by Sarah Waters
She said that, and her breath came hot upon my cheek—hot, thick, and mutton-scented. Along the passage I heard Mrs Pretty laugh.
I fled from them then—fled down the circling staircase, across the ground-floor ward, across the pentagons. For it seemed to me that, if I stayed another moment, then they would find a way to keep me there, for ever. They would keep me there, they would thrust Selina’s gown upon me; and all the time Selina herself would be still outside—lost, blind, and searching, never guessing that they had me in her old place.
I fled, and seemed still to hear Miss Ridley’s voice, to feel her breath upon me, hot as the breath of a hound. I fled; and at the gate I stopped, and leaned against the wall, and had to put my gloved hand to my mouth to wipe it clean of bitter matter.
Then, the Porter and his men could find no cab for me. There had come more snow upon the roads, and the drivers could not pass it; they said I must wait, and the way would be cleared by sweepers. But it seemed to me now that they sought only to keep me there, to keep Selina still lost. I thought, perhaps Miss Haxby or Miss Ridley had sent a message to the gate, that had reached there quicker than I. So I cried that they must let me out, I would not stay—and I must have frightened them, more even than Miss Ridley had, for they did it, and I ran, I saw them watching from the lodge. I ran to the embankment, and then I followed its wall, keeping very close to that one bleak way. I watched the river, that was quicker than I; and I wished I might take a boat, and make my escape like that.
For though I walked so swiftly, my journey was a slow one: the snow plucked at my skirts and made me stagger, and soon I grew tired. At Pimlico Pier I stopped and looked behind me, and put my hands to my side—there was a pain there, sharp as a needle. Then I walked again, as far as Albert Bridge.
And there I looked, not behind me, but to the houses of the Walk. I looked for my own window, which shows very clearly there when the leaves are off the trees.
I looked, hoping to see Selina. But the window was blank, with only the white cross of the sash upon it. Beneath it fell the pale front of the house, below it the steps and bushes, white with snow.
And upon the steps—hesitating upon the steps, as if uncertain whether to mount them or to shrink from them—there was a single shape of darkness . . .
It was a woman, in a matron’s cloak.
Seeing that, I ran again. I ran, stumbling over the frozen ruts upon the road. I ran, and the air came so cold and so sharp I thought it would put ice inside my lungs, and choke me. I ran to the railings of the house—there was the dark-cloaked woman still, she had climbed the steps at last and was about to put her fingers to the door—now, hearing me, she turned. Her hood was high, she held it close about her face, and when I stepped towards her I saw her twitch. When I gave a cry—‘Selina!’—she twitched still harder. Then the hood fell back. She said, ‘Oh, Miss Prior!’
And it was not Selina, not Selina at all. It was Mrs Jelf, of Millbank.
Mrs Jelf. The thought that rose, after the first shock and disappointment of it, was that they had sent her to me to take me back to prison; and when she came to me I thrust her from me, and turned, and staggered, and made to run again. But my skirts were heavier than ever, now; and my lungs felt heavy, from the weight of the ice.—And, after all, where had I to run to? So when she still came, and put her hand upon me, I turned back to her and gripped her, and she held me and I wept. I stood and shuddered in her arms. She might have been anyone to me, then. She might have been a nurse, or my own mother.
‘You’ve come,’ I said at last, ‘because of her.’ She nodded. Then I looked at her face—and might have been gazing into a glass, for her cheeks were yellow against the snow, and her eyes were rimmed with scarlet, as if from weeping or constant watching. I saw then that, though Selina could be nothing to her, still she had felt the loss of her, in some queer and terrible way of her own; and she had come to me, for help or comfort.
She was the nearest I had, at that moment, to Selina herself. I gazed again at the blank windows of the house, then held my arm out to her. She helped me to the door, and I gave her my key, to place in the lock—I couldn’t grasp it. We were quiet as thieves, and Vigers didn’t come. The house, inside, seemed still to have the spell of my own waiting on it, and was very chill and silent.
I took her to Pa’s room, and closed the door. She seemed nervous there, though after a second she raised a trembling hand and unfastened her cloak. Beneath it I saw her prison gown, very creased; but she was without her matron’s bonnet, and her hair hung down about her ears—brown hair, with springing threads of grey in it. I lit a lamp, but dared not ring for Vigers to see to the fire. We sat with our coats and gloves still on us, and sometimes shivered.
She said, ‘What must you think of me, for coming to your house like this? If I didn’t know already, how kind you are—oh!’ She put her hands to her cheek, and began to rock a little upon her chair. ‘Oh, Miss Prior!’ she cried—the words were stifled by her gloves. ‘You cannot guess what I have done! You cannot guess, you cannot guess . . .’
Now she wept into her hands, as I had wept upon her shoulder. At last her grief, that was so strange, began to frighten me. I said, What was it? What was it?—‘You might tell me,’ I said, ‘whatever it is.’
‘I think I might,’ she said, growing a little calmer at my words. ‘I think I must say it! And oh! what does it matter, what happens to me now?’ She raised her crimson eyes to me. ‘You’ve been to Millbank?’ she said. ‘And know she is gone? Do you know, have they said, how it was managed?’
Now, for the first time, I grew careful. I thought suddenly, Perhaps she knows. Perhaps she knows about the spirits, about the tickets and the plans, and has come to ask for money, to bargain or to tease. I said, ‘The women say it was the devil’—here she flinched. ‘Miss Haxby and Mr Shillitoe, however, they think there may have been a matron’s cloak taken, and matron’s boots.’
I shook my head. She put her fingers to her mouth and began to press her lips against her teeth, and to gnaw at them, her dark eyes on me. I said, ‘They think that someone might have helped her, from within the gaol. But oh, Mrs Jelf, why would someone do that? No-one cares for her there, no-one cares for her anywhere! There was only ever me, to think of her kindly. Only ever me, Mrs Jelf, and—’
Still she held my gaze, and bit at her lips. Then she blinked, and whispered across her knuckles.
‘Only you, Miss Prior,’ she said, ‘—and me.’
Then she turned from me, and hid her eyes; and when I said, ‘My God,’ she cried: ‘You think me wicked then, after all! Oh! And she promised, she promised—’
Six hours before, I had leaned calling into the frigid night, and it seemed to me that morning that I had not been warm since then. Now, I grew cold as marble—cold and stiff, yet with a heart that beat so wildly in my breast I thought it would shatter me. I said, in a whisper, ‘What did she promise you?’—‘That you would be glad!’ she cried. ‘That you would guess it, and say nothing! I thought you had guessed. Sometimes, when you came visiting, you seemed to look at me and know—’
‘It was the spirits,’ I said, ‘that took her. It was her spirit-friends . . .’
But the words seemed mawkish, suddenly. I seemed to choke upon them. And when Mrs Jelf heard them she gave a kind of moan: Oh, if it had been, if it had been them! ‘But it was me, Miss Prior! It was me that stole the cloak for her, and the matron’s slippers, and kept them hid! It was me walked with her, through all of Millbank—and told the wardens it was Miss Godfrey with me, Miss Godfrey with a swollen throat, and a wrap about it!’
I said, ‘You walked with her?’—She nodded: At nine o’clock. So frightened, she said, she had thought she would be ill, or begin shrieking.
At nine o’clock? But, the night-matron, Miss Cadman—she had heard a row—that was at midnight. And she had looked, and seen Selina quite asleep . . .
Mrs Jelf bent her head. ‘Miss Cadman saw nothing,’ she said, ‘but kept a
way from the ward till we were done there, then made a story. I gave her money, Miss Prior, and made her sin. And now, if they catch her, she’ll go to prison for it herself. And I, dear God, will be to blame for it!’
She moaned and wept a little again, and gripped herself, and again began to rock. I watched her, still trying to understand what she had said; but her words were like some sharp, hot thing—I could not grasp them, I could only turn them about in a desperate, swelling panic. There had been no spirit-help—there had been only the matrons. There had been only Mrs Jelf, and squalid bribery, and theft. Still my heart beat. Still I sat fixed as staring marble.
And at last I said, Why? ‘Why did you do those things—for her?’
She gazed at me then, and her gaze was clear. ‘But don’t you know?’ she said. ‘Can you not guess?’ She took a breath, and trembled. ‘She brought my boy to me, Miss Prior! She brought me messages from my own baby son, that is in Heaven! She brought me messages, and gifts—just as she brought you signs, from your own father!’
Now I could say nothing. Now her tears all ceased, and her voice, that had been cracked, grew almost blithe. ‘They think at Millbank I am a widow,’ she began, and, since I didn’t speak or stir—only my heart beat wildly, wilder with every word—she took the stillness of my gaze for an encouragement, and spoke again; and so told it all.
‘They think at Millbank, that I am a widow; and I told you once, that I had been a maid. Those things, miss, were untruths. I was once married, but my husband never died—at least, for all I know of it he didn’t: I haven’t seen him, for many years. I married him young, and was sorry later, for after only a little time I found another man—a gentleman!—who seemed to love me better. I had two daughters with my husband, who I cared for well enough; then I learned another child was coming—I am ashamed to say, miss, it was the gentleman’s . . .’
The gentleman, she said, had left her; and then, her husband had beaten her and cast her out, keeping the daughters with him. She had had such wicked thoughts then, about her unborn boy. She had never been harsh, at Millbank, to those poor girls sent to the cells for murdering their babies. God knows how near she was, to being one of them!
She took a shuddering breath. I kept my eyes on her, still saying nothing.
‘It was very hard for me, then,’ she went on, ‘and I was very low. But when the baby came, I loved him! He came early, and was sickly. If I had shown him just an ounce of hurt, I think he would have died. But he did not die; and I worked—all for him!—for myself, you see, I cared nothing. I worked long hours, in fearful places, all for his sake.’ She swallowed. ‘And then—’ Then, when he was four years old, her son had died anyway. She had thought her life was ended—‘Well, you will know how it is, Miss Prior, when that which is more dear to you than anything, is taken from you.’ She had worked a little, in worse places than before. She would have worked, she thought, in Hell itself, and hardly minded . . .
And then a girl she knew told her of Millbank. The wages there are high, because no-one cares for the duties; it was enough for her, she said, that they gave her her dinners, and a room with a fire and a chair in it. The women had looked all alike to her at first—‘even, even her, miss! Then, after a month, she touched my cheek one day and said, “Why are you so sad? Don’t you know that he is watching you, crying into his hand to see you weep, when you might be happy?” What a fright she gave me! I had never heard of spiritualism. I didn’t know, then, what her gifts were . . .’
Now I began to shudder. She looked, and tilted her head. ‘No-one knows as we do, do they, miss? Each time I saw her, she had some new word from him. He would come to her at night—he is a great boy now, of almost eight! How I wished for a glimpse of him! How kind she was, to me! How I have loved her, and helped her—done things, perhaps, I shouldn’t—you will know what I mean—all for his sake . . . And then when you came—oh, how jealous I was! I could hardly bear to see you with her! And yet, she said that she had power enough, still to bring my boy’s sweet messages, and words from your own father, miss, to you.’
I said, dull as marble: ‘She told you that?’
‘She told me that you came to her so often, to get word of him. And after your visits started, indeed, my boy came through stronger than ever! He sent me kisses, through her own mouth. He sent me—oh, Miss Prior, the happiest day in all my life! He sent me this, to keep about me always.’ She put her hand to the neck of her gown, and I saw her finger tugging at a chain of gold.
Then my heart gave such a jerk, my marble limbs seemed to splinter at last, and all my strength, my life, my love, my hope—all flowed from me, and left me nothing. Until then, I think I had listened and thought: These are lies, she is mad, this is nonsense—Selina will account for it all, when she comes here! Now she drew the locket free, and held it; she prised it wide, and there came more tears upon her lashes, and her look was blithe again.
‘See here,’ she said, showing me the curl of Helen’s pale hair. ‘The angels cut this from his little head, in Heaven!’
I looked, and wept—she thought me crying, I suppose, for her dead child. She said, ‘To know that he had come to her in her cell, Miss Prior! To think that he had lifted his dear hand to her, and placed a kiss upon her cheek, for her to give to me—oh, it made me ache to hold him! It made me ache, about the heart!’ She closed the locket, and returned it to its place behind her gown, and patted it. It has been swinging there, of course, through all my visits to the gaol . . .
And then at last, Selina had said there was a way. But it couldn’t be done on the wards at Millbank. Mrs Jelf must first help her get free; and then she would bring him. She would bring him, she swore it, to the place that Mrs Jelf lived.
She must only wait and watch, for a single night. And Selina would come, before day-light.
‘And you mustn’t think I would have helped her, Miss Prior, for anything but that! What could I do? If I don’t help him come—Well, she says that there are many ladies, where he is, who would be glad to have the care of a little motherless boy. She told me that, miss, and wept. She is so kind-hearted and so good—too good to be kept at Millbank! Didn’t you say it yourself, and to Miss Ridley? Oh! Miss Ridley! How I have feared her! I feared she would catch me, receiving kisses from my baby. I feared she would catch me being kind upon the ward, and so move me from it.’
I said, ‘It was you Selina stayed for, when it came time for her to go to Fulham. It was you she struck Miss Brewer for—you, for whom she suffered in the darks.’
She turned her head again, with a grotesque kind of modesty—said, she only knew how ill she felt then, to think that she had lost her. How ill, and then how thankful—oh, how shamed and sorry and thankful!—when poor Miss Brewer was hurt . . .
‘But now’—she raised her clear, dark, simple eyes to me—‘But now, how very hard it will be, to have to walk by her old cell and see another woman in it.’
I stared at her. I said, Could she say that? Could she think of that, when she had had Selina with her?
‘Had her with me?’ She shook her head, saying, What did I mean? Why did I think she had come here? ‘She never came to me! She never came, at all! I sat watching, through all the long night, and she never came!’
But, they had left the gaol together!—She shook her head. At the gate-house, she said, they had parted, and Selina had walked on alone. ‘She said there were things that she must fetch, that would make my son come better. She said I must only sit and wait, and she would bring him to me; and I sat and watched and waited, and at last grew sure they had recovered her. And what could I do then, but go to her at Millbank? And now, she is not recovered, and still I have had no word from her, no sign, nor anything. And I am so afraid, miss—so afraid for her, and for myself, and for my own dear boy! I think my fright, Miss Prior, will kill me!’
I had risen, and now I stood beside Pa’s desk and leaned upon it, and turned my face from her. After all, there were things that she had told me that were str
ange. Selina had stayed at Millbank, she said, to be released by her. But, I had felt Selina near me, in the dark, and at other times; and Selina had known things of me that I told nowhere, save in this book. Mrs Jelf had had kisses of her—but to me she had sent flowers. She had sent me her collar. She had sent me her hair. We were joined in the spirit and joined in the flesh—I was her own affinity. We had been cut, two halves together, from a single piece of shining matter.
I said, ‘She has lied to you, Mrs Jelf. She has lied to us both. But I think she will explain it, when we find her. I think there might be a purpose to it, that we cannot see. Can’t you think where she might have gone to? Is there no-one, who might be keeping her?’
She nodded. It was on account of that, she said, that she had come here.
‘And I,’ I said, ‘know nothing! I know less, Mrs Jelf, than you!’
My voice sounded loud in the silence. She heard it, and hesitated. Then, ‘You know nothing, miss,’ she said, giving me an odd little look. ‘But it was not you I came to trouble. It was the other lady here.’
The other lady here? I turned to her again. I said, she surely could not mean my mother?