Affinity (45 page)

She took a shuddering breath. I kept my eyes on her, still saying nothing.

‘It was very hard for me, then,’ she went on, ‘and I was very low. But when the baby came, I loved him! He came early, and was sickly. If I had shown him just an ounce of hurt, I think he would have died. But he did not die; and I worked—all for him!—for myself, you see, I cared nothing. I worked long hours, in fearful places, all for his sake.’ She swallowed. ‘And then—’ Then, when he was four years old, her son had died anyway. She had thought her life was ended—‘Well,
you
will know how it is, Miss Prior, when that which is more dear to you than anything, is taken from you.’ She had worked a little, in worse places than before. She would have worked, she thought, in Hell itself, and hardly minded . . .

And then a girl she knew told her of Millbank. The wages there are high, because no-one cares for the duties; it was enough for her, she said, that they gave her her dinners, and a room with a fire and a chair in it. The women had looked all alike to her at first—‘even, even
her
, miss! Then, after a month, she touched my cheek one day and said, “Why are you so sad? Don’t you know that he is watching you, crying into his hand to see you weep, when you might be happy?” What a fright she gave me! I had never heard of spiritualism. I didn’t know, then, what her gifts were . . .’

Now I began to shudder. She looked, and tilted her head. ‘No-one knows
as we do
, do they, miss? Each time I saw her, she had some new word from him. He would come to her at night—he is a great boy now, of almost eight! How I wished for a glimpse of him! How kind she was, to me! How I have loved her, and helped her—done things, perhaps, I shouldn’t—
you
will know what I mean—all for his sake . . . And then when you came—oh, how jealous I was! I could hardly bear to see you with her! And yet, she said that she had power enough, still to bring my boy’s sweet messages, and words from your own father, miss, to you.’

I said, dull as marble: ‘
She
told you that?’

‘She told me that you came to her so often, to get word of him. And after your visits started, indeed, my boy came through stronger than ever! He sent me kisses, through her own mouth. He sent me—oh, Miss Prior, the happiest day in all my life! He sent me this, to keep about me always.’ She put her hand to the neck of her gown, and I saw her finger tugging at a chain of gold.

Then my heart gave such a jerk, my marble limbs seemed to splinter at last, and all my strength, my life, my love, my hope—all flowed from me, and left me nothing. Until then, I think I had listened and thought:
These are lies, she is mad, this is nonsense—Selina will account for it all, when she comes here!
Now she drew the locket free, and held it; she prised it wide, and there came more tears upon her lashes, and her look was blithe again.

‘See here,’ she said, showing me the curl of Helen’s pale hair. ‘The angels cut this from his little head, in Heaven!’

I looked, and wept—she thought me crying, I suppose, for her dead child. She said, ‘To know that he had come to her in her cell, Miss Prior! To think that he had lifted his dear hand to her, and placed a kiss upon her cheek, for her to give to me—oh, it made me ache to hold him! It made me ache, about the heart!’ She closed the locket, and returned it to its place behind her gown, and patted it. It has been swinging there, of course, through all my visits to the gaol . . .

And then at last, Selina had said there was a way. But it couldn’t be done on the wards at Millbank. Mrs Jelf must first help her get free; and then she would bring him. She would bring him, she swore it, to the place that Mrs Jelf lived.

She must only wait and watch, for a single night. And Selina would come, before day-light.

‘And you mustn’t think I would have helped her, Miss Prior, for anything but that! What could I do? If I don’t help him come—Well, she says that there are many ladies, where he is, who would be glad to have the care of a little motherless boy. She told me that, miss, and wept. She is so kind-hearted and so good—too good to be kept at Millbank! Didn’t you say it yourself, and to Miss Ridley? Oh! Miss Ridley! How I have feared her! I feared she would catch me, receiving kisses from my baby. I feared she would catch me being
kind
upon the ward, and so move me from it.’

I said, ‘It was you Selina stayed for, when it came time for her to go to Fulham. It was you she struck Miss Brewer for—you, for whom she suffered in the darks.’

She turned her head again, with a grotesque kind of modesty—said, she only knew how ill she felt then, to think that she had lost her. How ill, and then how thankful—oh, how shamed and sorry and thankful!—when poor Miss Brewer was hurt . . .

‘But now’—she raised her clear, dark, simple eyes to me—‘But now, how very hard it will be, to have to walk by her old cell and see another woman in it.’

I stared at her. I said, Could she say that? Could she think of that, when she had had Selina with her?

‘Had her with me?’ She shook her head, saying, What did I mean? Why did I think she had come here? ‘She never came to me! She never came, at all! I sat watching, through all the long night, and she never came!’

But, they had left the gaol together!—She shook her head. At the gate-house, she said, they had parted, and Selina had walked on alone. ‘She said there were things that she must fetch, that would make my son come better. She said I must only sit and wait, and she would bring him to me; and I sat and watched and waited, and at last grew sure they had recovered her. And what could I do then, but go to her at Millbank? And now, she is not recovered, and still I have had no word from her, no sign, nor anything. And I am so afraid, miss—so afraid for her, and for myself, and for my own dear boy! I think my fright, Miss Prior, will kill me!’

I had risen, and now I stood beside Pa’s desk and leaned upon it, and turned my face from her. After all, there were things that she had told me that were strange. Selina had stayed at Millbank, she said, to be released by her. But, I had felt Selina near me, in the dark, and at other times; and Selina had known things of me that I told nowhere, save in this book. Mrs Jelf had had kisses of her—but to me she had sent flowers. She had sent me her collar. She had sent me
her hair
. We were joined in the spirit and joined in the flesh—I was her own
affinity
. We had been cut, two halves together, from a single piece of shining matter.

I said, ‘She has lied to you, Mrs Jelf. She has lied to us both. But I think she will explain it, when we find her. I think there might be a purpose to it, that we cannot see. Can’t you think where she might have gone to? Is there no-one, who might be keeping her?’

She nodded. It was on account of that, she said, that she had come here.

‘And I,’ I said, ‘know nothing! I know less, Mrs Jelf, than you!’

My voice sounded loud in the silence. She heard it, and hesitated. Then, ‘
You
know nothing, miss,’ she said, giving me an odd little look. ‘But it was not you I came to trouble. It was the other lady here.’

The
other
lady here? I turned to her again. I said, she surely could not mean
my mother
?

But she shook her head, and then her look grew stranger. And if her mouth had now dropped toads, or stones, I should not have been more frightened than I was by her next words.

She said, she had not come to speak with me, at all. She had come to see Selina’s maid, Ruth Vigers.

I gazed at her. There was a gentle ticking from the clock upon the mantel—Pa’s clock, that he would stand before and set his watch to. Beyond that, the house was perfectly silent.

Vigers
, I said then.
My servant
, I said.
Vigers, my servant, Selina’s maid.

‘Of course, miss,’ she answered—then, seeing my face: how could I not have known it? She had always thought it was for Selina’s own sake that I kept Miss Vigers about me here . . .

‘Vigers came to us from nowhere,’ I said. ‘From nowhere, from nowhere.’ What thought had I for Selina Dawes, the day my mother took Ruth Vigers to the house? How could it help Selina, for me to have
Vigers
close about me?

Mrs Jelf said she had supposed it a kindness on my part; and that I liked to have Selina’s maid as my own servant, to remind me of her. Besides that, she had thought that Selina sometimes sent me tokens, in the letters that were passed between Miss Vigers and the gaol . . .

‘Letters,’ I said. Now I think I began to glimpse the whole, thick, monstrous shape of it. I said, There were letters passed, between
Selina
and
Vigers
?

Oh, she said at once, there had always been those!—even before I had begun my visits. Selina did not like to have Miss Vigers come to Millbank, and—well, Mrs Jelf could understand why a lady would not quite like to have her maid look upon her, in such a place. ‘It seemed a very little thing to do for her, to take those letters, after her kindness with my boy. The other matrons will take in packets for the women, from their friends—though you must never say I told you, they will deny it if you ask!’
They
, she said, will do it for money. It was enough for Mrs Jelf that Selina’s letters made her glad. And then, ‘there was nothing harmful in them’—nothing save kind words and, sometimes, flowers. She had seen Selina weep over those flowers, very often. She had had to turn her eyes from her then, to stop her own tears coming.

How could that hurt Selina? And how could it hurt her, for Mrs Jelf to carry letters from her cell? Who
could
it harm, to give her paper?—to give her ink, and a candle to write by? The night-matron never minded—Mrs Jelf gave her a shilling. And by dawn the candle was burned away. They must only be a little careful, over the spilling of the wax . . .

‘Then, when I knew that her letters began to have words for you in them, miss; and when she wished for a token to send, a token from her own box . . . Well’—here her white face coloured slightly—‘you could not call it stealing, could you? Taking what was hers?’

‘Her hair,’ I murmured.

‘It was her own!’ she said at once. ‘Who is there, to miss it . . .?’

And so it had been sent, wrapped in brown paper; and Vigers had received it here. It was her hand that had placed it upon my pillow—‘And all the time, Selina said the spirits brought it . . .’

Mrs Jelf heard that, and tilted her head, and frowned. ‘She said, the spirits? But Miss Prior, why would she say that?’

I didn’t answer her. I had begun to shake again. I must have gone then from the desk to the fireplace, and leaned to rest my brow against the marble mantel, and Mrs Jelf must have risen, and come and put her hand upon my arm. I said, ‘Do you know what you have done? Do you know it, do you know? They have cheated us both, and you have helped them! You, with your
kindnesses
!’

Cheated? she answered. Oh no, I had not understood—

I said I understood it all, at last—though I didn’t, even then, not all of it, not quite. But what I knew already seemed enough to kill me. I stood still for a second, then raised my head, then let it fall.

And as my brow cracked upon the stone I felt the tugging of the collar at my throat; and then I sprang from the hearth, and put my fingers to my neck and began to tear at it. Mrs Jelf looked at me, her hand at her mouth. I turned away from her, and kept on plucking at the collar, working at the velvet and the lock with my blunt nails. It would not tear, however—it would not tear! but only seemed to grip me tighter. At last I looked about me, for something that would help me; I think I would have seized Mrs Jelf herself, and pressed her mouth against my throat and made her bite the velvet from me—except that I saw first Pa’s cigar knife, and took that up, and began slicing at the collar with the blade of it.

Seeing me do that, Mrs Jelf gave a scream; she screamed that I would harm myself! that I would cut my throat! She screamed—and the blade slipped. I felt blood upon my fingers—astonishingly warm, it seemed to me, to have come from my cold flesh. But I also felt the collar, broken at last. I flung it from me to the floor; and saw it quiver, upon the rug, in the form of an
S
.

Then I let the knife drop and stood jerking beside the desk, my hip beating hard against the wood, making Pa’s pen and pencil rattle. Mrs Jelf came nervously to me again, and seized my hands, and made her handkerchief into a pad to place against my bleeding throat.

‘Miss Prior,’ she said, ‘I think you are very ill. Let me fetch Miss Vigers. Miss Vigers will calm you. She will calm us both! Only send for Miss Vigers, and have the story from her . . .’

So she went on—
Miss Vigers, Miss Vigers
—and the name seemed to tear at me like the blade of a saw. I thought again of Selina’s hair, which had been put upon my pillow. I thought of the locket, which had been taken from my room while I lay sleeping.

Still the things upon the desk jumped, as my hip struck it. I said, ‘Why would they do this, Mrs Jelf? Why would they do this, so very
carefully
?’

I thought of the orange-blossoms; and of the collar, which I found pressed between the pages of this book.

I thought of this book, where I wrote all my secrets—all my passion, all my love, all the details of our flight . . .

Then the rattling pens fell silent. I put my hand to my mouth. ‘
No
,’ I said. ‘Oh, Mrs Jelf, not that, not that!’

She reached for me again, but I broke from her. I went stumbling from the room, into the still and shadowy hall. I called, ‘
Vigers!
’—a terrible, broken cry, that went echoing about the empty house, to be smothered by a silence more terrible still. I went to the bell, and jerked it till the wire snapped. I went to the door at the side of the stairs and called into the basement—the basement was dark. I stepped back into the hall—saw Mrs Jelf gazing fearfully at me, the handkerchief with my blood upon it fluttering from her fingers. I started up the stairs, and went first to the drawing-room, and then to Mother’s room, and Pris’s room—calling all the time for
Vigers! Vigers!