by Sarah Waters
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!
But no answer came, no sound at all save my own ragged breaths, the thump and slither of my feet upon the stairs.
And at last I reached the door of my own chamber, that was ajar. She had not thought to close it, in her great haste.
She has taken everything, except the books: these she removed from the boxes which held them, and piled carelessly upon the carpet; in their place she took items from my dressing-room—gowns and coats, and hats and boots and gloves and brooches—things, I suppose, to make a lady of her, things that she has handled in her time here, things she has cleaned and pressed and folded, and kept neat, kept ready. She has taken these—and, of course, the clothes I bought Selina. And she has the money, and the tickets, and the passports marked Margaret Prior and Marian Erle.
She even has the rope of hair, which I combed smooth, to coil about Selina’s head to cover the marks of the prison scissors. She left me only this, to write in. She left it neat and square, and with the cover wiped clean—as a good maid would leave a kitchen-book, after taking out a recipe.
Vigers. I said the name again—I spat the name, it was like a poison in me, I felt it rising in me, turning my flesh black. Vigers. What was she, to me? I could not even recall the details of her face, her look, her manners. I could not say, cannot say now, what shade her hair is, what colour her e
ye, how her lip curves—I know she is plain, plainer even than I. And yet I must think, She has taken Selina from me. I must think, Selina wept, for the wanting of her.
I must think, Selina has taken my life, that she might have a life with Vigers in it !
I know it, now. I would not know it then. I thought only that she must have cheated me; that she must have had some grip upon Selina, some queer claim that had forced her to this.—I still thought, Selina loves me. So when I went from the room I went not down to the hall, where Mrs Jelf still waited; I went to the narrow stairs, the attic stairs, that lead to the servants’ bedrooms. I cannot remember when I last climbed these stairs, before to-day—perhaps, when I was very young. There was a maid, once, I think, who caught me gazing at her, and gave me a pinch that made me cry; and after that, the staircase frightened me. I used to tell Pris that a troll lived at the top of it, and that when the servants went to their rooms they went, not to sleep, but to be maids for him.
Now I climbed the creaking stairs, and might have been a child again. I thought, Suppose she is there, or comes and finds me?
But of course, she was not there. Her room was cold and quite empty—the emptiest room, it seemed to me at first, that it was possible to imagine: a room that held nothing, like the cells at Millbank, a room that had made nothing a substance, a texture, or a scent. Its walls were colourless, its floor quite naked but for a single strip of rug, worn to the weave. It had a shelf, with a bowl, and a jug that was tarnished, and a bed, with yellowing sheets, that were twisted and bunched.
All she left behind her was a servant’s tin trunk—the trunk she came with, it has her initials hammered in it, very roughly, with the point of a nail.—R.V.
I saw them, and imagined her hammering the letters into the soft red flesh of Selina’s heart.
But if she ever did that, then I think Selina must have parted the bones at her breast, to let her. She must have grasped her own bones and, weeping, eased them open—just as, now, I lifted the lid of the trunk, and wept to see what lay inside it.
A mud-brown gown, from Millbank, and a maid’s black frock, with its apron of white. They lay tangled together, like sleeping lovers; and when I tried to pull the prison dress free, it clung to the dark fabric of the other and would not come.
They might have been put there in cruelty; they might have been cast there only in haste. Either way, I saw the message of them. There had been no trickery on Vigers’ part—only a sly and dreadful triumph. She had had Selina here, above my head. She had brought her past my door, and up the naked stairs—all while I sat, with my poor shielded candle. All while I waited through the long hours of the night, they were here, lying together, speaking in whispers—or not speaking at all. And when they heard me pace, and moan, and cry out at my window, they had moaned and cried out, to mock me—or else, they had caught the terrible straining of my passion, and the passion had become theirs.
But then, that passion was always theirs. Every time I stood in Selina’s cell, feeling my flesh yearn towards hers, there might as well have been Vigers at the gate, looking on, stealing Selina’s gaze from me to her. All that I wrote, in the dark, she had later brought a light to; and she had written the words to Selina, and the words had become her own. All the time I lay in my bed, turning, turning with the drug on me, feeling Selina come, it was Vigers that came, it was her shadow on my eye, her heart that beat to match Selina’s—while mine struck out some weak, irregular rhythm of its own.
I saw all this; and then I went to the bed they lay on, and turned the sheets, looking for marks and smudges. Then I went to the bowl upon the shelf. There was still a little cloudy water in it, and I sifted it with my fingers until I found a hair that was dark, and another, quite gold. Then I cast the bowl to the floor, and it broke in pieces, and the water stained the boards. I took the jug, meaning to smash it—but it was of tin and wouldn’t break, I had to beat it till it buckled. I seized the mattress, and then the bed; the sheets I ripped. The tearing cotton—how can I write it?—it was like a drug upon me. I tore and tore, until the sheets were rags, until my hands were sore; and then I put the seams to my own mouth and tore with my teeth. I ripped the rug upon the floor. I took the servant’s trunk, and pulled the gowns from it and tore at them—I think I would have torn at my own dress, my very hair, if I had not gone panting to the window at the last, and put my cheek against the glass, and clutched the frame, and shivered. Before me, London lay perfectly white and still. The snow still fell, the sky seemed pregnant with it. There was the Thames, and there the trees of Battersea; and there—far-off to the left, too far to catch from my own window a floor below—there were the blunted tips of Millbank’s towers.
And there upon Cheyne Walk, his coat very dark, was the policeman, making his day’s patrol.
Seeing him, I thought one thing—it was my mother’s voice, rising in me. I have been robbed, I thought, by my own servant! Only let me tell that policeman, and he will stop her—he will stop her train! I’ll have them both at Millbank! I’ll have them put in separate cells, and make Selina my own again!
I went from the room, and down the attic staircase, down to the hall. There was Mrs Jelf, pacing now, and weeping—I put her from me. I drew open the door, and ran along the pavement; and then I cried out to the policeman, in a quivering shriek that was a voice unlike my own, that made him turn and come running and say my name. I clutched at his arm. I saw him gazing at my hair, which was wild, and my face, which was terrible, and—I had forgotten this—the wound upon my throat, that I had twisted and made bleed again.
I said I had been robbed. I said, there had been thieves, in my own house. They were now upon the train, from Waterloo to France—two women, with my clothes on them!
He looked at me strangely. He said, Two women?—‘Two women, and one of them my maid. And she is terribly cunning, and has abused me, cruelly! And the other—the other—’
The other escaped, I meant to say next, from Millbank Prison! But instead of saying it, I took one quick icy breath and put my hand to my mouth.
For how should he suppose that I knew that?
Why were there clothes, for her to dress in?
Why was there money ready, why were there tickets?
Why was there a passport, made out in a fanciful name . . .?
The policeman waited. I said, ‘I am not sure, I am not sure.’
He glanced about him. He had removed his whistle from his belt, I saw—now he let it fall upon its chain and bent his head to me. He said, ‘I think you shouldn’t be upon the street, miss, so confused. Let me walk home with you, and you may tell me all your story there, where it is warm. You have hurt your neck, look, and the cold will make it smart.’
He held his arm for me to take. I drew away from him. ‘You mustn’t come,’ I said then. I said I had been wrong—there was no robbery, nor anything strange at the house at all. I turned, and walked from him. He kept pace with me, reaching for me, murmuring my name—yet also unable, quite, to put his hand upon me. And when I seized the gate and shut it on him, he hesitated; and while he did that I ran quickly into the house, and closed the door and slid the bolt, and stood with my back pressed to it, and my cheek against the wood.
He came, then, and pulled on the bell, I heard it ringing in the darkened kitchen. Then I saw his face, stained crimson by the glass at the side of the door: he cupped his hands, and peered into the darkness, and called for me and then for a servant. After a minute of this he moved away again; and after another minute with my back pressed to the door, I crept across the tiles into Pa’s study and peeped through the window-lace, and saw him standing at the gate. He had removed his note-book from his pocket, and was writing in it. He wrote a line, then checked his watch and glanced once more at the darkened house. Then he looked about him again, and slowly moved away.
Only then did I remember Mrs Jelf. There was no sign of her. But when I went softly to the kitchen I found the door unfastened, and suppose she took her leave that way
. She must have seen me run and seize the policeman, and gesture back towards the house. Poor lady! I imagine her sweating with terror to-night, to hear the constable’s tread outside her door—just as last night she sat, as I did, weeping at nothing.
18 July 1873
A tremendous row at the circle tonight! There were only 7 of us gathered, namely me, Mrs Brink, Miss Noakes & 4 strangers, 2 of them a lady & her little red-headed daughter, the other 2 sitters gentlemen, that I think had come only for fun. I saw them looking about themselves, & think they were looking for a trapdoor or wheels on the table. I thought then they might be grabbers, or that the idea of grabbing might come to them later. When they gave their coats to Ruth they said ‘Now miss, keep our things from being spirited away while we sit here & we will give you half a crown.’ When they saw me they made me bows & laughed, one of them taking my hand & saying ‘You must think us very rude, Miss Dawes. We were told you were handsome, but I was sure you would turn out very fat & old. There are, you must admit, a great many lady mediums answering that description.’ I said ‘I see only with the eyes of the spirit sir’ & he answered ‘Well, then I am afraid there is a great deal wasted every time you look in the glass. You must let us use our fleshly eyes on you the more to make up for it.’ He himself had a very poor set of whiskers, & an arm that was slender as a lady’s. When we sat he took pains to sit at my side, & when I said we must join hands to pray he said ‘Must I take Stanley’s hand? May I not rather hold both your hands?’ The lady with the daughter I thought looked quite disgusted then, & Mrs Brink said ‘I think our circle is not a harmonious one tonight, Miss Dawes. Perhaps you ought not to sit for us.’ I should have hated however, not to have sat then.
The gentleman kept very close beside me while we waited, saying once ‘This, I think, is what they call congenial spirits.’ Finally he did take his other hand from his friend & he put it upon my bare arm. I said at once ‘The circle has been broken!’ & he answered ‘Well it is not Stanley & I that have broken it. I can feel Stanley’s hand now, he is holding tight to the tail of my shirt.’ When I went into the cabinet he rose to help me but Miss Noakes said ‘I am to help Miss Dawes tonight.’ She fastened me with the collar & then held the rope, & the gentleman’s friend Mr Stanley seeing that said ‘Lord, must you do that? Must she really be tied like a goose?’ Miss Noakes answered ‘It is for persons like you that we do this. Do you think that any of us enjoys it?’
