she came and kissed my cheek, and then she left me.
She took the phial of chloral with her—but she had forgotten, after all, to stand and watch me take my drink. It still sat upon my desk, the water clear and thin and weak as tears, the chloral muddy at the bottom of the tumbler. A moment ago I rose and poured the water off, then I took the drug with a spoon—the grounds I could not reach with that I put my finger to, and then I sucked my finger. Now my mouth is very bitter, but its flesh quite numb. I believe I could bite my tongue until it bled, and scarcely feel it.
14 November 1874
Well, Mother and I are twenty chapters into Little Dorrit, and I have been marvellously good and patient, all week long. We have been to tea at the Wallaces’, and to Garden Court for supper with Miss Palmer and her beau; we have even been to the dress shops of Hanover Street together. And oh! what a hateful business it is, watching the small-chinned, prim-faced, plump-throated girls walk simpering before one, while the lady lifts the folds of skirt to show the faille, the groseille or the foulard detail underneath. I said, Had they nothing in grey?—the lady looked doubtful. Had they anything slim and plain and neat?—They showed me a girl in a cuirass gown. She was small, and shapely—she looked like an ankle in a well-shaped boot. I knew I would put the same gown on and look like a sword in a scabbard.
I bought a pair of buff kid gloves—and wished I might buy a dozen more of them, to take to Selina in her cold cell.
Still, I think Mother believed we were making great strides forward. This morning, as I took my breakfast, she presented me with a gift, in a silver case. It was a set of calling-cards she has had printed up. They are edged with a curving border of black, and bear our two names—hers printed first, and mine, beneath it, in a less ambitious script.
I looked at them and felt my stomach close, like a fist.
I have not mentioned the prison to her, and I have kept away from there, for almost a fortnight—all for the sake of making trips with her. I thought she must have guessed that and been grateful to me. But when she brought the cards to me this morning and said she planned to pay a call, and would I go with her or stay and read? I answered at once that I believed, after all, that I would go to Millbank—and she looked sharply at me, in real surprise. ‘Millbank?’ she said. ‘I thought you had finished with all of that.’
‘Finished? Mother, how could you think it?’
She gave a snap to the clasp of her purse. ‘You must do as you please, I suppose,’ she said.
I said I would do just as I had before Priscilla left. I said, ‘Nothing has changed, has it, apart from that?’—She would not answer.
Her new nervousness, the week of patient visits and L
ittle Dorrit, that awful, foolish supposition that I had somehow ‘finished’ with my visiting, all had their effect on me and made me dreary. Millbank itself—as is usual when I keep away from it a little—seemed wretched, and the women in it sorrier than ever. Ellen Power has a fever and a cough. She coughs so hard the cough convulses her, and leaves threads of blood upon the cloth she wipes her lips with—so much for the extra meat, the scarlet flannel, from kind Mrs Jelf. The gipsy-girl, the abortionist they named ‘Black-Eyed Sue’, now wears a dirty bandage upon her face, and must eat her mutton with her fingers. She had not been in her cell three weeks before she tried, in her despair or madness, to put out one of her dark eyes with her dinner-knife; her matron said the eye was pierced and she is blind in it. The cells are still as cold as larders. I asked Miss Ridley, as she led me between the wards, how it could help the women to be kept so cold and hopeless? —to be made ill? She said: ‘We are not here to help them, ma’am. We are here to punish them. There are too many good women who are poor or ill or hungry, for us to bother with the bad ones.’ She said they would all stay warm enough, if they would only sew briskly.