Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [58]
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. ‘Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?’ I said. That man told me so. He had found out that Sandi had been to the house and that I went to see him. I never knew who told. ‘Infamous daughter of an infamous mother,’ he said to me.
‘Oh put it away,’ Grace Poole said, ‘come and eat your food. Here’s your grey wrapper. Why they can’t give you anything better is more than I can understand. They’re rich enough
But I held the dress in my hand wondering if they had done the last and worst thing. If they had changed it when I wasn’t looking. If they had changed it and it wasn’t my dress at all – but how could they get the scent?
‘Well don’t stand there shivering,’ she said, quite kindly for her.
I let the dress fall on the floor, and looked from the fire to the dress and from the dress to the fire.
I put the grey wrapper round my shoulders, but I told her I wasn’t hungry and she didn’t try to force me to eat as she sometimes does.
‘It’s just as well that you don’t remember last night,’ she said. ‘The gentleman fainted and a fine outcry there was up here. Blood all over the place and I was blamed for letting you attack him. And the master is expected in a few days. I’ll never try to help you again. You are too far gone to be helped.’
I said, ‘If I had been wearing my red dress Richard would have known me.’
‘Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed.
But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.
That was the third time I had my dream, and it ended. I know now that the flight of steps leads to this room where I lie watching the woman asleep with her head on her arms. In my dream I waited till she began to snore, then I got up, took the keys and left myself out with a candle in my hand. It was easier this time than ever before and I walked as though I were flying.
All the people who had been staying in the house had gone, for the bedroom doors were shut, but it seemed to me that someone was following me, someone was chasing me, laughing. Sometimes I looked to the right or to the left but I never looked behind me for I did not want to see that ghost of a woman whom they say haunts this place. I went down the staircase. I went further than I had ever been before. There was someone talking in one of the rooms. I passed it without noise, slowly.
At last I was in the hall where a lamp was burning. I remember that when I came. A lamp and the dark staircase and the veil over my face. They think I don’t remember but I do. There was a door to the right. I opened it and went in. It was a large room with a red carpet and red curtains. Everything else was white. I sat down on a couch to look at it and it seemed sad and cold and empty to me, like a church without an altar. I wished to see it clearly so I lit all the candles, and there were many. I lit them carefully from the one I was carrying but I couldn’t reach up to the chandelier. Then I looked round for the altar for with so many candles and so much red, the room reminded me of a church. Then I heard a clock ticking and it was made of gold. Gold is the idol they worship.
Suddenly I felt very miserable in that room, thought he couch I was sitting on was so soft that I sank into it. It seemed to me that I was going to sleep. Then I imagined that I heard a footstep and I thought what will they say, what will they do if they find me here? I held my right wrist with my left hand and waited. But it was nothing. I was very tired after this. Very tired. I wanted to get out of the room but my own candle had burned down and I took one of the others. Suddenly I was in Aunt Cora’s room. I saw the sunlight coming through the window, the tree outside and the shadows of the leaves on the floor, but I saw the wax candles too and I hated them. So I knocked them all down. Most of them went out but one