Affinity (28 page)

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
Little 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
.

I went to Power, as I have said; and then to Cook and to another woman, Hamer; and then to Selina. She raised her head when she heard my step, and her gaze met my own, over the matron’s dipping shoulder, and her eyes grew bright. I knew then how hard it had been to keep, not just from Millbank, but from her. I felt that little
quickening
. It was just as I imagine a woman must feel, when the baby within her gives its first kick.

Does it matter if I feel that, that is so small, and silent, and secret?

It didn’t seem to matter, at that moment, in Selina’s cell.

For she was so grateful to have me go to her! She said, ‘You were patient with me, last time, when I was so distracted. And then, when you didn’t come for so long—I know it isn’t long, but it seems terribly long to me, here at Millbank. And when you didn’t come, I thought, perhaps you had changed your mind and meant never to visit again . . .’

I remembered that visit, and how queer and fanciful it had made me. I said she mustn’t think such things as that; and I looked, as I spoke, at the stone cell floor—there were no marks of white upon it now, no trace of wax or grease or even limewash. I said that I had only been obliged to keep away a little. I had been rather occupied, with duties at home.

She nodded, but looked sad. She said that she supposed I had many friends? She could see how I would rather spend my days with them, than go to Millbank.

If she could only know how slow and dull and empty my days are!—as slow as hers. I went to her chair, and sat in it, and put my arm upon her table. I told her that Priscilla had married, and that my mother needed me more at home now she was gone. She looked, and nodded: ‘Your sister married. Is it a good marriage?’—I said it was very good. She said, ‘Then you must be happy for her’—and when I only smiled and wouldn’t answer, she drew a little nearer.

She said, ‘I think, Aurora, that perhaps you envy your sister a little.’

I smiled. I said she was right, that I did envy her. ‘Not,’ I added, ‘because she has a husband, not for that, oh no! But because she has—how can I say it? She has
evolved
, like one of your spirits. She has moved on. And I am left, more firmly
un
evolved than ever.’

‘You are like me, then,’ she said. ‘Indeed, you are like all of us at Millbank.’

I said I was. And yet, they had their terms, that would expire . . .

I lowered my eyes, but felt her keep her gaze upon me. She asked me, would I tell her more about my sister? I said she would think me selfish—‘Oh!’ she said at once, ‘I could never think that.’

‘You will. Do you know, I couldn’t bear to look upon my sister as she set off upon her honeymoon. I couldn’t bear to kiss her, or to wish her farewell.
That
is when I was envious! Oh, I might as well have had vinegar in my veins, then, as blood!’

I hesitated. Still she studied me. And at last she said quietly, that I must not be ashamed to tell my true thoughts there, at Millbank. That there, there were only the stones in the walls to hear me—and herself, who they kept dumb as a stone, and so could tell no-one.

She has said as much to me, before; I never felt the force of it, however, as I did to-day, and when I spoke at last, it was as if the words were pulled from me, that had been tight, inside my breast, upon a thread. I said, ‘My sister has gone, Selina, to Italy; and I was to have travelled there, with my father and—with a friend.’ I have never of course mentioned Helen at Millbank. I said now only that we had planned to go, to Florence and to Rome; that Pa had meant to study in the archives and the galleries there, and that my friend and I had meant to help him. I told her that Italy had become a kind of mania with me, a kind of emblem. ‘We meant to make the trip before Priscilla married, so that my mother might not be left alone. Now Priscilla
is
married. She has gone there, with not a thought for all my careful plans. And I—’