Her speech was halting. She sometimes hesitated, and often licked her lips or passed her hand across them, and sometimes coughed. I thought at first that she did this out of some sort of consideration to me—who stood before her, now and then setting her conversation down, long-hand, upon the pages of my book. But then, the pauses came so queerly, and I thought again of Susan Pilling, who had also stammered and coughed and seemed to grope for ordinary words, and whom I had guessed to be only rather simple-minded . . . At last, as I moved to the gate and wished Power farewell, and as she again stumbled over some common word of blessing, she placed her swollen hand against her cheek and shook her head.
‘What a foolish old creature you must think me,’ she said. ‘You must think me hardly able to say my own name! Mr Power used fairly to curse my tongue—said it was quicker than a whippet with the scent of a hare. He’d smile to see me now, miss, wouldn’t he? So many hours, and not a soul to speak to. Sometimes you wonder if your tongue ain’t shrunk up or dropped clean off. Sometimes you do fear you will forget your own name.’
She smiled, but her eyes had begun to gleam, and her gaze was miserable. I hesitated—then said that she would think me foolish, for not guessing that the silence and the solitude were so hard. ‘When you are like me,’ I said, ‘you seem to hear nothing about you but chatter. You are glad to be able to go to your own room and say nothing.’
She said at once that I must go there more often, if I wanted to say nothing! I told her I would certainly go to her, if she wished it; and that then she must talk to me for as long as it suited her. She smiled again, and again she blessed me. ‘I shall watch out for your coming, miss,’ she said as Mrs Jelf unlocked the gate. ‘Let it be soon!’
I visited another prisoner, then, and again the matron picked her out for me, saying quietly, ‘This is a poor sad girl I am very afraid for, as finding the habits of the prison very hard.’ This girl was sad, and trembled when I went in to her. She is named Mary Ann Cook, and has been sent to Millbank, for seven years, for murdering her baby. She is not yet twenty, was put in there at sixteen, may have been handsome once but is now so white and wasted you would not recognise her for a girl at all, it is as if the pale prison walls have leached the life and colour from her and made her drab. When I asked her to tell me her history she did so dully, as if she has told it so many times before—to the matrons, to Visitors, perhaps only to herself—that the telling has made a kind of story of it, realer than memory but meaning nothing. I wished I could tell her that I know what such a story feels like.
She said she had been born to a Catholic family, that her mother had died and her father remarried; and that then she had been put to work as a maid, with her sister, in a very grand house. There, she said, were a lady and a gentleman and three daughters, who were all very kind, but there was also a son—‘and he, miss, was not kind. While he was a boy he used only to tease us—he used to listen at our door while we lay in our bed, and call into us, to frighten us. We didn’t mind that; and soon he went to school, and we saw him hardly at all. But after a year or two he came back, quite changed—as big as his father, nearly, and slyer than ever . . .’ She claims he pressed her into meeting him in secret, offered to set her up in a room as his mistress—she wouldn’t have that. Then she found that he had begun to offer money to her sister and so, ‘to save the younger girl’, she had submitted to him; and soon she found herself with child. She left her place then—says that, after all, her sister turned against her for the sake of the young man. She went to a brother, whose wife would not take her, and was confined in a charity-ward. ‘My baby came, but I never loved her. She looked so like
‘What a foolish old creature you must think me,’ she said. ‘You must think me hardly able to say my own name! Mr Power used fairly to curse my tongue—said it was quicker than a whippet with the scent of a hare. He’d smile to see me now, miss, wouldn’t he? So many hours, and not a soul to speak to. Sometimes you wonder if your tongue ain’t shrunk up or dropped clean off. Sometimes you do fear you will forget your own name.’
She smiled, but her eyes had begun to gleam, and her gaze was miserable. I hesitated—then said that she would think me foolish, for not guessing that the silence and the solitude were so hard. ‘When you are like me,’ I said, ‘you seem to hear nothing about you but chatter. You are glad to be able to go to your own room and say nothing.’
She said at once that I must go there more often, if I wanted to say nothing! I told her I would certainly go to her, if she wished it; and that then she must talk to me for as long as it suited her. She smiled again, and again she blessed me. ‘I shall watch out for your coming, miss,’ she said as Mrs Jelf unlocked the gate. ‘Let it be soon!’
I visited another prisoner, then, and again the matron picked her out for me, saying quietly, ‘This is a poor sad girl I am very afraid for, as finding the habits of the prison very hard.’ This girl was sad, and trembled when I went in to her. She is named Mary Ann Cook, and has been sent to Millbank, for seven years, for murdering her baby. She is not yet twenty, was put in there at sixteen, may have been handsome once but is now so white and wasted you would not recognise her for a girl at all, it is as if the pale prison walls have leached the life and colour from her and made her drab. When I asked her to tell me her history she did so dully, as if she has told it so many times before—to the matrons, to Visitors, perhaps only to herself—that the telling has made a kind of story of it, realer than memory but meaning nothing. I wished I could tell her that I know what such a story feels like.
She said she had been born to a Catholic family, that her mother had died and her father remarried; and that then she had been put to work as a maid, with her sister, in a very grand house. There, she said, were a lady and a gentleman and three daughters, who were all very kind, but there was also a son—‘and he, miss, was not kind. While he was a boy he used only to tease us—he used to listen at our door while we lay in our bed, and call into us, to frighten us. We didn’t mind that; and soon he went to school, and we saw him hardly at all. But after a year or two he came back, quite changed—as big as his father, nearly, and slyer than ever . . .’ She claims he pressed her into meeting him in secret, offered to set her up in a room as his mistress—she wouldn’t have that. Then she found that he had begun to offer money to her sister and so, ‘to save the younger girl’, she had submitted to him; and soon she found herself with child. She left her place then—says that, after all, her sister turned against her for the sake of the young man. She went to a brother, whose wife would not take her, and was confined in a charity-ward. ‘My baby came, but I never loved her. She looked so like
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