by Sarah Waters
I cannot live, and not be at her side!
Mother used to think me wilful. She will think this wilfulness. But how could it be that? I am not willing this to happen, I am surrendering! I am giving up one life, to gain a new and better one. I am going far from here, as I was meant to—I think—always. I am
. . . hastening to get nearer to the sun,
Where men sleep better.
I am glad for you, Helen, that my brother is kind.
—There I sign it. The quotation pleases me, and I wrote it with a strange sensation, thinking, That is the last time I shall quote, like this. For from the moment Selina comes to me, I shall live!
When will she come? It is twelve o’clock. The night, that was bitter, is growing wild. Why do rough nights always grow wilder at midnight? She won’t hear the worst of it, in her cell at Millbank. She might go into it unready, and be torn and bruised and baffled—and I can do nothing for her, except wait. When will she come?—she said, before daylight. When is the dawn? Six hours from now.
I shall take a dose of laudanum, and perhaps that will guide her to me.
I shall put my fingers to the collar at my throat and stroke the velvet—she said the collar would make her come.
Now it is one o’clock.
Now it is two o’clock—another hour gone. How quickly it passes, on the page! I have lived a year, to-night.
When will she come? It is half-past three—the time, they say, that people die, though it wasn’t so when Pa died, it was plain day-light then. I have not been so wakeful, so determinedly, since his last night. I have not wished so hard as I then wished to keep him from going from me, as I have wished to-night for her to come. Does he really gaze at me, as she believes? Does he see this pen move on the page? Oh Father, if you see me now—if you see her searching for me through the gloom—guide our two souls together! If you ever loved me, you may love me now by bringing her whom I love to me.
Now I begin to grow afraid, which I must not do. I know she will come, for she could not feel my reaching thoughts and not be drawn by them. But how will she come? I imagine her coming faded, pale as death—coming ill or maddened! I have taken her clothes—all her clothes, not just the travelling-gown, but the pearl-grey dress, with its skirt the colour of her eyes, and the dress of white with the velvet trim. I have placed them about the room, to catch the gleamings of my candle-flame. Now she seems all around me, as if reflected in a prism.
I have taken her rope of hair, and combed it, and plaited it; and this I keep about me and sometimes kiss.
When will she come? It is five o’clock, and still the dark part of the night, but oh! the fierceness of my wanting makes me ill! I have been to the window and lifted the sash. The wind came and made the fire gust, blew my hair wildly about my head, cast hail against my cheeks until I thought my cheeks would bleed—but still I leaned into the night, searching for her. I think I called her name—I did that, and the wind seemed to echo it. I think I shook—it seemed to me I shook the house, so that even Vigers felt me. I heard the floorboards creak beneath her shifting bed, I heard her turning in her dream—she seemed to turn, as the collar at my throat seemed to grow tight. She might have started from her sheets, hearing me cry out—When will you come? When will you come?—until I called again, Selina! And then again the cry was echoed and cast back upon me with the hail—
Except, it was Selina’s voice I think I heard, and it was my name she called. And I stood very still, to catch it again; and Vigers was still, her dream gone from her; and even the wind seemed to still a little, and the hail to ease. And the water of the river was dark and calm.
But no voice came—and yet I feel her, I think, very close. And if she is to come, it will surely be soon.
It will be soon, it will be very soon, in the last hour of the dark.
It is almost seven, and the night is ended; there is the sound of carts upon the street, and barking dogs, and cockerels. Selina’s gowns lie all about me, their brightness quite leaked away; in a moment I shall rise and fold them, and return them to their paper wrappings. The wind has fallen, and the hail has turned to flaking snow. The Thames has fog upon it. Now Vigers steps from her bed, to set the fires of the new day. How strange!—I didn’t hear the Millbank bell.
She has not come.
Part Five
21 January 1875
One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell. ‘You were careless with your life,’ Selina said to me a month ago, ‘but now I have it.’—I knew then what I had been saved for. I thought she took my life that day. I felt it leap to her! But she had already begun to tug at its threads. I see her now, winding them about her slender fingers, in the shadows of the Millbank night; I feel it still, her careful unravelling. After all, it is a slow and delicate business, losing one’s life! and not a thing to happen in a moment.
The hands will stop, in time. I can wait for that, as she can.
I went to her, at Millbank. What else should I have done? She had said she would come, in the darkness—she did not come. What else could I do now, but go to her? I had my gown still on me, for I had never changed out of it. I didn’t ring for Vigers—I couldn’t bear to have her look at me. Perhaps I hesitated at the door, to find the day so white and large; yet I was sensible enough to stop a cab, and call to its driver. I think that, for myself, I was calm. I think my wakeful night had dazed me.
I think there was even a voice that came whispering to me as I drove. It was a toad’s voice, very close at my ear—it said, ‘Yes, this is right! This is better! Even for four years, this is proper. Did you really think there was another way? Did you really think it? You?’
The voice seemed familiar to me. Perhaps it had been there from the beginning and I had only closed my ears to it before. Now I heard the lisp of it and sat very steady. What did it matter, what it said to me? It was Selina I thought of. I imagined her pale, broken, defeated—perhaps, made ill.
What else could I have done, but gone to her? Of course, she knew that I would go, and was waiting.
The night had been a wild one; the morning was very still. It was early when the cab-man set me down at Millbank’s gate. I found the tips of the prison towers blunted by fog, the walls streaked white where snow had snagged on them, and at the lodge they were raking the old coals from their fire and putting wood on it. When the Porter came to answer my knock I thought, for the first time, of how ill I must look, for his expression was strange. He said, ‘Why, miss, I didn’t think to see you here again, so soon!’ But then he grew thoughtful. He said, he supposed that they had sent out for me, from the women’s wards? and he shook his head. ‘They will come down very hard on us over this, Miss Prior. You may be sure of it.’
I said nothing, could not guess what he meant, was too distracted for it. The prison, as I passed through it, seemed changed to me—but then, I had expected that. I thought it was I that had changed it, I and my own nervousness that made the warders nervous in their turn. One man asked me, Had I a paper? He said he couldn’t let me pass his gate unless I had a paper from Mr Shillitoe. No warder had said such a thing to me before, in all my visits, and as I gazed at him I felt a rising, dull-edged panic. I thought, So they have resolved, already, to keep me from her . . .
Then another man came running, saying, ‘That is the Lady Visitor, you fool. You may let her pass!’ They touched their caps to me and unlocked their gate, and I heard them murmuring together when the gate was shut.
At the women’s gaol, all was the same. I was received there by Miss Craven, who studied me oddly, as the Porter had; and then said, as he had: ‘They have brought you in! Well! What do you make of it? I dare say you didn’t think to find yourself back here so soon, and on such a day as
this!’
I couldn’t speak to her, but only shook my head. She walked quickly with me along the wards—they, too, seemed very still and silent, the women in them strange. I began to grow afraid, then. I was afraid, not of the matron’s words, which meant nothing to me; I was afraid of how it would be, to look at Selina with the bars and bricks about her still.
We walked, and I put my hand upon the wall, to keep myself from swaying. I had eaten nothing for a day and a half. I had been wakeful, I had been wild, I had leaned weeping into the freezing night then sat very still before an ashen fire. When Miss Craven spoke again I had to peer at her to catch her words.
She said, ‘You have come, I suppose, for a look at the cell?’
‘The cell?’
She nodded: ‘The cell.’ Her face, I noticed now, was rather flushed. Her voice had a catch to it.
I said, ‘I’ve come, matron, to visit Selina Dawes’—and at that, her surprise was so great and so sharp, she put her hand upon me and clutched at my arm.
Oh! she said, did I really not know it?
Dawes was gone.
‘Escaped! Gone clean from out her cell! Not a thing out of its order, not a single lock bust or opened, in all the gaol! The matrons cannot credit it. The women say the devil has been and took her.’
‘Escaped,’ I said. Then: ‘No! She hasn’t done it!’
‘So said Miss Haxby, this morning. So said we all!’
She went on like this, and I turned from her and shook, shot through with fright—thinking, Dear God, she has gone to me, after all, at Cheyne Walk! And I am not there, and she will be lost! I must go home! I must go home!
Then I heard again Miss Craven’s words: So said Miss Haxby, this morning . . .
Now I put my hand upon her. What time was it, I asked her, that they found Selina gone?
It was at six, she said, when they came in to ring the women up.
‘At six? What time then did she go?’
They could not say. Miss Cadman had heard a stir in her cell, around midnight; but when she looked in then, she said, Dawes was sleeping in her bed. It was Mrs Jelf that found the hammock empty, when the doors were unfastened at six. All they knew was that the escape was made at some hour in the night . . .
Some hour in the night. But, I had sat through all those hours, counting them off, kissing her hair, stroking her collar, feeling her close at last; then losing her.
Where had the spirits taken her, if not to me?
I looked at the matron. I said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, Miss Craven. What should I do?’
She blinked. She was sure, she could not say. Should she take me up, to see the cell? Miss Haxby was there, she thought, with Mr Shillitoe . . . I said nothing to her. She took my arm again—‘Why, you are shaking, miss!’—and led me up the tower staircase. At the entrance to the third-floor wards, however, I made her stop, and I flinched. The row of cells, like the others we had passed, was queer and very silent. The women stood at their gates with their faces at the bars—not restless, not murmuring, only still and watchful, and there seemed no-one there to command them to their labour. When I appeared with Miss Craven they turned their eyes on me; and one of them—Mary Ann Cook, I think—made a gesture. But I didn’t look at any of them. I only went at last—slow and staggering, and with Miss Craven to lead me—to the arch at the angle of the ward, to Selina’s cell.
Its doors were unfastened and flung wide, and Miss Haxby and Mr Shillitoe stood at them, gazing in. Their faces were so grave and pale, I thought for a moment that Miss Craven had confused the news. I was sure that, after all, Selina was there. I was sure that, in her defeat and her despair, she had hanged herself with the ropes of her hammock, and I had come too late.
Then Miss Haxby turned and saw me, and caught her breath, as if in anger. But then I spoke; and the wretchedness of my face and voice made her hesitate. Was it true, I said, what Miss Craven had told me? She did not answer, only moved a little to one side so that I might see for myself what lay beyond her—Selina’s cell, quite empty, with its hammock hung out and the blankets neat upon it, its floor clean-swept, its mug and trencher tidy on their shelf.
I gave a cry, I think, and Mr Shillitoe moved to hold me. ‘You must come away from here,’ he said. ‘This thing has shocked you—it has shocked us all.’ He glanced once at Miss Haxby, and then he patted me, as if my surprise and my dismay did me some great and meaningful credit. I said, ‘Selina Dawes, sir. Selina Dawes!’—He answered: ‘Here is a lesson, Miss Prior! You had great plans for her, and see how she has abused you. Miss Haxby was right, I think, to caution us. But there! Who would have thought her quite so cunning? To escape, from Millbank—as if our locks were made of butter!’
I looked at the gate, the door, the bars at the window. I said, ‘And no-one, no-one in all the gaol, saw her go, or heard her, or missed her, until the morning?’
Here he gazed again at Miss Haxby. She said, in a very low tone: ‘Someone will have seen her—we are sure of it. Someone must have seen her go, and helped her passage.’ She said there was a cloak, and a pair of night-shoes, that had been taken from the prison stores. They thought Dawes gone from the prison clad as a matron.
I had seen her drawn tight, like an arrow. I had thought she would come naked, bruised and trembling. I said, ‘Clad as a matron?’—and Miss Haxby at last looked bitter: How else? Unless I thought, like the women, that the devil had borne her off upon his back!
She turned from me then, and she and Mr Shillitoe talked on in smothered voices. I still stared into the empty cell. I had begun to feel not dazed, but really ill. At last I grew so ill, I thought I might be sick. I said, ‘I must go home, Mr Shillitoe. This has upset me, more than I can say.’
He took my hand, and gestured for Miss Craven to escort me out. As he passed me to her he said, ‘And Dawes said nothing to you, Miss Prior? Nothing to suggest she had this crime in mind?’
I stared at him, then shook my head—the motion made me sicker. Miss Haxby studied me. He went on: ‘We must talk another time, when you are calmer. Dawes may yet be recovered—we hope she will be! But whether she is recovered or not, there will have, of course, to be an inquiry—I should say, several inquiries. You may be called upon to speak about her conduct, before the prison committee . . .’ He said, Could I bear that? Would I think again, if there was not some hint she gave—some sign, of her intentions—some clue, regarding who it was who may have helped her, or received her?
I said I would, I would, still hardly thinking of myself. If I was frightened, it was for her sake still, and not—not yet—for my own.
I took Miss Craven’s arm, and began to walk with her along the line of watching women. From the cell next to Selina’s, Agnes Nash caught my eye, and slowly nodded.—I turned my eyes from her. I said, ‘Where is Mrs Jelf?’ The matron said that Mrs Jelf had been made ill, by shock, and had been sent home by the prison surgeon.—But I was too ill myself, I think, to hear her properly.
Now, however, came another torment. On the staircase, at the junction of the wards below—at the place where I had once waited for Mrs Pretty to pass, so that I might run to the door of Selina’s cell and feel my life fly to her—there I met Miss Ridley. She saw me and started, and then she smiled.
‘Well!’ she said. ‘This is a lucky chance, Miss Prior, that sees you upon our wards, on this day! Don’t say that Dawes has run to you, and you have brought her back to us?’ She folded her arms, and stood upon her step a little more squarely. Her keys all shifted upon their chain and her leather boots creaked. Beside me, I felt Miss Craven hesitate.
I said, ‘Please let me pass, Miss Ridley.’ I still thought I might be sick, or weep, or fall in a kind of fit. I still thought, that if I could only get home, to my own room, then Selina would be guided to me from her lost place, and I would grow well again. I still thought that!
Miss Ridley saw my nervousness, and moved a little to her right—but only a little, so that I had to
step between her and the whitewashed wall and feel my skirts brush hers. As I did it, our faces came close, and her eyes grew narrow.
‘And so,’ she said quietly, ‘do you have her, or not? You must know it is your duty, to surrender her to us.’
I had begun to turn from her. Now the sight of her—the sound of her voice, that was like a bolt in its cradle—made me press near to her again. ‘Surrender her?’ I said. ‘Surrender her, and to you, here? I wish to God I did have her—that I might keep her from you! Surrender her? I would as likely surrender a lamb, to the slaughterer’s knife!’
Still her face was smooth.—‘Lambs must be ate,’ she said at once, ‘and wicked girls corrected.’
I shook my head. I said, What a devil she was! How I pitied the women who had her to close the locks upon them, and the matrons who must take her as their model. ‘It is you that are wicked. It is you, and this place—’
As I spoke, her features shifted at last and the heavy, lash-less lids upon her pale eyes gave a quiver. ‘Wicked, am I?’ she said, as I swallowed and drew breath. ‘Pity the women, do you, that must be fastened by me? You may say that, now Dawes has gone. You didn’t think our locks so hard—nor our matrons, perhaps—when they kept her neat and close, for you to gaze at!’
She might have pinched or slapped me: I flinched, and shrank from her, and put my hand upon the wall. Nearby Miss Craven stood—her face shut, like a gate. Beyond her, I saw that Mrs Pretty had turned the corner of the ward, and had drawn to a halt to study us. Miss Ridley came close to me, raising a hand to her own white lip, to smooth it. She said she didn’t know what I might have told Miss Haxby and the governor. Perhaps they thought themselves obliged to credit me, because I was a lady—she could not say. What she could say, was this: if I had fooled them, I had fooled no-one else upon those wards. There was something devilish queer about this flight of Dawes’s, after my attentions to her—something very devilish queer, indeed! And if I was found to have played the slightest part in it—‘Well,’ she turned her eyes to the watching matrons, ‘we keep ladies, too, upon our wards—don’t we, Mrs Pretty? Oh yes! We have ways of making it very warm for ladies, here at Millbank!’