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Her quiet voice, that only I can hear, is the most frightening voice of them all.
Pa used to say that any piece of history might be made into a tale: it was only a question of deciding where the tale began, and where it ended.
I have said I plan to work upon the letters, in time; but that for now, I should like to try this other thing, and at least see how I do at it. I said this to Mother’s friend Mrs Wallace, and she looked at me a little speculatively; I wondered then how much she knows or guesses about my illness and its causes, for she answered, ‘Well, there’s not a better tonic for dismal spirits than charity-work—I heard a doctor say that. But a prison ward—oh! only think of the air! The place must be a breeding-ground, for every kind of illness and disease!’
For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell
I talked a little with Miss Ridley then, about the women’s diet and the variations that are made in it—there being always fish served on a Friday, for example, on account of the large number of Roman Catholic prisoners; and on a Sunday, suet pudding. I said, Had they any Jewesses? and she answered that there were always a number of Jewesses, and they liked to make ‘a particular trouble’ over the preparation of their dishes. She had encountered that sort of behaviour, amongst the Jewesses, at other prisons.
Millbank, to look on women more wretched than yourself, in the hope that it will make you well again.’—
Perhaps, however, it is the same with spinsters as with ghosts; and one has to be of their ranks in order to see them at all.
Two days ago, Priscilla put a novel aside and Mr Barclay picked it up, and turned its pages, and laughed at it. He does not care for lady authors. All women can ever write, he says, are ‘journals of the heart’—the phrase has stayed with me. I have been thinking of my last journal, which had so much of my own heart’s blood in it; and which certainly took as long to burn as human hearts, they say, do take.
She laughed. ‘I did that,’ she said. ‘I did that, for a year. We all do—you might ask any of us. Your first year at Millbank, you see, is a frightful thing. You will swear to anything, then—you will swear to starve and take your family with you, rather than do another wicked deed and get sent back here. You will promise anything to anyone, you are that sorry. But only for the first year. After that, you ain’t sorry. You think of your crimes—you don’t think, “If I had not done that, I wouldn’t be here”, you think, “If I had only done that better . . .” You think of all the tremendous swindles
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At a book-case, however—well, a book may be on any queer subject, but one can at least always be certain how to turn a page and read it.
Mrs Silvester I don’t much care for—she reminds me of my mother. Her daughter, however, I hate: she reminds me of myself.
The matron—not Miss Ridley, to-day, but a fair-haired, younger woman named Miss Godfrey—shook her head. ‘Those are the rules,’ she said. How many times have I heard that phrase, there? ‘Those are the rules. They seem harsh to you, Miss Prior, I know. But once we let prisoner and visitor together, there come all manner of things into the gaol. Keys, tobacco . . . Infants may be taught to pass on blades, in their very kisses.’
‘It is an odd thing, the breaking-out,’ she said, ‘and quite peculiar to female gaols.’ She said there is a thought that prison women have an instinct for it; she knows only that, at some point in their terms at Millbank, her girls will nearly all of them submit. ‘And when they are young and strong and determined—well, then they are like savages. They shriek and crash about—we cannot get near them, but have to send for the men. The entire gaol hears the racket, and it takes all my power to calm the wards. For when one woman has broken out, another is sure to follow. The urge, that has been
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They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you.
Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same. It may be that the husband your sister has now has that other soul, that has the affinity with her soul—I hope it is. But it may be the next man she takes, or it may be neither. It may be someone she would never think to look to on the earth, someone kept from her by some false boundary . . .’
‘How will a person know, Selina, when the soul that has the affinity with hers is near it?’
She answered, ‘She will know. Does she look for air, before she breathes it? This love will be guided to her; and when it comes, she will know. And she will do anything to keep that love about her, then. Because to lose it will be like a death to her.’
Why do gentlemen’s voices carry so clearly, when women’s are so easily stifled?
