Affinity (14 page)

An absurd dream—and certainly very different to the dreams that used to torment me in the weeks after his death, in which I would find myself squatting at the side of his grave, calling to him through the newly-turned earth. I would open my eyes from those and seem to feel the soil still clinging to my fingers. But I woke afraid this morning, and when Ellis brought my water I made her stay and talk with me, until at last she said she must leave me or my water would be cold. I went and dipped my hands in it then. It was not quite chill, but it had misted the looking-glass; and as I wiped that I looked, as I always looked, for my locket.—
My locket was gone!
and I cannot say where. I know I hung it beside the glass last night, and perhaps I later went and turned it in my fingers. I cannot say when quite it was that I at last went to my bed; but that is not a queer thing with me—it is the point, after all, of the chloral!—and I am certain that I didn’t take it with me.—Why would I have? So it could not have been broken and lost in the sheets—besides, I have searched for it among the bed-clothes, very carefully.

And now, all day, I have felt dreadfully naked and miserable. I feel the loss of it, above my heart, quite like a pain. I have asked Ellis, and Vigers—even Pris. But I have not mentioned it to Mother. She would think, first, that one of the girls had taken it; and then, when she saw the folly of that—for, as she has said herself, it is such a plain piece, and I am used to keeping it alongside so many far finer items—then she would think I had grown ill again. She would not know, they none of them could know, the strangeness of my losing it, on such a night!—after such a visit, and such a conversation, with Selina Dawes.

And now,
I
begin to fear I have grown ill again. Perhaps it was the chloral, working on me. Perhaps I rose and seized the locket and placed it somewhere—like Franklin Blake in
The Moonstone
. I remember Pa reading that scene, and smiling over it; but I remember, too, a lady who was visiting us shaking her head. She said she had had a grandmother on whom the laudanum had so worked, she had risen from her sleep and taken a kitchen knife and cut her own leg with it, then returned to her bed, and the blood had flowed into the mattress and half killed her.

I don’t believe I would do such a thing. I think, after all, one of the girls must have it. Perhaps Ellis took it up and broke its chain, and was afraid to show me? There is a prisoner at Millbank who says she broke a brooch of her mistress’s, and took it to be mended, but was caught with it upon her and charged as a thief. Perhaps Ellis fears that. Perhaps she is so afraid, she has simply thrown the broken locket away. Now I suppose a dust-man will find it, and he will give it to his wife. She will put her dirty fingernail to it and find the lock of shining hair inside it, and wonder for a second whose head it was cut from and why it was kept . . .

I do not care if Ellis broke it, or if the dust-man’s sweet-heart has it—she might keep the locket, though I had it from Pa. There are a thousand things, in this house, to remind me of my father. It is the curl of Helen’s hair I am afraid for, that she cut from her own head and said I must keep, while she still loved me. I am only afraid of losing that—for God knows! I’ve lost so much of her already.

3 November 1872

I thought no-one would come today. The weather keeps so poor, no-one has come to the house at all, not for 3 days, not even for Mr Vincy or Miss Sibree. We have kept only quietly amongst ourselves, making dark circles in the parlour. We have been trying for forms. They say a medium must try for forms now, that in America it is all the sitters ask for. We tried till 9 o’clock last night but, no spirit coming, we finally put up the lights & had Miss Sibree sing. When we tried again to-day, with again no phenomena occurring, Mr Vincy showed us how a medium might seem to make a limb come, that really was only his own. He did it like this -

I held his left wrist, & Miss Sibree seemed to hold his right.
In fact
however, we held the
same arm
, it was only that Mr Vincy had made it so dark we could not see. ‘With my free hand,’ he said ‘I may do anything, for example this’, & he put his fingers against my neck, I felt them & screamed. He said ‘You see how a person might be cheated by an unscrupulous medium, Miss Dawes. Imagine if my hand had been made first very hot or very cold, or very wet, then how much realer might it not seem?’ I said he ought to show Miss Sibree, & I went & took another seat. Still, I was glad to learn about the arm trick.

We sat until 4 or 5 &, the rain falling heavier than ever, we were all finally certain no-one would come. Miss Sibree stood at the window & said ‘O, who would envy us our vocations! We must be here for the living & the dead to call on, just as they please. Do you know I was woken at 5 this morning, by a spirit laughing in the corner of my room?’ She put her hands to her eyes & rubbed them. I thought ‘I heard that spirit, it came out of a bottle last night, you were laughing it into your chamber-pot,’ but Miss Sibree has been kind to me over Aunty, I would never think of saying such a thing aloud. Mr Vincy said ‘Our calling is indeed a hard one. Don’t you think, Miss Dawes?’ Then he got up & yawned & said that, since no-one would come now, we might as well put a cloth on the table & have a game of cards. No sooner had he brought the cards out however, than the bell did sound. Then he said ‘So much for our game, ladies! That will be for me, I daresay.’

But when Betty came to the room, it was not him she looked at, it was me. She had a lady with her, & a girl that was the lady’s own maid. When the lady saw me rise she put a hand to her heart, crying out ‘Are you Miss Dawes? O, I know that you are!’ I saw Mrs Vincy looking at me then, & Mr Vincy, & Miss Sibree & even Betty. I however, was as surprised as any of them, the only idea coming into my head being, that this was the mother of the lady I saw a month ago, whose children I said would die. I thought ‘This is what comes of being too honest. I should be like Mr Vincy after all. I was sure that the lady had done herself some injury in grief, & now her mother had come to charge me with it.’

But when I looked at the lady’s face I saw a pain in it but, behind the pain, a happiness. I said ‘Well, I suppose you had better come to my room. It is quite at the top of the house though. Shall you mind the stairs?’ She only smiled at her maid & then answered ‘Mind them? I have been searching for you for 25 years. I shall not be kept from you now, by a staircase!’

Then I thought she might be a little queer in the head. But I brought her here, & she stood & looked about her, then she looked at her maid & then looked hard at me again. I saw then that she was quite a lady, with hands that were very white & neat, & very handsome though old-fashioned rings. I thought she might be 50 or 51. Her dress was black, a better black than mine. She said ‘You do not know, do you, why I have come to you? That is strange. I thought you might have guessed.’ I said ‘You have been brought here by some sorrow.’ She answered ‘I was brought here, Miss Dawes,
by a dream
.’

She said a dream had made her come to me. She said she dreamed, 3 nights ago, my face & my name, & the address of Mr Vincy’s hotel. She said she dreamed them, but never thought they might be true until she looked this morning in the
Medium & Daybreak
& saw the notice I put there 2 months ago. That made her come to Holborn to find me out, & now that she had seen my face she said she knew what the spirits wanted by it. I thought ‘Well, that is more than I know,’ & I looked at her & her maid, & waited. The lady said then ‘O Ruth, do you see that face? Do you see it? Shall I show her?’ & the maid said ‘I think you ought to, ma’am.’ Then the lady took something from her coat that was wrapped in a length of velvet, & she uncovered it & kissed it, then showed it to me. It was a portrait in a frame, she held it to me, almost weeping. I looked at it & she watched me, & her maid also watched me. Then the lady said ‘
Now
I think you see, don’t you?’

All I really saw however, was the picture’s frame, which was of gold, & the lady’s white hand, which trembled. But when she put the picture in my fingers at last I cried out ‘O!’

Then she nodded, & placed her hand again upon her breast. She said ‘There is so much work that we must do. When shall we start it?’ I said we ought to start it straight away.

So she sent her maid out to wait on the landing, & she stayed with me for an hour. Her name is Mrs Brink, & she lives at Sydenham. She came all the way to Holborn, only for me.

6 November 1872

To Islington, to Mrs Baker for her sister Jane Gough, that passed into spirit March ’68,
brain-fever
.
2/-

To Kings Cross, to Mr & Mrs Martin, for their boy Alec lost from the side of a yacht -
Found Great Truth in the Great Seas
.
2/-

Here
, Mrs Brink, for her especial spirit.
£1

13 November 1872

Here, Mrs Brink 2 hrs. £1

17 November 1872

When I came out of my trance today I came out shaking, & Mrs Brink made me lie upon my bed & put her hand upon my forehead. She got her maid to fetch a glass of wine from Mr Vincy & then, when the wine came, she said it was very poor stuff, & she made Betty run to a public house to buy a better sort. She said ‘I have made you work too hard.’ I said it was not that, but that I often fainted or was ill, & then she looked about her & said she was not surprised, she thought it would make any person poorly to have to live in my room. She looked at her maid & said ‘Look at that lamp’, she meant the lamp that Mr Vincy has put red paint on, that smokes. She said ‘Look at this dirty carpet, look at these bed-clothes’, she meant the old silk cover that I brought from Bethnal Green, that Aunty sewed. She shook her head, then held my hand. She said I am far too rare a jewel to be kept in a poor box like this.

17 October 1874

A very curious conversation this evening, regarding Millbank, and spiritualism, and Selina Dawes. We had Mr Barclay to dinner; later came Stephen and Helen, and Mrs Wallace, to play at cards with Mother. We are all asked now, with the wedding so close, to call Mr Barclay ‘Arthur’; Priscilla, perversely, now calls him simply
Barclay
. They talk a great deal of the house and grounds at Marishes, and how it will be when she is mistress there. She is to learn to ride, and also to drive a carriage. I have a very clear vision of her, perched on the seat of a dog-cart, holding a whip.

She says there will be a great welcome for us, at the house, after the wedding. She says there are so many rooms, they might put us all in them and nobody would know it. Apparently there is an unmarried cousin of the family’s there, that I am sure to take to: a very clever lady—she collects moths and beetles, and has exhibited, at entomological societies, ‘alongside gentlemen’. Mr Barclay—Arthur—said that he has written to tell her of my work among the prisoners, and that she has said she will be very pleased to know me.

Mrs Wallace asked me then, when was I last at Millbank? ‘How is that tyrant, Miss Ridley,’ she said, ‘and the old lady who is losing her voice?’—she meant Ellen Power. ‘Poor creature!’

‘Poor creature?’ said Pris then. ‘She sounds feeble-minded. Indeed, all of the women that Margaret tells us of sound feeble-minded.’ She said she wondered how it was that I could bear their company—‘I am sure, you never seem able to bear
our
company for any time at all.’ She gazed at me, but it was really Arthur she spoke for and he, who was seated on the carpet at her feet, answered at once that that was because I knew that nothing she said was worth listening to. ‘It is all a lot of air. Isn’t that so, Margaret?’—he calls me that now, of course.

I smiled at him, but looked at Priscilla, who had leaned to catch at his hand and pinch it. I said that she was quite wrong to call the women feeble-minded. It was only that their lives had been so very different from her own. Could she imagine, how different they had been?

She said that she didn’t care to imagine it; that I did nothing
but
imagine it, and things like it, and that made the difference between us. Now Arthur held her wrists, her two slim wrists in one of his great hands.

‘But really, Margaret,’ Mrs Wallace went on, ‘are they all of that class? And are their crimes all so miserable? Have you no famous murderesses there?’ She smiled and showed her teeth—which have fine, dark, vertical cracks to them, like old piano keys.

I said that the murderesses were usually hanged; but I told them about a girl there, Hamer, who battered her mistress with a skillet, but was let off when it was proved that the mistress had been cruel to her. I said that Pris ought to look out for that sort of thing, when she is at Marishes.—‘Ha ha,’ she said.

‘There is also a woman,’ I went on, ‘—quite a lady, they paint her on the wards—who poisoned her husband—’

Arthur said, that he certainly hoped there would be nothing of
that
sort at Marishes. ‘Ha ha,’ said everybody, then.

And while they laughed and began to talk of other things I thought, Shall I say, there is also a curious girl, a spiritualist . . .? I decided first, that I would not—then thought, Why shouldn’t I? And when I finally did say it, my brother answered at once, quite easily, ‘Ah yes, the medium. Now, what is her name? Is it Gates?’

‘It is Dawes,’ I said, in some surprise. I had never said the name aloud before, outside of Millbank Prison. I had never heard anyone speak of her, who was not a matron on the wards. But now Stephen nodded—of course, he remembered the case. The prosecuting lawyer in it had been, he said, a Mr Locke—‘a very fine man, retired now. I should like to have worked with him.’

‘Mr Halford Locke?’ said Mother then. ‘He came to dinner once. Do you remember, Priscilla? No, you were too young to sit at table with us then. Do you remember, Margaret?’

I don’t remember it. I am glad I don’t. I looked from Stephen to Mother—and then I turned to Mrs Wallace and stared at her. ‘Dawes, the medium?’ she was saying. ‘Oh, I know
her
! It was she who struck Mrs Silvester’s daughter on the head—or throttled her—or, anyway, nearly killed her . . .’