‘Leave what? Leave who?’
Leave Mother. Leave Helen and Stephen, and Georgy, and the children still to come. Leave my father’s grave. Leave my ticket to the reading-room at the British Museum.—‘Leave my life,’ I said at last.
She answered, that she would give me a better one.
I said, ‘We would have nothing.’
‘We would have your money.’
‘It is my mother’s money!’
‘You must have money of your own. There must be things that you might sell . . .’
This was foolish, I said. It was worse than foolish—it was idiotic, insane! How could we live, together, alone? Where would we go?
But even as I asked it, I saw her eyes, and knew . . .
‘Think of it!’ she said. ‘Think of living there, with the sun always upon us. Think of those bright places you long to visit—Reggio and Parma and Milan, and Venice. We could live in any of those places. We should be free.’
I gazed at her—and there came the sound of Mrs Pretty’s tread beyond the door, the crunch of grit beneath her heel. I said then, in a whisper, ‘We are mad, Selina. To escape, from Millbank! You couldn’t do it. You should be captured at once.’ She said that her spirit-friends would keep her safe; and then, when I cried that, No, I could not believe it, she said, Why not? She said I must think of all the things she had sent me. Why shouldn’t she also send herself?
Still I said, No, it couldn’t be true. ‘If it were true, you would have gone from here a year ago.’—She said that she was waiting, that she needed me, to go for. She needed me, to take her to myself.
‘And if you don’t take me,’ she said, ‘—well, when they put an end to your visits, what will you do then? Will you go on envying your sister’s life? Will you go on being a prisoner, in your own dark cell, forever?’
And I had again that dreary vision, of Mother growing querulous and aged—scolding when I read too softly or too fast. I saw myself beside her in a mud-brown dress.
But we should be found, I said. The police would take us.
‘They could not seize us, once we had left England.’
People would learn what we had done. I would be seen, and recognised. We would be cast off, by society!
She said, When had I ever cared for being a part of that sort of society? Why should I trouble over what it thinks? We would find a place, away from all that. We would find the place that we were meant for. She would have done the work that she was made to do . . .
She shook her head. ‘All through my life,’ she said, ‘all through the weeks and months and years of it, I thought I understood. But I knew nothing. I thought I was in light, when all the time, my eyes were closed! Every poor lady that came to me, that touched my hand, that drew a small part of my spirit from me to her—they were only shadows. Aurora, they were shadows of you! I was only seeking you out, as you were seeking me. You were seeking me, your own affinity. And if you let them keep me from you now, I think we shall die!’
My own affinity. Have I known it? She says that I have. She said, ‘You guessed it, you felt it. Why, I think you felt it, even before I did! The very first time you saw me, I think you felt it then.’
I remembered, then, watching her in her bright cell—her face tilted to catch the sun, the violet flower in her hands. Hadn’t there been a kind of purpose to my gazing, just as she said?
I put my hand to my mouth. ‘I am not sure,’ I said. ‘I am not sure.’
‘Not sure? Look at your own fingers. Are you not sure, if they are yours? Look at any part of you—it might be me that you are looking at! We are the same, you and I. We have been cut, two halves, from the same piece of shining matter. Oh, I could say, I love you—that is a simple thing to say, the sort of thing your sister might say to her husband. I could say that in a prison letter, four times a year. But my spirit does not love yours—it is entwined with it. Our flesh does not love: our flesh is the same, and longs to leap to itself. It must do that, or wither! You are like me. You have felt what it’s like, to leave your life, to leave your self—to shrug it from you, like a gown. They caught you, didn’t they, before the self was quite cast off? They caught you, and they pulled you back—you didn’t want to come . . .’
She said, Did I think the spirits would have let them do that, if there had not been a purpose to it? Didn’t I know my father would have taken me, if he had known that I should go? ‘He sent you back,’ she said, ‘and now I have you. You were careless with your life; but now I have it. Will you fight that, still?’
Now my heart beat terribly hard at my breast. It beat at the place my locket used to hang. It beat like a pain, like a hammer blow. I said, ‘You say I am like you. You say my limbs might be your limbs, that I have been made from shining matter. I think you must never have looked at me—’
‘I have looked at you,’ she said quietly then. ‘But do you think I look at you, with their eyes? Do you think I haven’t seen you, when you have put your strait grey gowns aside?—when you have taken down your hair, and lain, white as milk, in the darkness . . .?
‘Do you think,’ she said finally, ‘that I will be like her—like her, that chose your brother over you?’
Then I knew. I knew that all she said, all she had ever said, was true. I stood, and wept. I stood and wept and shivered, and she made no move to comfort me. She only watched, and nodded, saying, ‘Now you understand. Now you know, why we cannot be only careful, only sly. Now you know, why you are drawn to me—why your flesh comes creeping to mine, and what it comes for. Let it creep, Aurora. Let it come to me, let it creep . . .’
She had made her voice into a fierce, slow whisper. It sent the drug, that had been heavy in me, pulsing about my veins. I felt the tug of her, then. I felt the lure of her, the grasp of her, I felt myself drawn across the coir-thick air to her whispering mouth. I clutched at her cell wall—but the wall was smooth, and slippery with limewash—I stood against it, but felt it slide from me. I began to think I must be stretching, bulging—I thought my face was bulging from its collar, my fingers swelling in their gloves . . .
I looked at my hands. She had said that they were her hands, but they were large and strange. I felt the surface of them, I felt the creases and the whorls upon the flesh of them.
I felt them harden and grow brittle.
I felt them soften and begin to drip.
And then I knew whose hands they were. They were not her hands, they were his—they had made those waxen moulds, they had come to her cell in the night and left smears in it. They were my hands, and they were Peter Quick’s! The thought was frightful.
I said, ‘No, it cannot be done. No, I will not do it!’—and the bulging and the quickening ceased at once, and I stepped away, and placed my hand upon the door—and it was my own hand, in a glove of black silk. She said, ‘Aurora.’—I said, ‘Don’t call me that, it isn’t true! It was never true, never at all!’ I put my fist to the door and I shouted: ‘Mrs Pretty! Mrs Pretty!’ And when I turned to look at her, I found her face mottled red, as if from a slap. She stood, stiff and shocked and wretched. Then she began to weep.
‘We will find another way,’ I told her. But she shook her head and whispered, ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you see, how there is no other way than this?’ A single tear brimmed at the corner of her eye, then quivered and ran, and was muddied by coir dust.
Then Mrs Pretty came and nodded me past her, and I went, not turning—for I knew that if I turned, then Selina’s tears, her bruises and my own fierce longing would send me back to her, and then I would be lost. The door was closed and fastened, and I walked from it—as one might walk, in a terrible torture, gagged and goaded and feeling the flesh ripped from one’s bones.
I walked until I reached the tower staircase. Mrs Pretty left me there, thinking I suppose that I would make my way downstairs. But I did not go. I stood in the shadows, and put my face against the chill white wall; and I did not move again until I heard feet upon the steps above me. I thought it might be Miss R
idley there, and I turned, and brushed at my cheek, for fear that there were tears or lime upon it. The feet came nearer.
It was not Miss Ridley. It was Mrs Jelf.
She saw me, and blinked. She had heard a movement on the stairs, she said, that made her wonder . . . I shook my head. When I told her that I had just come from seeing Selina Dawes, she shivered; she seemed as miserable, almost, as myself. She said, ‘My ward is very changed, now they have taken her from it. All the Star-class women have gone, and I have new prisoners in their cells, and some are strangers to me. And Ellen Power—Ellen Power is also gone.’
‘Power gone?’ I said dully. ‘I am glad for her, at least. They will be gentler with her, perhaps, at Fulham.’
When she heard me say that, however, she looked more miserable than ever. ‘Not gone to Fulham, miss,’ she said. She said she was sorry that I didn’t know it, but they had moved Power to the infirmary at last, five days before, and she had died there—her grand-daughter had come, to take the body. All Mrs Jelf’s kindness had gone for nothing after all, for they had found the bit of scarlet flannel beneath Power’s gown, and were harsh with her over it; and Mrs Jelf was to lose wages, as a punishment.
I listened to this in a numb kind of horror. ‘My God,’ I said at last, ‘how have we borne it? How shall we go on bearing it?’—for four more years, was what I meant.
She shook her head, then put her hand to her face and turned from me. I heard the slithering of her feet upon the steps, fading to silence.
I went down, then, to Miss Manning’s wards, and walked the length of them, and gazed in at the women as they sat in their cells—every one of them hunched and shivering, every one wretched, every one ill or nearly ill, hungry or nauseous, and with fingers cracked with prison work and with cold. At the end of the ward I found another matron to take me to the gate of Pentagon Two, and then a warder to escort me through the men’s gaol—I didn’t speak to them. At the tip of the tongue of gravel that leads down to the Porter’s lodge I found the day grown dark, the river breezes harsh with hail. I tipped my hat, and staggered against the wind. All about me Millbank reared, bleak as a tomb, and silent, yet filled with wretched men and women. I had never, in all my visits, felt the weight of their combined despair as I felt it press upon me now. I thought of Power, who had once blessed me and now was dead. I thought of Selina, bruised and weeping, calling me her affinity—saying, we had been seeking one another out and if we lost each other now, then we would die. I thought of my own room above the Thames, and Vigers in her chair beyond the door—there was the Porter swinging his keys, he had sent a man to fetch a cab for me. I thought, What time is it? It might have been six o’clock, it might have been midnight. I thought, Suppose Mother is at home—what shall I say? I have lime upon me, and the scent of the wards. Suppose she writes to Mr Shillitoe, or sends for Dr Ashe?
Now I hesitated. I was at the Porter’s door. Above me was the filthy, fog-choked London sky, beneath my feet the reeking Millbank soil, that no flowers will grow in. Against my face beat hailstones, sharp as needles. The Porter stood ready to guide me into his lodge—still, however, I hesitated. He said, ‘Miss Prior? What is it, miss?’ and he put his hand across his face, to wipe the water from it.
I said, ‘Wait’—I said it quietly at first, he had to lean and frown, not hearing me. Then I said, ‘Wait,’ again—I said it louder; I said, ‘Wait, you must wait, I must go back, I must go back!’ I said there was something I had not done, that I must go back for!
Perhaps he spoke again—I didn’t hear him. I only turned and headed back into the shadows of the gaol—almost running, and turning my heels upon the gravel. To every warder I met I said the same thing—that I must go back! I must go back into the women’s wards!—and though they looked at me in wonder, they let me pass. At the female gaol I found Miss Craven, just come upon her duties at the gate. She knew me well enough to let me through, and when I said I didn’t need a guide—had only left some small business undone—she nodded me by and didn’t look at me again. I told the same story, then, upon the ground-floor wards; and then I climbed the tower staircase. I listened for Mrs Pretty’s step and, when she had passed into the further ward, I ran to the door of Selina’s cell and put my face to the eye of it, and pressed it, and gazed at her. She sat slumped beside her tray of coir, feebly pulling at it with her bleeding fingers. Her eyes were still wet and rimmed with crimson, and her shoulders shook. I didn’t call her; but as I watched she looked up, and gave a jerk of fright. I whispered, ‘Come quick, come quick to the door!’ She ran, and leaned to the wall, until her face was close to mine and her breath came on me.
I said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll go with you. I love you, and I cannot give you up. Only tell me what I must do and I will do it!’
Then I saw her eye, and it was black, and my own face swam in it, pale as a pearl. And then, it was like Pa and the looking-glass. My soul left me—I felt it fly from me and lodge in her.
30 May 1873
Last night I had an awful dream. I dreamed that I woke up & all my limbs were stiff & I could not move them, & my eyes had a paste on them that kept them shut & it had run into my mouth & kept my lips shut too. I longed to call out to Ruth or to Mrs Brink but, because of the paste, I could not, I heard the sound I was making & it was only a groan. I began to be afraid then that I should have to lie like that until I choked or starved, & when I thought that I began to cry. Then my tears began to wash away the paste from over my eyes until finally there was a little space that I might just peep through, & thought, ‘Now I shall look & see my own room, at least.’ The room, however, that I expected to see, was not my room at Sydenham, it was my room at Mr Vincy’s hotel.
But when I did look, I saw only that the place I lay in was entirely dark, & then I knew that I was buried in my own coffin, that they had put me in it thinking I was dead. I lay crying in my coffin until the tears melted the paste from my mouth, & then I did call out, thinking ‘If I only call hard enough someone is sure to hear me & let me out.’ But no-one came, & when I lifted my head it knocked upon the wood that was above me & by the sound of that knock I knew that there was earth above the coffin, & that I was already in my grave. Then I knew that no-one would hear me however loudly I called.
I lay very still then, wondering what I should do, & as I did that there came a whispering voice beside me, it came against my ear & made me shiver. The voice said ‘Did you think you were alone? Didn’t you know that I was here?’ I looked for the person that spoke, but it was too dark for me to see them, there was only the feeling of the mouth close to my ear. I couldn’t tell if it was Ruth’s mouth, or Mrs Brink’s, or Aunty’s, or someone else entirely. I only knew, from the sound of the words, that the mouth was smiling.
Part Four
21 December 1874
They come every day now, the tokens from Selina. They come as flowers, or as scents; sometimes they come only as a subtle alteration to the details of my room—I return to it and find an ornament taken up and set down crooked, the door to my closet ajar and my dresses with marks of fingers on the velvet and the silk, a cushion with a dent in it, as if a head has lain there. They never come when I am here and watching. I wish they would. They would not frighten me. I should be frightened, now, if they ceased! For while they come, I know they come to make the space between us thick. They make a quivering cord of dark matter, it stretches from Millbank to Cheyne Walk, it is the cord through which she will send me herself.
The cord grows thickest at night, as I lie sleeping with the laudanum on me. Why didn’t I guess that? I take the medicine gladly, now. And sometimes, when Mother is out—for the rope must be made in the day-time, too—sometimes I go to her drawer and steal an extra draught of it.
I shall no longer need my medicine, of course, when I am in Italy.
Mother is patient with me now. ‘Margaret has been three weeks away from Millbank,’ she says, to Helen and the Wallaces, ‘and look at the change in her!’ She says she has not
seen me look so well in all the time since Pa died. She doesn’t know about the trips I make to the prison, secretly, while she is out. She doesn’t know that my grey visiting gown lies in the press—Vigers, good girl, has never told her, and I have Vigers to dress me now, instead of Ellis. She doesn’t know about the promise I have made, my bold and terrible intention to abandon and disgrace her.
Sometimes I do tremble a little, when I think of that.
And yet, I must think of it. The cord of darkness will fashion itself, but if we are truly to go, if she is truly to escape—and oh! how quaint the word sounds! as if we were a pair of footpads from the penny presses—if she is to come it must be soon, it must be planned, I must prepare, it will be perilous. I shall have to lose one life, to gain another. It will be like death.
I thought dying was simple, once; but it was very hard. And this—surely this will be harder?
I went to her to-day, while Mother was out. They have her still on Mrs Pretty’s ward, she is still wretched, her fingers bleed worse than ever, but she does not weep. She is like me. She said, ‘I could bear anything, now I know why I am bearing it.’ Her fierceness is there, but it is all contained, it is like the flame behind the chimney of a lamp. I am frightened the matrons will see it, and guess. I was frightened, to-day, when they looked at me. I seemed to walk flinching through the gaol, it might have been my first trip there; I was conscious again of the great size, the crushing weight of it—of its walls, its bolts and bars and locks, its watchful keepers in their suits of wool and leather, its odours, its clamour, that seemed cut from lead. I thought then, as I walked, that we had been fools, ever to think she could escape from it! It was only when I felt her fierceness, that I was sure again.
We talked of the preparations I must make. She said we shall need money, all the money I can find; and we shall need clothes, and shoes, and boxes to put them in. She said we must not wait until we arrive at France before we buy these things, for we mustn’t seem strange in any way upon the train, we must seem like a lady and her companion and have the luggage to show for it. I had not thought of it as she had. It sometimes seems a little foolish, thinking such things in my own room. It didn’t seem foolish, hearing her plan and order, fiercely, with glittering eyes.