Affinity (44 page)

I took Miss Craven’s arm, and began to walk with her along the line of watching women. From the cell next to Selina’s, Agnes Nash caught my eye, and slowly nodded.—I turned my eyes from her. I said, ‘Where is Mrs Jelf?’ The matron said that Mrs Jelf had been made ill, by shock, and had been sent home by the prison surgeon.—But I was too ill myself, I think, to hear her properly.

Now, however, came another torment. On the staircase, at the junction of the wards below—at the place where I had once waited for Mrs Pretty to pass, so that I might run to the door of Selina’s cell and feel my life fly to her—there I met Miss Ridley. She saw me and started, and then she smiled.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘This is a lucky chance, Miss Prior, that sees
you
upon our wards, on
this
day! Don’t say that Dawes has run to you, and you have brought her back to us?’ She folded her arms, and stood upon her step a little more squarely. Her keys all shifted upon their chain and her leather boots creaked. Beside me, I felt Miss Craven hesitate.

I said, ‘Please let me pass, Miss Ridley.’ I still thought I might be sick, or weep, or fall in a kind of fit. I still thought, that if I could only get home, to my own room, then Selina would be guided to me from her lost place, and I would grow well again. I still thought that!

Miss Ridley saw my nervousness, and moved a little to her right—but only a little, so that I had to step between her and the whitewashed wall and feel my skirts brush hers. As I did it, our faces came close, and her eyes grew narrow.

‘And so,’ she said quietly, ‘do you have her, or not? You must know it is your duty, to surrender her to us.’

I had begun to turn from her. Now the sight of her—the sound of her voice, that was like a bolt in its cradle—made me press near to her again. ‘Surrender her?’ I said. ‘Surrender her, and to you, here? I wish to God I did have her—that I might keep her from you! Surrender her? I would as likely surrender a lamb, to the slaughterer’s knife!’

Still her face was smooth.—‘Lambs must be ate,’ she said at once, ‘and wicked girls corrected.’

I shook my head. I said, What a devil she was! How I pitied the women who had her to close the locks upon them, and the matrons who must take her as their model. ‘It is
you
that are wicked. It is you, and this place—’

As I spoke, her features shifted at last and the heavy, lash-less lids upon her pale eyes gave a quiver. ‘Wicked, am I?’ she said, as I swallowed and drew breath. ‘Pity the women, do you, that must be fastened by me? You may say that, now Dawes has gone. You didn’t think our locks so hard—nor our matrons, perhaps—when they kept her neat and close, for you to gaze at!’

She might have pinched or slapped me: I flinched, and shrank from her, and put my hand upon the wall. Nearby Miss Craven stood—her face shut, like a gate. Beyond her, I saw that Mrs Pretty had turned the corner of the ward, and had drawn to a halt to study us. Miss Ridley came close to me, raising a hand to her own white lip, to smooth it. She said she didn’t know what I might have told Miss Haxby and the governor. Perhaps they thought themselves obliged to credit me, because I was a lady—she could not say. What she could say, was this: if I had fooled them, I had fooled no-one else upon those wards. There was something devilish queer about this flight of Dawes’s, after my attentions to her—something very devilish queer, indeed! And if I was found to have played the slightest part in it—‘Well,’ she turned her eyes to the watching matrons, ‘we keep
ladies
, too, upon our wards—don’t we, Mrs Pretty? Oh yes! We have ways of making it very warm for
ladies
, here at Millbank!’

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 away 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!