To Say Nothing of the Dog

by Connie Willis

  “From who knows what sort of cow? Hardly. This tea is lukewarm.”

  Baine produced a spirit lamp, and proceeded to heat more water while Mrs. Mering looked around at us for another victim. “Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said to Terence, who had retreated behind his book of poems, “it’s far too dark to read in here. You will ruin your eyes.”

  Terence closed the book and put it in his pocket, looking like a man who was just beginning to realize what he had let himself in for. Baine lit the lamps and poured more tea.

  “What a dull group you all are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Mr. Henry, tell us about the States. Mrs. Chattisbourne says you told her you were out West fighting Red Indians.”

  “Briefly,” I said, wondering if she were going to ask about scalping next, but she was on a different course.

  “Did you have the opportunity while you were in the West of attending one of Baroness Eusapia’s seances in San Francisco?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  “Pity,” she said, and it was clear she thought I had missed all the best tourist attractions. “Eusapia is famous for her apports.”

  “Apports?” Terence asked.

  “Objects transported through the air from distant locations,” she said.

  That’s it, I thought. That’s what happened to the bishop’s bird stump. It was apported to a seance in San Francisco.

  “. . . flowers and photographs,” Mrs. Mering was saying, “and once she apported a sparrow’s nest all the way from China. With the sparrow in it!”

  “How do you know it was a Chinese sparrow?” Terence said dubiously. “It didn’t chirp in Chinese, did it? How do you know it wasn’t a California sparrow?”

  “Is it true that servants in America don’t know their proper place,” Tossie said, looking at Baine, “and that their mistresses actually allow them to express opinions on education and art as if they were equals?”

  It looked like the universe was going to collapse right here in this compartment. “I . . . uh . . .” I said.

  “Did you see a spirit, Mrs. Mering,” Verity said, trying to change the subject, “when you had your premonition?”

  “No, it . . .” she said, and got that odd, inward look again. “Baine, how many more stops does this horrid train make?”

  “Eight, madam,” he said.

  “We shall be frozen before we reach home. Go and tell the conductor to bring us a stove. And fetch a rug for my knees.”

  And so on. Baine fetched the rug, and a warmed brick for Mrs. Mering’s feet, and a powder for the headache which Mrs. Mering had given all of us, but which she took herself.

  “I certainly hope you do not intend to keep dogs after you are married,” she told Terence, and made him turn down the lamps because they hurt her eyes. At the next station, she sent Baine to purchase a newspaper. “My premonition said that something dreadful was going to happen. Perhaps there has been a robbery. Or a fire.”

  “I thought you said your premonition had something to do with water,” Tossie said.

  “Fires are put out with water,” she said with dignity.

  Baine came in, looking like he had nearly missed the train again. “Your newspaper, madam.”

  “Not the Oxford Chronicle,” Mrs. Mering said, pushing it aside. “The Times.”

  “The newspaperboy did not have the Times,” Baine said. “I will attempt to see if there is a copy in the smoking car.”

  Mrs. Mering sank back against the seat. Terence picked up the discarded Oxford Chronicle and began to read it. Tossie went back to looking uninterestedly out the window.

  “It’s stifling in here,” Mrs. Mering said. “Verity, go fetch my fan.”

  “Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” she said gratefully, and made her escape.

  “Why do they insist on overheating these railway cars?” Mrs. Mering said, fanning herself with her handkerchief. “It really is a disgrace that we must travel in such uncivilized conditions.” She glanced across at Terence’s newspaper. “I simply do not see—”

  She stopped, staring blindly at Terence.

  Tossie looked up. “What is it, Mama?”

  Mrs. Mering stood up and took a staggering step backward in the direction of the door. “That night at the seance,” she said, and fainted dead away.

  “Mama!” Tossie said, starting up. Terence peered round his paper and then dropped it in a rattling heap.

  Mrs. Mering had fallen slantwise across the door, with her head fortunately on the plush seat and her arms flung out to either side.

  Terence and I scooped her up and deposited her more or less on the seat, with Tossie fluttering around us.

  “O, Mama!” she said, leaning over Mrs. Mering’s inert form. “Wake up!”

  She took off her mother’s hat, which didn’t seem particularly to the point, and began patting her cheek. “O, do wake up, Mama!”

  There was no response.

  “Speak to me, Mama!” Tossie said, gently patting her cheek.Terence picked up the newspaper he’d dropped and began fanning her with it.

  Still no response.

  “You’d better go and get Baine,” I said to Terence.

  “Yes. Baine,” Tossie said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Right,” Terence said, handed Tossie the newspaper, and hurried off down the corridor.

  “Mama!” Tossie said, picking up fanning where Terence had left off. “Speak to me!”

  Mrs. Mering’s eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?” she said faintly.

  “Between Upper Elmscott and Oldham Junction,” Tossie said.

  “On the train from Coventry,” I translated. “Are you all right?”

  “O, Mama, you gave us such a fright!” Tossie said. “What happened?”

  “Happened?” Mrs. Mering repeated, pushing herself to sitting. She felt at her hair. “Where’s my hat?”

  “It’s here, Mama,” Tossie said, handing me the newspaper and picking up the hat. “You fainted. Did you have another premonition?”

  “Premonition?” Mrs. Mering said vaguely, trying to pin her hat back on. “I don’t . . .”

  “You were looking at Terence, and you stopped speaking, as though you’d seen a spirit, and then you fell to the floor in a faint. Was it Lady Godiva?”

  “Lady Godiva?” Mrs. Mering said, sounding more like her old self. “Why on earth would Lady—” She stopped.

  “Mama?” Tossie said anxiously.

  “I remember,” Mrs. Mering said. “We asked the spirits for news of Princess Arjumand, and the doors opened . . .” she said, her voice rising, “. . . it must have been just at that moment . . . I asked if she had been drowned . . . .”

  And went out like a light again. Her head fell sideways onto the plush armrest, and her hat flopped forward over her nose.

  “Mama!” Tossie shrieked.

  “Do you have any smelling salts?” I asked, propping Mrs. Mering up.

  “Jane has,” she said. “I’ll go and fetch them.” She scampered off down the corridor.

  “Mrs. Mering,” I said, fanning her with one hand and holding her erect with the other. She had a tendency to flop over to one side. “Mrs. Mering!” I wondered if I should loosen her stays, or at the least her collar, but decided I’d better wait for Tossie. Or Verity. And where were they?

  The door banged open and Terence galloped in, panting. “I couldn’t find Baine anywhere. ‘He has vanished from the sight of mortal men.’ Perhaps he’s been apported.” He peered interestedly at Mrs. Mering. “She’s still out?”

  “Again,” I said, fanning. “Any idea what brought this on?”

  “Not a clue,” he said, sitting down on the seat opposite. “I was reading the newspaper, and she suddenly looked at me as though I were Banquo’s ghost. ‘Is that a dagger that I see before me, its handle towards my hand?’ only in this case it was the Oxford Chronicle, and went out like a light. Was it my choice of reading material, do you think?”

  I shook my head. “She said somet
hing about Princess Arjumand, and about the spirits.”

  Verity came in, carrying the fan. “What—” she said blankly.

  “She’s fainted,” I said. “Tossie’s gone for the smelling salts.”

  Tossie hurried in, followed by Baine.

  “Where’s Jane?” I said, glancing briefly at her. “Did you bring the smelling salts?”

  “I brought Baine,” she said, her cheeks very pink from her haste.

  Baine immediately took charge, kneeling in front of Mrs. Mering and taking off her hat. He unbuttoned her collar. “Mr. St. Trewes, open the window. Mr. Henry, if you could give me some room, please.”

  “Careful,” I said, letting go of Mrs. Mering’s arm. “She has a tendency to list to starboard,” but he already had hold of both her shoulders. I stepped back next to Verity, still holding the folded newspaper.

  “Now then,” he said, and pushed her head down between her knees.

  “Baine!” Tossie said.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Mering said, and tried to sit up.

  “Take deep breaths,” Baine said, keeping his hand firmly on the back of her neck. “That’s it. Deep breaths. Good,” he said, and let her sit up.

  “What—” she said, bewilderedly.

  Baine produced a flask of brandy from his coat pocket and a china teacup. “Drink this,” he commanded, placing her gloved hands around it. “That’s it. Good.”

  “Are you feeling better, Mama?” Tossie said. “What made you faint?”

  Mrs. Mering took another sip of the brandy. “I don’t remember—” she said. “Whatever it was, I feel much better now.” She handed the teacup to Baine. “How much farther to Muchings End?”

  Verity, standing next to me, whispered, “What happened?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. Terence was reading the newspaper,” I said, holding it up for illustration, “and she suddenly—” I stopped, staring, just like Macbeth.

  It was the second story down, just under an article about boating congestion on the Thames.

  “BALLIOL PROFESSOR DROWNED,” it read, and under it, in smaller caps, but still quite readable (this being the Oxford Chronicle and not the Times):

  “HISTORY PROFESSOR MATTHEW PEDDICK KILLED IN RIVER ACCIDENT”

  “‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried the Lady of Shalott”

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  CHAPTER 21

  Explanations and Recriminations—Another Premonition—Our Corporeality Is Called in Question—A Thunderstorm—The Mystery of the Telegrams Solved—A Quiet Evening at Home—An Arrival—Childhood Nicknames—The Establishment of the Jumble Sale as an Ongoing Tradition—Decline and Fall

  The remainder of the trip consisted of explanations and recriminations. “I thought you said he sent his sister a telegram,” Terence said.

  “I thought he had,” I said. “I asked him, ‘Did you send your telegrams?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and waved the yellow receipt slips at me.”

  “Well, he must have forgotten to pay for them or something. The funeral’s tomorrow at ten.”

  “Madame Iritosky tried to warn me,” Mrs. Mering said, lying back against three cushions and a folded blanket Baine had been dispatched to fetch for her. “‘Beware the sea,’ she said. ‘Beware the sea!’ She was trying to tell me Professor Peddick had drowned!”

  “But he didn’t drown,” I said. “It’s all a misunderstanding. He fell in the river, and Terence and I fished him out. Professor Overforce must have thought he drowned when he couldn’t find him.”

  “Fell in the river?” Mrs. Mering said. “I thought your boat capsized.”

  “It did,” Terence said, “but that was the next day. We heard this splash, and I thought it was Darwin, because there were a number of trees along the bank just there, but it wasn’t. It was Professor Peddick, and it was a lucky thing we came along just at the right moment to save him or he would have been done for. Fate. ‘Ah, happy fate, that grasped the skirts of happy chance!’ Because he was going down for the third time, and we had the very devil of a time—”

  “Mr. St. Trewes!” Mrs. Mering, obviously recovering, said. “There are ladies present!”

  Terence looked chagrined. “Oh, I do beg your pardon. In the excitement of telling the story, I—”

  Mrs. Mering nodded dismissively. “You say Professor Peddick fell in the river?”

  “Well, actually, Professor Overforce—they were discussing history, you see, and Professor Peddick said . . .”

  I had stopped listening and was staring blankly at the wall, the way Mrs. Mering had stared with her premonition. Something someone had said—for a moment I had almost had it, the solution to the mystery, the significant clue, and Verity was right, we had been looking at it the wrong way round—but I had only had it for an instant, and then it had slipped away. It was something that one of them had said. Mrs. Mering? Terence? I squinted at Terence, trying to remember.

  “. . . and then Professor Peddick said Julius Caesar wasn’t irrelevant and that was when Professor Overforce went in the drink.”

  “Professor Overforce!” Mrs. Mering said, motioning to Verity for the smelling salts. “I thought you said Professor Peddick fell in.”

  “Actually, it was more that he was pushed,” Terence said.

  “Pushed!”

  It was no use. Whatever my premonition had been, it was gone. And it was obviously time to intervene.

  “Professor Peddick slipped and fell in,” I said, “and we rescued him and intended to take him back home, but he insisted on coming with us downriver. We stopped in Abingdon so he could send a telegram to his sister, telling her of his plans, but it obviously went astray, and when he turned up missing, she assumed that he was dead. Whereas he was really alive and with us.”

  She took a deep whiff of the smelling salts. “With you,” she said, looking speculatively at Terence. “There was a cold gust of wind, and I looked up, and there you were, standing in the doorway in the darkness. How do I know you’re not all spirits?”

  “Here. Feel,” Terence said, offering his arm. “‘Too, too solid flesh.’” She squeezed his sleeve gingerly. “There, you see,” he said. “Quite real.”

  Mrs. Mering looked unconvinced. “The spirit of Katie Cook felt solid. Mr. Crookes put his arm round her waist at a seance, and he said she felt quite human.”

  Yes, well, there was an explanation for that, and for the fact that spirits bore an unusual resemblance to people draped in cheesecloth, and with that sort of reasoning, we were never going to be able to prove we were alive.

  “And they had Princess Arjumand with them,” Mrs. Mering said, warming to her theory, “who Madame Iritosky said had crossed over to the Other Side.”

  “Princess Arjumand isn’t a spirit,” Verity said. “Baine caught her in the fishpond this morning, trying to catch Colonel Mering’s Black Moor. Isn’t that right, Baine?”

  “Yes, miss,” he said, “but I was able to remove her before there was any harm done.”

  I looked at him, wondering if he had removed her to the middle of the Thames, or if he’d been too frightened by the Verity incident to try it again.

  “Arthur Conan Doyle says that spirits eat and drink in the afterlife just as we do here,” Mrs. Mering said. “He says the afterlife is just like our world, but purer and happier, and the newspapers would never print anything that isn’t true.”

  And so on, until we changed trains at Reading, at which terminus the topic switched to how disgracefully Professor Peddick had behaved.

  “To put his loved ones through such dreadful anguish,” Mrs. Mering said, standing on the platform watching Baine struggle with the luggage, “to leave them to sit by the window, anxiously watching for his return, and then, as the hours passed, to have all vestiges of hope fade, is the absolute height of cruelty! Had I but known how careless of his loved ones’ affections he was, I should never have opened our home and our hospitality to him. Never!”

  “Should we wire ahead and warn Prof
essor Peddick of the impending storm?” I whispered to Verity as we walked up the steps to the other train.

  “When I was gone to fetch the fan,” she said, watching Tossie ahead of us with Terence, “did anyone come into the compartment, anyone at all?”

  “Not a soul,” I said.

  “And Tossie stayed there the whole time?”

  “She went to get Baine, after her mother fainted,” I said.

  “How long was she gone?”

  “Only long enough to fetch Baine,” I said, and then at her crestfallen look, “She might have bumped into someone in the corridor. And we’re still not home. She might meet someone here. Or at the station at Muchings End.”

  But the guard who handed her into our compartment was at least seventy, and there wasn’t a soul, departed or otherwise, on the rainy platform at Muchings End. Or at home. Except for Colonel Mering and Professor Peddick.

  I should definitely have wired ahead.

  “Had the most wonderful idea,” Colonel Mering said, coming happily out to greet us in the rain.

  “Mesiel, where is your umbrella?” Mrs. Mering cut in before he could get any farther. “Where is your coat?”

  “Don’t need ’em,” the Colonel said. “Just been out to look at my new red-spotted silver tancho. Perfectly dry,” even though he looked fairly damp and his mustache had gone limp. “Couldn’t wait to tell you our idea. Absolutely splendid. Thought we’d come straight up to tell you, didn’t we, Professor? Greece!”

  Mrs. Mering, being helped out of the carriage by Baine, who was holding an umbrella over her, looked warily at Professor Peddick, as if still not quite sure of his corporeality. “Grease?”

  “Thermopylae,” the Colonel said happily. “Marathon, the Hellespont, the straits of Salamis. Laying out the battle today. Came to me. Only way to see the lay of the land. Envision the armies.”

  There was an ominous peal of thunder, which he ignored. “Holiday for the whole family. Order Tossie’s trousseau in Paris. Visit Madame Iritosky. Got a telegram from her today saying she was going abroad. Pleasant tour.” He stopped and waited, smiling, for his wife’s response.