Affinity (40 page)

I waited for that sound, then crept up all the stairs and came in here; and I sat and drew the money order out, and gazed at it until that white space where the figure must be put again seemed to expand. At last it might have been a pane of glass with frost upon it, and as I watched, the frost began to melt and thin. Then I knew that what I could make out, faintly, beyond the ice, were the crisping lines and the deepening colours of my own future.

Then there were sounds from the rooms below me, and when I heard them I opened my drawer and took out this book, and turned back the pages so that I might slip the order between them. But the book seemed to bulge a little; and when I tilted it, something slithered from it—something slim and black, it fell upon my skirt and then was still. When I touched it, it seemed warm.

I had never seen it before, yet I knew it at once. It was a velvet collar, with a lock of brass. It was the collar Selina used to wear, and she had sent it to me—it was my reward, I think, for all my cleverness with Stephen!

I stood at the glass and fastened it about my throat. It fits, but tightly: I feel it grip, as my heart pulses, as if she holds the thread to which it is fastened and sometimes pulls it, to remind me she is near.

6 January 1875

It is five days since I was last at Millbank; but it is marvellously easy not to go there, now that I know Selina visits me—now that I know she will soon come, and never leave! I am content to stay at home, to talk with guests, even to talk alone with Mother. For Mother keeps to the house, too, more than is usual. She spends her hours sorting her gowns for Marishes, and sending the maids into the attics to fetch trunks and boxes, and sheets to place over the furniture and rugs when we are gone.

When we are gone
, I have written—for there is one advance, at least. I have found a way to make her plans a shelter for my own.

We sat together one night, a week ago—she with a piece of paper and a pen, drawing up lists; I with a book upon my lap, and a knife. I was cutting the pages, but had my eyes upon the fire, and suppose I sat very still. I didn’t know it however, until Mother raised her head and gave a
tut
. She said, How could I sit there, so idle and so calm? We were to leave for Marishes in ten days’ time, and there were a hundred things that must be done before we went. Had I even spoken to Ellis, about my gowns?

I did not draw my gaze from the fire, nor slow the gentle tearing of the knife. I said, ‘Well, here is progress Mother. A month ago you were reproaching me for restlessness. It does seem rather hard of you, however, to be scolding me now for excess of calm.’

It was the tone I keep for this book, not for her. Hearing it, she put her list aside, saying, She knew nothing of calmness, it was my impertinence that she ought to be scolding!

Now I did look at her. Now I did not feel idle. I felt—well, perhaps it was Selina, speaking for me!—but I felt gilded with a lustre not my own, no, not at all my own. I said, ‘I’m not a serving-girl, to be reprimanded and dismissed. I’m not any kind of girl, you have said it yourself. You still treat me like one, however.’

‘That’s enough!’ she said quickly. ‘I won’t have such talk, in my own house, from my own daughter. And I shan’t have it at Marishes—’

No, I said. No, she would not. For she wouldn’t have me at Marishes, either—at least, not for a month or so. I told her I had decided to stay on here, alone, while she goes down with Stephen and Helen.

Stay here, alone? What nonsense was this?—I said it wasn’t nonsense. I said that, on the contrary, it was perfectly sensible.

‘It is more of your old wilfulness, that is what it is! Margaret, we have had arguments like this a score of times—’

‘All the more reason, then, for us not to have another now.’ Really, there was nothing to be said. I should be happy to be solitary, for a week or two. And I was sure that everyone at Marishes would be more content, with me at Chelsea!

She didn’t answer that. I put the knife to the book again, and cut the pages faster, and when she heard the ripping paper she blinked. She said, What would our friends all think of her, if she was to go and leave me here? I said they might think what they liked, she might tell them anything. She might tell them I was preparing Pa’s letters for publication—indeed, I might begin it, with the house so quiet.

She shook her head. ‘You have been ill,’ she said. ‘Suppose you should fall ill again, with no-one here to nurse you?’

I said I should not fall ill; nor would I be at all alone, for there would be Cook—Cook might bring in a boy to sleep downstairs at night, as she had in the weeks after Pa died. And there would also be Vigers. She might leave me Vigers, and take Ellis with her to Warwickshire . . .

I said all this. I hadn’t thought of any of it before that moment, but now I might have been letting the words fly from the book in my lap with each swift, easy movement of the knife. I saw Mother grow thoughtful—still, however, she frowned. She said again, ‘If you should sicken—’

‘Why should I do that? Look how well I have become!’

Then she did look at me. She looked at my eye, which I think the laudanum had made vivid; and at my cheek, which the fire, or perhaps the motion of my hand cutting the paper, had made burn. She looked at my gown, which was an old, plum-coloured gown I had had Vigers fetch from the press and make narrow—for none of my suits of grey and black are high enough at the throat to hide my velvet collar.

The gown alone, I think, almost decided her. Then I said, ‘Do say you’ll leave me, Mother. We mustn’t always keep so close, must we? Won’t it be pleasanter for Stephen and Helen, at least, to have a holiday without
me
in it?’

It seems, here, a shrewd thing for me to have said; yet I meant nothing by it, nothing at all. I should never have said, before that moment, that Mother had any opinion on the matter of my feelings for Helen. I should not have thought that she had ever watched me gaze at her, or listened when I said her name, or seen me glance away as she kissed Stephen. Now she heard the lightness and the evenness of my tone, and I saw a look upon her face—not quite relief, nor satisfaction, but something like them, something very like them—and I knew at once that she had done all those things. I knew she had been doing them for two years and a half.

And I wonder now how differently it might have been between us if I had only kept my love more hidden; or if I had never felt it at all.

She moved in her chair, and smoothed the skirt across her lap. It seemed not quite correct to her, she said. But she supposed that, if Vigers were to stay, and I was to travel with her, after three or four weeks . . .

She said she must talk with Helen and Stephen about it, before she could quite give me her consent; and when we visited them next, on New Year’s Eve—well, I find I need to gaze at Helen now, hardly at all, and when Stephen kissed her at midnight, I only smiled. Mother told them my plan and they looked at me and said, How could it harm me, to be left alone in my own home, where I spend so many solitary hours already? And Mrs Wallace, who dined there with us, said it was certainly more sensible to want to stay at Cheyne Walk than to risk one’s health by making a journey on a train!

We were home at two that night. After the house was locked I kept my cloak about me, and stood a long time at my window, raising the sash a little to feel the thin rain of the new year. At three o’clock there were still boats ringing their bells, and men’s voices from the river, and boys running fast along the Walk; but for a single moment as I watched, the clamour and the bustle died, and then the morning was perfectly still. The rain was fine—too fine to spoil the surface of the Thames, it shone like glass, and where the lamps of the bridges and the water-stairs showed there were wriggling snakes of red and yellow light. The pavements gleamed quite blue—like china plates.

I should never have guessed that that dark night could have had so many colours in it.

Next day, while Mother was out, I went to Millbank, to Selina. They have put her back upon the ordinary ward, and so now she has prison dinners again, and wool to work at rather than coir—and her own matron Mrs Jelf, who is so careful of her. I walked to her cell, remembering how it had once been a pleasure to me to keep back my visit to her, to call on other women first, and save the gazing on her till I might gaze freely. Now, how can I keep from her? What is it to me, what the other women think? I stopped at the gates of one or two of them and wished them ‘Happy New Year’, and shook their hands; but the ward seemed changed to me, I looked along it and saw only so many pale women in mud-coloured gowns. Two or three of the prisoners I used to call on have been moved, to Fulham; and Ellen Power, of course, is dead, and the woman in her cell now does not know me. Mary Ann Cook seemed pleased enough to have me come—and Agnes Nash, the coiner. But it was Selina I went for.

She asked me quietly, ‘What have you done for us?’ and I told her all that Stephen had said. She thinks we cannot be sure about the income, and says I had better visit my bank and draw from it as much money as I can, and keep it safe till we are ready for it. I told her about Mother’s visit to Marishes, and she smiled. She said, ‘You are clever, Aurora.’ I said the cleverness was all hers, it was only working through me, I was its vehicle.

‘You are my medium,’ she said.

Then she came a little closer to me and I saw her looking at my gown, and then at my throat. She said, ‘Have you felt me near you? Have you felt me all about you? My spirit comes to you, at night.’

I answered: ‘I know.’

Then she said, ‘Do you wear the collar? Let me see it.’

I pulled at the material about my throat and showed her the strip of velvet that lay warm and tight beneath it. She nodded, and the collar grew tighter.

‘This is very good,’ she whispered—her voice was like a finger, stroking. ‘This will draw me to you, through the dark.
No
—’ for I had taken a step, to be nearer to her ‘—No. If they see us now, they may move me further from you. You must wait a little. Soon you will have me. And then—well, you may keep me close then, close as you like.’

I gazed at her, and my thoughts gave a tilt. I said, ‘
When
, Selina?’

She said that I must decide it. It must be a night when I was sure to be alone—a night after my mother had gone, when I had found the things that we would need. I said, ‘Mother is leaving on the 9th. It might be any night, I suppose, after that one . . .’

Then I thought of something. I smiled—I think I must have laughed, for I remember her saying then: ‘Hush, or Mrs Jelf will hear you!’

I said, ‘I am sorry. It is only that—well, there is a night we might choose, if you won’t think it foolish.’ She looked puzzled. I almost laughed again. I said, ‘The twentieth of January, Selina.—St Agnes’ Eve!’

But she still looked blank. Then she said, after a moment, Was that my birthday . . . ?

I shook my head, saying, St Agnes’ Eve! The Eve of St Agnes! ‘
They glide
,’ I said, ‘
like phantoms, into the wide hall
—

‘Like phantoms, to the iron porch they glide,
Where lies the Porter, in uneasy sprawl.
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide,
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones,
The key turns! and the door upon its hinges groans . . .’

I said that; and she only stood watching, not knowing—not knowing! And at last I fell silent. There came a movement at my breast—part dismay it was, part fear, part simple love. Then I thought, Why should she know? Who was there ever, to teach her things like that?

I thought,
That will come.

14 June 1873

Dark circle, & afterwards Miss Driver stayed. She is a friend of Miss Isherwood’s, that came last month for Peter to see privately. She said Miss Isherwood never felt so well as she did now, & it was all thanks to the spirits. She said ‘Will you see, Miss Dawes, if Peter cannot also help me? I find I keep so very restless, & am prone to such queer fits. I think I must be rather like Miss Isherwood, & need developing.’ She stayed one and a half hours, her treatment being the same as for her friend, though taking longer. Peter said she must come back.
£1
.

21 June 1873

Development, Miss Driver 1 hour.
£2
.

First sitting, Mrs Tilney & Miss Noakes. Miss Noakes pains at the joints.
£1
.

25 June 1873

Development - Miss Noakes, Peter holding her at the head while I knelt & breathed upon her. 2 hours.
£3
.

3 July 1873

Miss Mortimer, irritation of the spine. Too nervous.

Miss Wilson, aches. Too plain for Peter’s eye.

15 January 1875

They have all gone to Warwickshire—gone a week ago. I stood at the door and watched their luggage put into a cab, watched them drive from me, saw their hands at the windows; and then I came up here and wept. Mother I let kiss me. Helen I took aside. ‘God bless you!’ I said to her. I could think of nothing else. But when I said it, she laughed—it was such a curious thing to hear me say. She said, ‘I shall see you in a month. Will you write to me, before then?’ We were never parted for so long before. I said I would, but now a week has passed and I have sent nothing. I will write to her, in time. But not yet.

The house is stiller now than I ever knew it. Cook has her nephew here to sleep downstairs, but to-night they are all already in bed. There was nothing for them to do, after Vigers brought my coals and water. The door to the house was fastened at half-past nine.

But how quiet it is! If my pen could whisper, I would make it whisper now.
I have our money.
I have
thirteen hundred pounds
. I took it from my bank, yesterday. It is my own money, and yet I felt like a thief, handling it. I gave them Stephen’s order; they were a little queer over it, I thought—the clerk stepping away from the counter for a moment to speak with a more senior man, then returning to ask me, Would I not prefer the money in the form of a cheque? I said, No, a cheque would not serve—trembling all the time—thinking they must see my purpose and might try and send for Stephen. But after all, what could they do? I am a lady, and the money is mine. They brought it to me in a paper wallet. The clerk made me a bow.