"Herself wants to see you," she says, jerking her head towards the back of the house. Her manners are as democratic as ever.
Mrs. Humphrey was strongly opposed to Dora's return, and can hardly bear to be in the same room with her, which is not surprising. However, Simon had pointed out that he cannot be expected to function without tidiness and order, and someone must do the work of the house, and as no one else was to be had at the moment, Dora would have to do. As long as Dora was paid, he'd said, she would be tractable enough, although politeness would be too much to expect; all of which has proven to be the case.
"Where is she?" says Simon. He shouldn't have said she; it sounds too intimate. Mrs. Humphrey would have been better.
"Lying on the sofa, I guess," says Dora with contempt. "Same as always."
But when Simon enters the parlour - still eerily bare of furniture, although some of the original pieces have mysteriously reappeared - Mrs. Humphrey is standing by the fireplace, with one arm and hand draped gracefully over the white mantelpiece. The hand with the lace handkerchief. He smells violets.
"Dr. Jordan," she says, breaking her pose, "I thought you might care to dine with me tonight, as a poor recompense for all the efforts you have made on my behalf. I do not like to seem deficient in gratitude. Dora has prepared a little cold chicken." She enunciates each word carefully, as if it's a speech she has memorized.
Simon declines, with as much politeness as he can summon. He thanks her very much, but this evening he is engaged. This verges on the truth: he has half accepted an invitation of Miss Lydia's, to join a party of young people in a rowing excursion on the inner harbour.
Mrs. Humphrey accepts his refusal with a gracious smile, and says that they will do it another time. Something in the way she's holding her body - that, and the slow deliberation of her speech - strikes him as odd. Has the woman been drinking? Her eyes have a fixed stare, and her hands are trembling slightly.
Once upstairs, he opens his leather satchel. Everything seems in order. His three bottles of laudanum are there: none is emptier than it should be. He uncorks them, tastes the contents: one is almost pure water. She's been raiding his supplies, God only knows for how long. The afternoon headaches take on a different significance. He should have known: with a husband like that she was bound to seek out a crutch of some kind. When in funds she no doubt buys it, he thinks; but cash has been scarce, and he has been careless. He ought to have locked his room, but now is too late to begin.
There is, of course, no way he can mention it to her. She is a fastidious woman. To accuse her of theft would be not only brutal, but vulgar. Still, he's been taken.
Simon goes on the rowing trip. The night is warm and calm, and there's moonlight. He drinks a little champagne - there only is a little - and sits in the same rowboat as Lydia, and flirts with her in a half-hearted way. She at least is normal and healthy, and pretty too. Possibly he should propose to her. He thinks she might accept. Cart her home to propitiate his mother, hand her over, let the two of them work on his well-being.
It would be one way of deciding his own fate, or settling his own hash; or getting himself out of harm's way. But he won't do it; he's not that lazy, or weary; not yet.
X.
LADY OF THE LAKE
We then commenced packing up all the valuable things we could find; we both went down into the cellar; Mr. Kinnear was lying on his back in the wine-cellar; I held the candle; McDermott took the keys and some money from his pockets; nothing was said about Nancy; I did not see her, but I knew she was in the cellar, and about 11 o'clock, McDermott harnessed the horse; we put the boxes in the wagon and started off for Toronto; he said he would go to the States and he would marry me. I consented to go; we arrived at Toronto, at the City Hotel, about 5 o'clock; awoke the people; had breakfast there; I unlocked Nancy's box and put some of her things on, and we left by the boat at 8 o'clock, and arrived at Lewiston, about 3 o'clock; went to the tavern; in the evening we had supper at the public table, and I went to bed in one room and McDermott in another; before I went to bed, I told McDermott I would stop at Lewiston, and I would not go any further; he said he would make me go with him, and about 5 o'clock in the morning, Mr. Kingsmill, the High Bailiff, came and arrested us, and brought us back to Toronto.
- Confession of Grace Marks,
Star and Transcript, Toronto, November 1843.
He meets, by heavenly chance express,
The destined maid; some hidden hand
Unveils to him that loveliness
Which others cannot understand.
His merits in her presence grow,
To match the promise in her eyes,
And round her happy footsteps blow
The authentic airs of paradise....
- Coventry Patmore,
The Angel in the House, 1854.
38.
What McDermott told me later was that after he'd fired the gun at me, and I'd fallen down in a dead faint, he pumped a bucket of cold water and threw it over me, and gave me some water with peppermint to drink, and I revived immediately, and was as good as new and quite cheerful, and stirred up the fire and cooked supper for him, which was ham and eggs, with tea after, and a shot of whisky to steady us; and we ate it together with a good will, and clinked our glasses, and drank to the success of our venture. But I can't remember any of that at all. I could not have acted so heartlessly, with Mr. Kinnear lying dead in the cellar, not to mention Nancy, who must have been dead too, though I didn't know for certain what had become of her. But McDermott was a great liar.
I must have lain unconscious for a long time, for when I woke up the light was already fading. I was lying on my back, on the bed in my own bedchamber; and my cap was off and my hair was all disarranged and down about my shoulders, and also it was damp, and the upper part of my dress as well, and that must have been from the water that James had thrown over me; so that part at least of what he said was true. I lay there on the bed, trying to remember what had happened, as I couldn't recollect how I'd got into the room. James must have carried me in, for the door was standing open, and if I'd walked in by myself I would have locked it.
I meant to get up and latch the door, but my head was aching and the room was very hot and airless; and I fell asleep again, and must have tossed restlessly, for when I woke the bedclothes were all rumpled and the coverlet had fallen off onto the floor. This time I woke suddenly and sat bolt upright, and despite the heat I was in a cold sweat. The reason for it was that there was a man standing in the room looking down at me. It was James McDermott, and I thought he had come in to strangle me in my sleep, having killed the others. My voice was all dried up in my throat with terror, and I couldn't speak a word.
But he said, quite kindly, did I feel better now after my rest; and I found my voice again and said I did. I knew it would be a mistake to show too much fear, and to lose control of myself; for then he'd think he couldn't trust me or depend on me to keep my nerve, and would be afraid I would break down and begin crying or screaming when there were others present, and tell everything; which was why he had shot at me; and if he thought that, he would do away with me as quick as winking, rather than have any witness.
Then he sat down on the side of the bed, and said now it was time for me to keep my promise; and I said what promise, and he said I knew very well, for I had promised him myself in exchange for the killing of Nancy.
I could not remember having said any such thing; but as I was now convinced he was a madman, I thought he had twisted around something I had indeed said, some thing that was innocent enough, or only what anyone would say; such as I wished she was dead, and that I would give anything for it. And Nancy had been very harsh with me, from time to time. But that is only what servants are always saying, out of their masters' hearing; for when you can't answer back to their faces, you must give vent to your feelings in some other way.
But McDermott had turned this around to mean what I never intended, and now he wished to hold me to
a bargain I hadn't made. And he was in earnest, as he put a hand on my shoulder, and was pushing me backwards onto the bed. And with the other hand he was pulling up my skirt; and I could tell by the smell of him that he'd been into Mr. Kinnear's whisky, and heavily too.
I knew that the only way was to humour him. Oh no, I said, laughing, not in this bed, it is too narrow and not at all comfortable for two people. Let us go to some other bed.
To my surprise he thought that was a fine idea, and said it would give him great pleasure to sleep in Mr. Kinnear's bed, where Nancy had so often played the whore; and I reflected that once I'd given in to him, he would consider me a whore as well, and would hold my life very cheap indeed, and would most likely kill me with the axe and throw me into the cellar, as he had often said a whore was good for nothing but to wipe your dirty boots on, by giving them a good kicking all over their filthy bodies. So I planned to delay, and to put him off as long as I could.
He pulled me to my feet, and we lit the candle that was in the kitchen, and climbed the stairs; and then we went into Mr. Kinnear's room, that was all tidy and with the bed neatly made up, as I had done it myself that very morning; and he threw back the covers, and pulled me down beside him. And he said, No straw for the gentry, nothing but goose feathers for them, no wonder Nancy liked to spend so much time in this bed; and for a moment he seemed overawed, not by what he'd done, but by the grandeur of the bed he was in. But then he fell to kissing me, and said, Now my girl, it's time, and began unbuttoning my dress; and I remembered that the wages of sin is death, and I felt faint. But I knew that if I fainted I was as good as dead, with him in the state he was in.
I burst into tears, and I said, No, I can't, not here, in a dead man's bed, it isn't right, with him in the cellar stark and stiff; and I began to sob and cry.
He was very annoyed, and said I must stop at once, or he would slap my face for me; but he did not. What I had said had cooled his ardour, as they say in books; or as Mary Whitney would say, he'd mislaid the poker. For at that moment Mr. Kinnear, dead as he was, was the stiffer man of the two of them.
He pulled me up off the bed, and yanked me down the hallway by one arm, and I was still wailing and howling for all I was worth. If you don't like that bed, said he, I shall do it in Nancy's, for you are as great a slut as she was. And I could see which way the wind was blowing, and I thought my last hour had come; and I expected at any moment to be thrown down, and dragged along by the hair.
He flung open the door, and hauled me into the room, which was in disarray, just as Nancy had left it, for I hadn't tidied the room, there being no need and indeed no time to do so. But when he pulled back the coverlet, the sheet was all spattered with dark blood, and there was a book lying there in the bed, covered with blood also. At which I let out a scream of terror; but McDermott stopped, and looked at it, and said, I'd forgot about that.
I asked him what in Heaven's name it was, and what it was doing there. He said it was the magazine that Mr. Kinnear had been reading, and he'd carried it with him out to the kitchen, where he was shot; and in falling he'd clapped his hands to his breast, still holding the book; and it therefore received the first spurts of blood. And McDermott had thrown it into Nancy's bed, to get it out of sight, and also because it belonged there, having been brought from town for her, and also because Kinnear's blood was on Nancy's head, for if she had not been such a bloody great whore and shrew, all would have been different, and Mr. Kinnear needn't have died. So it was a sign. And at that he crossed himself, which was the only time I ever saw him do anything so Papist.
Well, I thought him as mad as a moose in heat, as Mary Whitney used to say; but the sight of the book had sobered him up, and all notions of what he'd been about to do had gone right out of his head. And I held the candle down close, and turned the book over with my thumb and finger, and it was indeed the Godey's Ladies' Book which Mr. Kinnear had so enjoyed reading, earlier in the day. And at this memory I nearly burst into tears in earnest.
But there was no telling how long McDermott's present mood would hold. So I said, That will confuse them; when they find it, they will not be able to guess at all how it came here. And he said yes, it would give them something to puzzle their brains over; and he laughed in a hollow sort of way.
Then I said, We had better hurry, or someone may come while we are here; we must make haste, and pack up the things. For we will have to travel by night, or someone will see us on the road, with Mr. Kinnear's rig, and will know something is wrong. It will take us a long time to reach Toronto, I said, in the dark; and also Charley Horse will be tired, having made the trip once today already.
And McDermott agreed, as one half asleep; and we commenced searching through the house, and packing up the things. I did not want to take very much, only the lightest and most valuable items, such as Mr. Kinnear's gold snuffbox, and his telescope and pocket-compass, and his gold pen-knife, and any money we could find; but McDermott said, in for a penny, in for a pound, and he might as well be hanged for a goat as for a sheep; and in the end we ransacked the house, and took the silver plate and candlesticks, and the spoons and forks and all, even the ones with the family crest on; for McDermott said they could always be melted.
I looked into Nancy's box, and at her dresses; and I thought, There is no need for them to go to waste, poor Nancy has no further use for them. So I took the box and all in it, and her winter things too; but I left the dress that she'd been sewing, because it seemed too close to her altogether, as it was not finished; and I'd heard that the dead would come back to complete what they had left undone, and I didn't want her missing it, and following after me. For by this time I was almost certain she was dead.
Before leaving, I tidied up the house, and washed the dishes, the plates from supper and all; and I put Mr. Kinnear's bed in order, and pulled the coverlet up over Nancy's bed, although I left the book in it, not wanting to get Mr. Kinnear's blood on my hands; and I emptied her chamber pot, as I did not think it a nice thing to leave, as being somehow disrespectful. And meanwhile McDermott was harnessing Charley, and loading the boxes and the carpetbag into the wagon; though one time I found him sitting outside on the step, and staring vacantly in front of him. So I told him to pull himself together, and be a man. For the last thing I wanted was to be stuck there in that house with him, especially if he'd gone completely out of his mind. And when I told him to be a man, it had an effect, for he shook himself, and got up, and said I was right.
The last thing I did was to take off the clothes I'd been wearing that day; and I put on one of Nancy's dresses, the pale one with the white ground and the small floral print, which was the same one she had on the first day I came to Mr. Kinnear's. And I put on her petticoat with the lace edging, and my own spare clean petticoat, and Nancy's summer shoes of light-coloured leather, which I had so often admired, although they did not fit very well. And also her good straw bonnet; and I took her light cashmere shawl, although I did not think I would need to wear it, as the night was warm. And I put some rosewater behind my ears and on my wrists, from the bottle of it on her dresser; and the smell of it was a comfort of sorts.
Then I put on a clean apron, and stirred up the fire in the summer kitchen stove, which still had some embers left in it, and burnt my own clothes; I didn't like the thought of wearing them ever again, as they would remind me of things I wished to forget. It may have been my fancy, but a smell went up from them like scorching meat; and it was like my own dirtied and cast-off skin that I was burning.
While I was doing this, McDermott came in, and said he was ready, and why was I wasting time. I told him I could not find my large white kerchief, the one with the blue flowers on it, and that I needed it to keep the sun off my neck, while we would be crossing the Lake on the ferry the following day. At that he laughed in an astonished way, and said it was downstairs in the cellar, keeping the sun off Nancy's neck; as I ought to remember, seeing as how I myself had pulled it tight and tied the knot. At this I was very shocke
d; but did not wish to contradict him, as it is dangerous to contradict mad people. So I said I had forgot.
It was about eleven o'clock at night when we set out; a beautiful night, with enough of a breeze to be cooling, and not too many mosquitoes. There was half a moon, and I couldn't remember whether it was waxing or waning; and as we went down the driveway between the rows of maples and past the orchard, I looked behind me, and saw the house standing there all peaceful and lighted up by the moonlight, as if it was gently glowing. And I thought, who would guess from looking at it what lies within. And then I sighed, and readied myself for the long drive.
We went quite slowly, even though Charley knew the road; but he knew also that this was not his true driver, and that there was something amiss; for several times he stopped, and would not go forward until urged with the whip. But when we'd gone several miles along the road, and were past the places that he knew best, he settled into it; and along we went, past the fields all silent and silvery, and the snake fences like darker braid alongside, with the bats flickering overhead, and the dense patches where there was woodland; and once an owl crossed our path, as pale and soft as a moth.
At first I was afraid we would meet someone we knew, and they would ask where we were going on such a furtive errand; but there was not a living soul. And James became bolder and more cheerful, and started talking about what we would do when we reached the States, and how he would sell the things, and buy a small farm, and then we would be independent; and if we did not have enough money at first, we would hire ourselves out as servants, and save up our pay. And I said neither yes nor no, as I did not intend to stay with him any more than a minute, once we were safe across the Lake and among people.
Alias Grace Page 34
