Alias Grace

Oh no, he thinks. What next? What have I done?

Chapter 43

Dr. Jordan has gone off to Toronto. I don’t know how long he will be gone; I hope it’s not very long, as I have become quite used to him somehow, and fear that when he goes away, as he is bound to do sooner or later, there will be a sad emptiness in my heart.

What should I tell him, when he comes back? He will want to know about the arrest, and the trial, and what was said. Some of it is all jumbled in my mind, but I could pick out this or that for him, some bits of whole cloth you might say, as when you go through the rag bag looking for something that will do, to supply a touch of colour.

I could say this:

Well, Sir, they arrested me first, and James next. He was still asleep in his bed, and the first thing he did when they woke him up was to try to blame it on Nancy. If you find Nancy you will know all about it, he said, it was her fault. I thought this was very stupid of him, as although she hadn’t yet been discovered, they were bound to ferret her out sooner or later, if only by the smell; and indeed they did so, the very next day. James was trying to pretend he didn’t know where she was, or even that she was dead; but he should have held his tongue about her.

It was still the early morning when they arrested us. They hustled us out of the Lewiston tavern at great speed. I believe they were afraid the men there might stop them, and attract a mob, and rescue us, as they might have done if McDermott had thought to shout out that he was a revolutionary, or a republican, or some such, and he had his rights, and down with the British; because there was still considerable high feelings then, on the side of Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion, and there were those in the States that wanted to invade Canada. And the men that arrested us had no real authority. But McDermott was too cowed to protest, or else he lacked the presence of mind; and when they’d got us as far as the Customs, and said we were wanted on suspicion of murder, then our party was allowed to proceed, and to set sail without further ado.

I was very glum going back across the Lake, although the weather was fair and the waves not large; but I cheered myself up, by telling myself that Justice would not let me be hanged for something I hadn’t done, and I would only have to tell the story as it happened, or as much of it as I could remember. As for McDermott’s chances, I did not rate them very high; but he was still denying all, and saying we only had Mr. Kinnear’s things with us because Nancy had refused to pay us what we were owed, and so we had paid ourselves. He said if anyone had killed Kinnear it was most likely a tramp; and there had been a suspicious-looking man hanging around, who’d said he was a peddler, and sold him some shirts; and they should be looking for that one, and not an honest man like himself, whose only crime was to wish to better his lot in life through hard work and immigration. He certainly could lie, but never very well; and he wasn’t believed, and might just as well have kept his mouth shut; and I thought it wrong in him, Sir, that he was trying to put the murder off on my old friend Jeremiah, who’d never done any such thing in his life, that I knew of.

They put us into the jail in Toronto, locked up in cells, like animals in a cage, but not so close together that we could speak; and then they examined us separately. They asked me a good many questions; and I was quite frightened, and not at all sure what I should say. I had no lawyer at this time, as Mr. MacKenzie only came into it much later. I asked for my box, which they made such a fuss over in the newspapers, and sneered at me for referring to it as mine, and for having no clothes of my own to speak of; but although it was true this box and the clothes in it had once been Nancy’s, they were hers no longer, as the dead have no use for such things.

They held it against me as well that I was at first calm and in good spirits, with full and clear eyes, which they took for callousness; but if I’d been weeping and crying, they would have said it showed my guilt; for they’d already decided I was guilty, and once people make their minds up that you have done a crime, then anything you do is taken as proof of it; and I don’t think I could have scratched myself or wiped my nose without it being written up in the newspapers, and malicious comment made on it, in high-sounding phrases. And it was at this time that they called me McDermott’s paramour, and also his accomplice; and they wrote also that I must have helped to strangle Nancy, as it would take two to do the job. The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others. The next thing, Sir, was the Inquest, which was held very soon after we were brought back. It was to determine how Nancy and Mr. Kinnear had died, whether by accident or murder; and for that I had to be examined in court. By now I was thoroughly terrified, as I could see that feeling was running very much against me; and the jailers in Toronto made cruel jokes when they brought in my food, and said they hoped when they hanged me that the scaffold would be high, as that way they would get a good look at my ankles. And one of them tried to take advantages, and said I might as well enjoy it while I had the chance, as where I was going I’d never have no fine brisk lover like himself between my knees; but I told him to keep his filthy self to himself; and it would have come to worse, except that his fellow-jailer came along and said that I hadn’t been tried yet, much less condemned; and if the first one valued his position he should keep away from me. Which he did mostly.

I will tell Dr. Jordan about this, as he likes to hear about such things, and always writes them down. Well, Sir, I will continue — the day of the Inquest came, and I took care to appear neat and tidy, for I knew how much appearances count, as when you are applying for a new position, and they always look at your wrists and cuffs, to see if you are of clean habits; and they did say in the newspapers that I was decently dressed.

The Inquest was held in the City Hall, with a number of Magistrates present, all staring and frowning; and an immense crowd of spectators, and Press men, pushing and shoving and jostling, so as to be in a better position to see and hear; and these had to be reprimanded several times, for disruption. I didn’t see how they could get any more people into the room, which was stuffed to bursting, but more and more kept trying to thrust themselves forward.

I tried to control my trembling, and to face what was to come with as much courage as I could lay hold of, which by that time, to tell you the truth, Sir, was not very much. McDermott was there, looking as surly as ever, which was the first time I had seen him since we were arrested. The newspapers said he showed sullen doggedness and reckless defiance, which was their way of putting it, I suppose. But it was nothing different from the way he always looked at the breakfast table. Then they started in to question me about the murders, and I was at a loss. For as you know, Sir, I could not rightly remember the events of that terrible day, and did not feel I had been present at them at all, and had lain unconscious for several parts of it; but I was well aware that if I said this I would be laughed to scorn, since Jefferson the butcher testified that he’d seen me and conversed with me, and said I’d told him we would not be needing any fresh meat; which they made a joke of later, because of the bodies in the cellar, in a broadsheet poem they were hawking about at the time of McDermott’s hanging; and I thought it was very coarse and common, and disrespectful of a fellow-being’s mortal struggle. So I said that the last time I’d seen Nancy was around dinnertime, when I looked out of the kitchen door and saw her putting the young ducks in; and after that, McDermott said she’d gone into the house, and I said she was not there, and he told me to mind my own business. Then he said she’d gone over to Mrs. Wright’s. I told them I was suspicious, and asked McDermott about her several times, when we were travelling to the States, at which he said she was all right; but I did not positively know of her death, until she was discovered on the Monday morning.

I then told how I heard a shot, and saw Mr. Kinnear’s body lying on the floor; and how I screamed and rushed about, and how McDermott shot at me, and I fainted and fell down. I did remember that part of it. And indeed they found the ball from the gun, in the wood of the summer kitchen door frame, which showed I was not lying.

We were bound over for trial, which was not to take place until November; and so I was three weary months penned up in the Toronto jail, which was worse than being here in the Penitentiary, as I was all by myself in a cell, and people coming on the pretence of some errand or other, but really to gawk and gape. And I was in a very miserable state.

Outside, the seasons changed, but all I knew of it was the difference in the light that shone through the small barred window, which was too high on the wall for me to see out of it; and the air that would come in, bringing the scents and odours of all I was missing. In August there was the smell of fresh-mown hay, and then the smell of grapes and peaches ripening; and in September the apples, and in October the fallen leaves, and the first cold foretaste of snow. There was nothing for me to do, except sit in my cell, and worry about what was going to happen, and whether indeed I would be hanged, as the jailers told me every day, and I must say they enjoyed every word of death and disaster that came out of their mouths. I don’t know whether you have noticed it, Sir, but there are some that take pleasure in the distress of a fellow-mortal, and most especially if they think that fellow-mortal has committed a sin, which adds an extra relish. But which among us has not sinned, as the Bible tells us? I would be ashamed myself, to take such delight in the sufferings of others.

In October they gave me a lawyer, which was Mr. MacKenzie. He was not very handsome, and had a nose like a bottle. I thought he was very young and untried, as this was his first case; and sometimes his manner was a little too familiar for my taste, as he appeared to wish to be shut up in the cell with me alone, and offered to comfort me, with frequent pattings of the hand; but I was glad to have anyone at all, to plead my case and to put things in as good a light as possible; so I said nothing about it, but did my best to smile and behave gratefully. He wanted me to tell my story in what he called a coherent way, but would often accuse me of wandering, and become annoyed with me; and at last he said that the right thing was, not to tell the story as I truly remembered it, which nobody could be expected to make any sense of; but to tell a story that would hang together, and that had some chance of being believed. I was to leave out the parts I could not remember, and especially to leave out the fact that I could not remember them. And I should say what must have happened, according to plausibility, rather than what I myself could actually recall. So that is what I attempted to do.

I was by myself a great deal, and spent many a long hour dwelling on my future ordeal; and if I came to be hanged, what it would be like; and how long and lonely the road of death might be, that I could well be forced to travel along; and what awaited me at the other end of it. I prayed to God, but got no answer; and I consoled myself by reflecting that this silence of his was just another of his mysterious ways. I tried to think over all of the things I’d done wrong, so I could repent of them; such as choosing the second-best sheet for my mother, and not staying awake when Mary Whitney was dying. And when I myself came to be buried, it might not be in a sheet at all, but cut up into pieces, and bits and fragments, as they say the doctors did to you if you were hanged. And that was my worst fear. Then I attempted to cheer myself, by recalling earlier scenes. I remembered Mary Whitney, and how she’d had her marriage and her farmhouse planned out, with the curtains chosen and all, and how it came to nothing, and how she died in agony; and then the last day of October came around, and I remembered the night we’d peeled the apples, and how she’d said I would cross the water three times, and then get married to a man whose name began with a J. All of that seemed now like a childish game, and I no longer had any belief in it. Oh Mary, I would say, how I long to be back in our little cold bedroom at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, with the cracked washbasin and the one chair, instead of here in this dark cell, in danger of my life. And it did seem to me at times that a little comfort came back to me in return; and once I heard her laughing. But you often imagine things, when you are alone so much. It was at this time that the red peonies first began growing.

The last time I saw Dr. Jordan, he asked if I recalled Mrs. Susanna Moodie, when she’d come to visit the Penitentiary. That would have been seven years ago, shortly before they put me into the Lunatic Asylum. I said that I did recall her. He asked me what I thought of her, and I said she looked like a beetle.

A beetle? said Dr. Jordan. I saw that I had astonished him.

Yes, a beetle, Sir, I said. Round and fat and dressed in black, and a quick and scuttling sort of walk; and black, shiny eyes too. I do not mean it as an insult, Sir, I added, for he’d given one of his short laughs. It was just the way she looked, in my opinion.

And do you remember the time she visited you, just a short time after that, in the Provincial Asylum?

Not well, Sir, I said. But we had many visitors there.

She describes you as shrieking and running about. You were confined on the violent ward. That may be, Sir, I said. I do not recall behaving in a violent manner towards others, unless they did so first to me.

And singing, I believe, said he.

I enjoy singing, I said shortly; for I was not pleased by this line of questioning. A good hymn tune or ballad is uplifting to the spirits.

Did you tell Kenneth MacKenzie that you could see the eyes of Nancy Montgomery following you around? he said.

I have read what Mrs. Moodie wrote down about that, Sir, I said. I don’t like to call anyone a liar. But Mr. MacKenzie put a misconstruction upon what I told him.

And what was that?

I said red spots, at first, Sir. And that was true. They looked like red spots. And after?

And after, when he pressed me for an explanation, I told him what I thought they were. But I did not say eyes.

Yes? Go on! said Dr. Jordan, who was trying to appear calm; he was leaning forward, as if waiting for some great secret. But it was no great secret. I would have told him earlier, if he’d asked me. I did not say eyes, Sir; I said peonies. But Mr. MacKenzie was always more fond of listening to his own voice than to someone else’s. And I suppose it’s more the usual thing, to have eyes following you around. It is more what is required, under the circumstances, if you follow me, Sir. And I guess that was why Mr. MacKenzie misheard it, and why Mrs. Moodie wrote it down. They wanted to have things done properly. But they were peonies, all the same. Red ones. There is no mistake possible. I see, said Dr. Jordan. But he looked as puzzled as ever.

Next he will want to know about the trial. It began on the 3rd of November, and so many people crushed into the courthouse that the floor gave way. When I was put into the dock, at first I had to stand, but then they brought me a chair. The air was very close, and there was a constant buzzing of voices, like a swarm of bees. Different people got up, some in my favour, to say I’d never been in trouble before, and was a hard worker, and of good character; and others spoke against me; and there were more of these. I looked around for Jeremiah the peddler, but he was not there. He at least would have understood something of my plight, and would have tried to help me out of it, for he’d said there was a kinship between us. Or so I believed.

Then they brought in Jamie Walsh. I was hoping for some token of sympathy from him, but he gave me a stare filled with such reproach and sorrowful anger, that I saw how it was with him. He felt betrayed in love, because I’d gone off with McDermott; and from being an angel in his eyes, and fit to be idolized and worshipped, I was transformed to a demon, and he would do all in his power to destroy me. With that my heart sank within me, for of everyone I knew at Richmond Hill, I had been counting on him to say a good word for me; and he looked so young and fresh, and unspoiled and innocent, that a pang went through me, for I valued his good opinion of me, and it was a grief to lose it. He got up to testify, and was sworn in; and the way he took the oath on the Bible, very solemn but with hard rage in his voice, did not bode me any good. He told about our party the night before, and playing the flute, and how McDermott had refused to dance, and walked him partway home; and how Nancy was alive when he’d left us, and on her way upstairs to bed. And then he told how he’d come over the next afternoon, and seen McDermott with a double-barrelled gun in his hand, which he claimed he’d been using to shoot birds. He said I was standing by the pump with my hands folded, wearing white cotton stockings; and when asked where Nancy was, I laughed in a teasing manner, and said he was always wanting to know things; but that Nancy had gone to Wrights‘, where there was someone ill, with a man who’d come to fetch her.

I remember none of this, Sir, but Jamie Walsh gave his testimony in a straightforward manner which it was difficult to doubt.

But then his emotions overcame him, and he pointed at me, and said, “She has got on Nancy‘s dress, the ribbons under her bonnet are also Nancy’s, and the tippet she has on, and also the parasol in her hand.”

At that there was a great outcry in the courtroom, like the uprush of voices at the Judgment Day; and I knew I was doomed.

When my turn came, I said what Mr. MacKenzie had told me to say, and my head was all in a turmoil, trying to remember the right answers; and I was pressed to explain why I hadn’t warned Nancy and Mr. Kinnear, once I knew James McDermott’s intentions. And Mr. MacKenzie said it was for fear of my life, and despite his nose he was very eloquent. He said that I was little more than a child, a poor motherless child and to all intents and purposes an orphan, cast out upon the world with nobody to teach me any better; and I’d had to work hard for my bread, from an early age, and was industry itself; and I was very ignorant and uneducated, and illiterate, and little better than a halfwit; and very soft and pliable, and easily imposed upon.

But despite everything he could do, Sir, it went against me. The jury found me guilty of murder, as an accessory both before and after the fact, and the judge pronounced sentence of death. I’d been made to stand up to hear the sentence; but when he said Death, I fainted, and fell on the railing made of pointed spikes that was all around the dock; and one of the spikes went into my breast, right next to my heart. I could show him the scar.

Chapter 44

Simon has taken the morning train for Toronto. He’s travelling second class; he’s been spending too much money of late, and feels the need to economize.

He’s looking forward to his interview with Kenneth MacKenzie: through it, he may uncover some detail or other, something Grace has failed to mention, either because it might show her in a bad light or because she has genuinely forgotten it. The mind, he reflects, is like a house — thoughts which the owner no longer wishes to display, or those which arouse painful memories, are thrust out of sight, and consigned to attic or cellar; and in forgetting, as in the storage of broken furniture, there is surely an element of will at work.

Grace’s will is of the negative female variety — she can deny and reject much more easily than she can affirm or accept. Somewhere within herself — he’s seen it, if only for a moment, that conscious, even cunning look in the corner of her eye — she knows she’s concealing something from him. As she stitches away at her sewing, outwardly calm as a marble Madonna, she is all the while exerting her passive stubborn strength against him. A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

Some days he would like to slap her. The temptation is almost overwhelming. But then she would have trapped him; then she would have a reason for resisting him. She would turn on him that gaze of a wounded doe which all women keep in store for such occasions. She would cry. Yet he doesn’t feel she dislikes their conversations. On the contrary, she appears to welcome them, and even to enjoy them; much as one enjoys a game of any sort, when one is winning, he tells himself grimly. The emotion she expresses most openly towards him is a subdued gratitude. He’s coming to hate the gratitude of women. It is like being fawned on by rabbits, or like being covered with syrup: you can’t get it off. It slows you down, and puts you at a disadvantage. Every time some woman is grateful to him, he feels like taking a cold bath. Their gratitude isn’t real; what they really mean by it is that he should be grateful to them. Secretly they despise him. He recalls with embarrassment, and a kind of shrivelling self-loathing, the puppyish condescension he used to display when paying out his money to some pitiful shopworn streetgirl — the beseeching look in her eyes, and how large and rich and compassionate he felt himself to be, as if the favours about to be conferred were his, not hers. What contempt they all must have kept hidden, under their thanks and smiles!

The whistle shouts; grey smoke blows past the window. To the left, across flat fields, is the flat lake, dimpled like hammered pewter. Here and there is a log shanty, a line of washing flapping, a fat mother no doubt cursing the smoke, a clutch of staring children. Freshly cut trees, then old stumps; a smouldering bonfire. The occasional bigger house, red brick or white clapboard. The engine pounds like an iron heart, the train moves relentlessly westward.

Away from Kingston; away from Mrs. Humphrey. Rachel, as he has now been entreated to call her. The more miles he is able to put between himself and Rachel Humphrey, the lighter and less troubled in spirit he feels. He’s gotten himself in too deep with her. He’s floundering — images of quicksand come to mind

— but he can’t see how to extricate himself, not yet. Having a mistress — for that’s what she’s become, he supposes, and it hasn’t taken long! — is worse than having a wife. The responsibilities involved are weightier, and more muddled.

The first time was an accident: he was ambushed in his sleep. Nature took advantage of him, creeping up on him as he lay entranced, without his daytime armour; his own dreams turned against him. This is the very thing Rachel claims of herself: she was sleepwalking, she says. She thought she was outdoors in the sunlight, gathering flowers, but somehow she found herself in his room, in the darkness, in his arms, and already then it was too late, she was lost. Lost is a word she uses a lot. She has always been of a sensitive nature, she’s told him, and subject to somnambulism even as a child. They used to have to lock her into her room at night, to prevent her wandering around in the moonlight. He doesn’t for an instant believe this story, but for a refined woman of her class he supposes it’s a way of saving face. What was really in her mind at the time, and what she is thinking now, he scarcely dares to guess. Almost every night since, she’s come to his room in her nightdress, with a white ruffled peignoir thrown over it. The ribbons at the throat untied, the buttons open. She carries a single candle: she looks young in the dusk. Her green eyes gleam, her long fair hair is down around her shoulders like a shining veil. Or if he stays out late, walking by the river in the cool of night as he’s increasingly inclined to do, she’ll be there waiting for him when he returns. His initial reaction is one of ennui: there is a ritual dance to be gone through, and it is one that bores him. The encounter begins with tears, quivering, and reluctance: she sobs, she reproaches herself, she pictures herself as ruined, wallowing in shame, a soul condemned. She’s never been anybody’s mistress before, she has never stooped so low, indulged in such abasement; if her husband discovers them, what will become of her? It is always the woman who’s blamed. Simon lets her go on in this vein for a time; then he comforts her, and assures her in the vaguest of terms that all will be well, and says he doesn’t think any the less of her for what she has so inadvertently done. Then he adds that nobody need know, provided they are discreet. They must take great care never to betray themselves by word or glance, in front of others — especially Dora, because Rachel must know how servants gossip — a caution that isn’t only for her protection, but for his. He can imagine what Reverend Verringer would have to say; among others.

She cries more at the thought of discovery; she writhes with humiliation. He doesn’t think she’s been taking the laudanum any more, or at least not so much; otherwise she wouldn’t get so worked up. Her behaviour would not be so reprehensible if she were a widow, she goes on. If the Major were dead, she would not be betraying her marriage vows; but as it is…. He tells her the Major has treated her abominably, and is a cad, a scoundrel, a dog, and deserves even worse from her. He has kept a semblance of caution: he’s made no offers of instant marriage, should the Major suddenly and accidentally topple off a cliff and break his neck. Inwardly he wishes him a long and healthy life. He dries her eyes with her own handkerchief — always a clean one, freshly ironed, smelling of violets, tucked conveniently into her sleeve. She winds her arms around him, presses close, and he feels her breasts pushing against him, her hips, the full length of her body. She has an astonishingly tiny waist. Her mouth grazes his neck. Then she draws back, aghast at herself, with a gesture of nymph-like coyness, and bends away from him in an attitude of flight; but by this time he is no longer bored. Rachel is unlike any woman he’s ever had before. To begin with, she’s a respectable woman, his first; and respectability in a woman, as he’s now discovered, complicates things considerably. Respectable women are by nature sexually cold, without the perverse lusts and the neurasthenic longings that drive their degenerate sisters into prostitution; or so goes the scientific theory. His own explorations have suggested to him that prostitutes are motivated less by depravity than by poverty, but nevertheless they must appear as their clients wish to imagine them. A whore must feign desire and then pleasure, whether she feels them or not; such pretences are what she’s paid for. A cheap whore is cheap not because she’s ugly or old, but because she’s a bad actress.

With Rachel however things are reversed. Her pretence is a pretence of aversion — it’s her part to display resistance, his to overcome it. She wishes to be seduced, overwhelmed, taken against her will. At the moment of her climax — which she attempts to disguise as pain — she always says no. In addition, she implies, by her shrinking and clinging, her abject imploring, that she’s offering him her body as a kind of payment — something she owes him in return for the money he’s spent on her behalf, as in some overdone melodrama featuring evil bankers and virtuous but penniless maidens. Her other game is that she is trapped, at the mercy of his will, as in the obscene novels obtainable at the seedier bookstalls of Paris, with their moustache-twirling Sultans and cowering slave-girls. Silvery draperies, chained ankles. Breasts like melons. Eyes of gazelles. That such configurations are banal does not rob them of their power.

What idiocies has he uttered, in the course of these nightly debauches? He can hardly remember. Words of passion and burning love, of how he cannot resist her, which — strange to say — he himself actually believes at the time. During the day, Rachel is a burden, an encumbrance, and he wishes to be rid of her; but at night she’s an altogether different person, and so is he. He too says no when he means yes. He means more, he means further, he means deeper. He would like to make an incision in her — just a small one — so he can taste her blood, which in the shadowy darkness of the bedroom seems to him like a normal wish to have. He’s driven by what feels like uncontrollable desire; but apart from that — apart from himself, at these times, as the sheets toss like waves and he tumbles and wallows and gasps —

another part of himself stands with folded arms, fully clothed, merely curious, merely observing. How far, exactly, will he go? How far in.

The train pulls into the station at Toronto, and Simon attempts to put such thoughts behind him. At the station he hires a gig, and directs the driver to his chosen hotel; not the best one — he doesn’t want to squander money unnecessarily — but not a hovel either, as he has no wish to be bitten by fleas and robbed. As they move through the streets — hot and dusty, crowded with vehicles of all descriptions, lumbering wagons, coaches, private carriages — he looks around him with interest. Everything is new and brisk, bustling and bright, vulgar and complacent, with a smell of fresh money and fresh paint about it. Fortunes have been made here in a very short time, with more in the making. There are the usual shops and commercial buildings, and a surprising number of banks. None of the eating establishments looks at all promising. The people on the sidewalks appear prosperous enough for the most part, without the hordes of destitute beggars, the swarms of rickety, dirty children, and the platoons of draggled or showy prostitutes that disfigure so many European cities; yet such is his perversity that he would rather be in London or Paris. There he would be anonymous, and would have no responsibilities. No ties, no connections. He would be able to lose himself completely.

Twelve - Solomon’s Temple

Chapter 45

The law offices of Bradley, Porter, and MacKenzie are located in a new and somewhat pretentious red-brick building on King Street West. In the outer office a lank youth with colourless hair sits at a high desk, scrabbling with a steel-nibbed pen. When Simon enters he jumps up, scattering inkdrops like a dog shaking itself.

“Mr. MacKenzie is expecting you, Sir,” he says. He places a reverent parenthesis around the word MacKenzie. How young he is, thinks Simon; this must be his first position. He ushers Simon along a carpeted passageway, and knocks at a thick oak door.

Kenneth MacKenzie is in his inner sanctuary. He’s framed himself with polished bookshelves, expensively bound professional volumes, three paintings of racehorses. On his desk is an inkstand of Byzantine convolution and splendour. He himself isn’t quite what Simon has been expecting: no heroic delivering Perseus, no Red Cross Knight. He’s a short, pear-shaped man — narrow shoulders, a comfortable little belly swelling under his tartan vest — with a pocked and tuberous nose, and, behind his silver spectacles, two small but observant eyes. He rises from his chair, hand outstretched, smiling; he has two long front teeth like a beaver’s. Simon tries to imagine what he must have looked like, sixteen years ago, when he was a young man — younger than Simon is now — but fails in the attempt. Kenneth MacKenzie must have looked middle-aged even as a five-year-old.

This is the man, then, who once saved the life of Grace Marks, against considerable odds — cold evidence, outraged public opinion, and her own confused and implausible testimony. Simon is curious to find out exactly how he managed it.

“Dr. Jordan. A pleasure.”

“It is kind of you to spare me the time,” says Simon.

“Not at all. I have Reverend Verringer’s letter; he speaks very highly of you, and has told me something of your proceedings. I am glad to be of help in the interests of science; and as you have heard, I am sure, we lawyers always welcome a chance to show off. But before we get down to it —” A decanter is produced, cigars. The sherry is excellent: Mr. MacKenzie does himself well.

“You are no relation to the famous rebel?” Simon asks, by way of beginning.

“None at all, though I would almost rather claim kin than not; it isn’t the disadvantage now that it once was, and the old boy has long since been pardoned, and is seen as the father of reforms. But feeling ran high against him in those days; that alone could have put a noose around Grace Marks’ neck.”

“How so?” says Simon.

“If you’ve read back over the newspapers, you’ll have noticed that those which supported Mr. Mackenzie and his cause were the only ones to say a good word for Grace. The others were all for hanging her, and William Lyon Mackenzie as well, and anyone else thought to harbour republican sentiments.”

“But surely there was no connection!”

“None whatsoever. There is never any need for a connection, in such matters. Mr. Kinnear was a Tory gentleman, and William Lyon Mackenzie took the part of the poor Scots and Irish, and the emigrant settlers generally. Birds of a feather, was what they thought. I sweated blood at the trial, I can tell you. It was my first case, you know, my very first; I’d just been called to the bar. I knew it would be the making or the breaking of me, and, as things turned out, it did give me quite a leg up.”

“How did you come to take the case?” asks Simon.

“My dear man, I was handed it. It was a hot potato. No one else wanted it. The firm took it pro bono

— neither of the accused had any money, of course — and as I was the youngest, it ended up with me; and at the last minute, too, with scarcely a month to prepare. ”Well, my lad,“ said old Bradley, ”here it is. Everyone knows you’ll lose, because there’s no doubt as to their guilt; but it will be the style in which you lose that will count. There is graceless losing, and there is elegant losing. Let us see you lose as elegantly as possible. We will all be cheering you on.“ The old boy thought he was doing me a favour, and perhaps he was, at that.”

“You acted for both of them, I believe,” says Simon.

“Yes. That was wrong, in retrospect, as their interests proved to be in conflict. There were a lot of things about the trial that were wrong; but the practice of jurisprudence was much laxer then.” MacKenzie frowns at his cigar, which has gone out. It strikes Simon that the poor fellow doesn’t really enjoy smoking, but feels he ought to do it because it goes with the racehorse pictures.

“So you’ve met Our Lady of the Silences?” MacKenzie asks.

“Is that what you call her? Yes; I’ve been spending a good deal of time with her, trying to determine…”

“Whether she is innocent?”

“Whether she is insane. Or was, at the time of the murders. Which I suppose would be innocence of a kind.”

“Good luck to you,” says MacKenzie. “It was a thing I could never be satisfied about, myself.”

“She purports to have no memory of the murders; or at least of the Montgomery woman’s.”

“My dear man,” says MacKenzie, “you’d be amazed how common such lapses of memory are, amongst the criminal element. Very few of them can remember having done anything wrong at all. They will bash a man half to death, and cut him to ribbons, and then claim they only gave him a little tap with the end of a bottle. Forgetting, in such cases, is a good deal more convenient than remembering.”

“Grace’s amnesia seems genuine enough,” says Simon, “or so I have come to believe, in the light of my previous clinical experience. On the other hand, although she can’t seem to remember the murder, she has a minute recollection of the details surrounding it — every item of laundry she ever washed, for instance; and such things as the boat race that preceded her own flight across the Lake. She even remembers the names of the boats.”

“How did you check her facts? In the newspapers, I suppose,” says MacKenzie. “Has it occurred to you that she may have derived her corroborative details from the same source? Criminals will read about themselves endlessly, if given the chance. They are as vain in that way as authors. When McDermott asserted that Grace helped him in his strangling escapade, he may very well have got the idea from the Kingston Chronicle and Gazette, which proposed it as fact, even before there was an inquest. The knot around the dead woman’s neck, they said, obviously required two persons to tie it. A piece of rubbish; you can’t tell from such a knot whether it was tied by one person or two, or twenty, for that matter. Of course I made hash of this notion at the trial.”

“Now you have turned around, and are pleading the other side of the case,” says Simon.

“One must always keep both sides in one’s head; it’s the only way to anticipate the moves of one’s opponent. Not that mine had a very hard job of work, in this case. But I did what I could; a man can but do his best, as Walter Scott has remarked somewhere. The courtroom was crowded as Hell, and —

despite the November weather — just as hot, and the air was foul. Nevertheless, I cross-examined some of the witnesses for over three hours. I must say it took stamina; but I was a younger man then.”

“You began by disallowing the arrest itself, as I recall.”

“Yes. Well, Marks and McDermott were seized on American soil, and without a warrant. I made a fine speech about the violation of international frontiers, and habeas corpus and the like; but Chief Justice Robinson was having none of it.

“I then attempted to show that Mr. Kinnear was something of a black sheep, and lax in his morals; which was undoubtedly true. He was a hypochondriac as well. Neither of these things had much to do with the fact that he’d been murdered, but I did my utmost, especially with the morals; and it’s a fact that those four people kept popping in and out of one another’s beds like a French farce, so that it was hard to keep it straight who was sleeping where.

“I then proceeded to destroy the reputation of the unfortunate Montgomery woman. I didn’t feel guilty about slandering her, as the poor creature was already well out of it. She’d had a child previously, you know — which died, I presume of midwives’ mercy — and at the autopsy it was found she was pregnant. Undoubtedly the father was Kinnear, but I did my level best to produce a shadowy Romeo who’d strangled the poor woman out of jealousy. However, pull as I might, that rabbit refused to come out of the hat.”

“Possibly because there was no rabbit,” says Simon.

“Quite right. My next trick was an attempted sleight-of-hand with the shirts. Who was wearing which shirt, when, and why? McDermott had been caught in one of Kinnear’s shirts — what then? I established the fact that Nancy had been in the habit of selling her employer’s cast-off garments to the servants, with or without her master’s permission; so McDermott could have come by his Shirt of Nessus honestly enough. Unfortunately, Kinnear’s corpse had churlishly slipped on one of McDermott’s shirts, which was a stumbling block indeed. I tried my best to avoid it, but the Prosecution hammered me with it, fair and square.

“I then pointed the finger of suspicion at the peddler to whom the bloody shirt thrown behind the door could be traced, as he had tried to palm off the same goods elsewhere. But that was no good either; there was testimony that the peddler had sold that very shirt to McDermott — a whole poker hand of shirts, in fact — and had then been unobliging enough to have vanished into thin air. For some reason he didn’t wish to appear at the trial and run the risk of getting his own neck stretched.”

“Cowardly fellow,” says Simon.

“Just so,” says MacKenzie, laughing. “And when it came to Grace, I must say I wasn’t given much help. The foolish girl could not be dissuaded from dressing herself up in the murdered woman’s finery, an act which was viewed with horror by the press and public; although if I’d had my wits about me, I would have advanced that very fact as evidence of an innocent and untroubled conscience, or, even better, of lunacy. But I didn’t have the cunning to think of it at the time.

“In addition, Grace had muddied the trail considerably. She’d said at the time of her arrest that she hadn’t known where Nancy was. Then, at the inquest, she said she suspected Nancy was dead and in the cellar, though she hadn’t seen her put there. But, at the trial, and in her supposed Confession — that little item put out by the Star, and a tidy sum they made by it — she claimed to have seen McDermott dragging Nancy by the hair, and tossing her down the stairs. She never went so far as to admit to the strangling, however.”

“But she did admit it to you, later,” says Simon.

“Did she? I don’t recall….”

“In the Penitentiary,” says Simon. “She told you she was haunted by Nancy‘s bloodshot eyes; or so Mrs. Moodie reported you as having said.”

MacKenzie gives an uncomfortable wiggle, and looks down. “Grace was certainly in a troubled state of mind,” he says. “Confused and melancholy.”

“But the eyes?”

“Mrs. Moodie — for whom I have the greatest regard,” says MacKenzie, “has a somewhat conventional imagination, and a tendency to exaggerate. She put some fine speeches into the mouths of her subjects, which it is highly unlikely they ever made, McDermott having been an unmitigated lout — even I, who was defending him, found it a stretch to scrape together a few good words for the man — and Grace a near child, and uneducated. As for the eyes, what is strongly anticipated by the mind is often supplied by it. You see it every day on the witness stand.”

“So there were no eyes?”

MacKenzie wiggles again. “I couldn’t swear to the eyes, on oath,” he says. “Grace said nothing, exactly, that would stand up in court, as constituting a confession, although she did say she was sorry that Nancy was dead. But anyone might say that.”

“Indeed,” says Simon. He suspects now that the eyes did not originate with Mrs. Moodie, and wonders what other parts of her narrative were due to MacKenzie’s own flamboyant tastes as a raconteur. “But we also have McDermott’s statement, made just before he was hanged.”

“Yes, yes; a scaffold pronouncement always makes it into the newspapers.”

“Why did he wait so long, I wonder?”

“Until the very last, he hoped for a commutation, since Grace had been given one. He considered their guilt to be equal, and thought the sentences ought to be, as well; and he could not accuse her without knotting the noose very firmly around his own neck, as he’d need to admit to the axe-play and so forth.”

“Whereas Grace could accuse him with relative impunity,” says Simon.

“Just so,” says MacKenzie. “Nor did she flinch from it when the moment came. Sauve qui peut! That woman has nerves like flint. She’d have made a good lawyer, if a man.”

“But McDermott didn’t get his reprieve,” says Simon.

“Of course not! He was mad to expect it, but furious nonetheless. He considered that too to be Grace’s fault — in his eyes, she’d cornered the clemency market — and as I read it, he then wanted to be revenged.”

“Somewhat understandably,” says Simon. “As I recall, he claimed that Grace came down into the cellar with him, and strangled Nancy with her own kerchief.”

“Well, the kerchief was indeed found. But the rest of it is not hard evidence. The man had already told several different stories, and was a notorious liar into the bargain.”

“Although,” says Simon, “to turn Devil’s advocate — just because a man is known to lie, it does not follow that he always does so.”

“Precisely,” says MacKenzie. “Well, I see the fascinating Grace has been leading you a merry chase.”

“Not so merry,” says Simon. “I must admit I’ve been baffled. What she says has the ring of truth; her manner is candid and sincere; and yet I can’t shake the suspicion that, in some way I cannot put my finger on, she is lying to me.”

“Lying,” says MacKenzie. “A severe term, surely. Has she been lying to you, you ask? Let me put it this way — did Scheherazade lie? Not in her own eyes; indeed, the stories she told ought never to be subjected to the harsh categories of Truth and Falsehood. They belong in another realm altogether. Perhaps Grace Marks has merely been telling you what she needs to tell, in order to accomplish the desired end.”

“Which is?” asks Simon.

“To keep the Sultan amused,” says MacKenzie. “To keep the blow from falling. To forestall your departure, and make you stay in the room with her as long as possible.”

“What on earth would be the point of that?” says Simon. “Amusing me won’t get her out of prison.”

“I don’t suppose she really expects that,” says MacKenzie. “But isn’t it obvious? The poor creature has fallen in love with you. A single man, more or less young and not ill-favoured, appears to one who has long been sequestered, and deprived of masculine company. You are doubtless the object of her waking daydreams.”

“Surely not,” says Simon, flushing despite himself. If Grace is in love with him, she has preserved the secret extremely well.

“But I say, surely so! I had the very experience myself, or the twin of it; for I had to pass many hours with her, in her jail cell in Toronto, while she spun out her yarn for me to as great a length as it would go. She was besotted with me, and didn’t wish to let me out of her sight. Such melting and languorous glances! A hand placed on hers, and she would have thrown herself into my arms.”

Simon is disgusted. What a conceited little troll, with his natty vest and bulbous nose! “Indeed?” he says, trying not to let his anger show.

“Ah yes,” says MacKenzie. “She thought she was going to be hanged, you know. Fear is a remarkable aphrodisiac; I advise you to try it some time. We lawyers are so often cast in the role of St. George, at least temporarily. Find a maiden chained to a rock and about to be devoured by a monster, rescue her, then have her yourself. It’s the usual thing with maidens, wouldn’t you agree? I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. She was very young and tender then; though no doubt prison life has hardened her.”

Simon coughs, to hide his rage. How could he not have noticed that the man had a mouth like a depraved old lecher’s? A provincial brothel-trotter. A calculating voluptuary. “There has never been any suggestion of that,” he says. “In my case.” He’s considered the daydreams to be all on his side, but already he’s beginning to doubt it. What has Grace really been thinking about him, as she sewed and recounted?

“I was very lucky,” says MacKenzie, “and so of course was Grace herself, that the murder of Mr. Kinnear was tried before the other. It was obvious to everyone that she couldn’t have helped to shoot Kinnear; and for Nancy‘s murder — indeed, for both of them — the evidence was circumstantial only. She was convicted not as a principal, but as an accessory, as all that could be proven against her was that she’d known of McDermott’s murderous intentions in advance, and had failed to inform against him; and that she similarly neglected to broadcast the news of his completed achievement. Even the Chief Justice recommended clemency, and with the aid of several strong petitions in her favour I was able to save her life. By that time the death sentence had been pronounced against both of them and the trial had been closed, since it was thought unnecessary to go into the details of the second case; so Grace was never tried for the murder of Nancy Montgomery.”

“And if she had been?” asks Simon.

“I couldn’t have got her off. Public opinion would have been too strong for me. She would have been hanged.”

“But in your opinion, she was innocent,” says Simon.

“On the contrary,” says MacKenzie. He sips at his sherry, wipes his lips daintily, smiles a smile of gentle reminiscence. “No. In my opinion, she was guilty as sin.”

Chapter 46

What is Dr. Jordan doing and when will he come back? Though what he is doing I think I have guessed. He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won’t find it out that way. He doesn’t understand yet that guilt conies to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that others have done to you.

His first name is Simon. I wonder why his mother named him that, or it may have been his father. My own father never bothered with the naming of us, it was up to Mother and Aunt Pauline. There is Simon Peter the Apostle, of course, who was made a fisher of men by our Lord. But there is also Simple Simon. Met a pie man, going to the fair. And said, Let me taste your ware, and had no penny. McDermott was like that, he thought he could take things without paying for them; and so does Dr. Jordan. Not that I don’t feel sorry for him. He was always thin, and it’s my impression that he is getting even thinner. I believe he is a prey to some gnawing sorrow.

As for what I was named after, it might have been the hymn. My mother never said so, but then there were many things she never said.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now I’m found,

Was blind but now I see.

I hope I was named after it. I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing. As it says in the Bible, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.

If it is face to face, there must be two looking.

Today was Bath Day. There is some talk of making us bathe naked, in groups, instead of by two’s in our shifts; they say it will save time and be more economical, as less water need be used, but I think it an immodest idea and if they attempt it I shall complain to the authorities. Although perhaps I won’t, as these things are sent to try us and I should put up with it without complaint, as I do all the rest, for the most part. The baths are unpleasant enough already, the stone of the floor all slippery with dirty old soap, like a jelly, and there’s always a Matron watching; which may be just as well, as otherwise there would be splashing. In winter you freeze to death, but now in the heat of the summer with all the sweat and grime, which is twice as much after working in the kitchens, I don’t mind the cold water so much, as it is refreshing.

After the baths had been got through I spent time at the plain sewing. They are behindhand at the prison with the men’s uniforms, as more and more criminals keep being admitted, especially in the dog days of summer when tempers are short and folks run to vindictiveness; and so they must use my extra pair of hands. They have their orders and their quotas to fill, just as in a factory. Annie Little was sitting next to me on the bench, and she leant close and whispered to me, Grace, Grace, is he handsome, your young doctor? Will he get you out of prison? Are you in love with him, I suppose you are.

Don’t be silly, I whispered to her, talking such rubbish, I’ve never been in love with any man and I don’t plan to start now. I am condemned for life and there is no time for that sort of thing in here, and no space for it either when it comes to that.

Annie is thirty-five, she’s older than I am, but besides being not always right in the head she has never grown up. That happens in the Penitentiary, some of them stay the same age all the time inside themselves; the same age as when first put in.

Get off your high horse, she said, and dug me with her elbow. You wouldn’t mind a stiff piece in a tight corner, it never comes amiss; and you are so sly, she whispered, you’d find a time and a place for it if you wanted, Bertha Flood did it with a keeper in the tool shed, only she got caught and you’d never, you’ve got such a steady hand, you could murder your own grannie in her bed and never turn a hair. And she gave a snorting laugh.

I fear she has led a most disreputable life.

Silence there, said the Matron on duty, or I’ll take down your names. They’re becoming stricter again, as there is a new Head Matron; and if there are too many marks against you they cut off your hair. After the noon meal I was sent over to the Governor’s house. Dora was there again, as she has an arrangement with Dr. Jordan‘s landlady that she may come to us on the days of the great washing; and as usual she was full of gossip. She said if she told half she knew, it would take someone down a peg or two, and there was many a whited sepulchre wearing black silk and carrying lace handkerchiefs, and having sick headaches in the afternoons as if thoroughly respectable; and others could suit themselves, but she is not one to have the wool pulled over her eyes. She said that since Dr. Jordan went away, her mistress was spending hours in pacing the floor, and looking out the window, or sitting as if sunk into a stupor; which was no wonder, as she must be fearing he’ll run off on her, as did the other one. And then who would pay for her whims and whams, and for all the running and fetching she required?

Clarrie for the most part ignores what Dora has to say. She is not interested in gossip about the better classes; she only smokes her pipe, and says, H’m. But today she said why should she care what the likes of those get up to, you might as well watch the hens and roosters scuffling in the barnyard, and God put such folks on this earth to dirty up the laundry as far as she could tell, because she couldn’t for the life of her see any other use for them. And Dora said, Well, they are doing a fine job of that, I must say, they dirty it up as fast as I can get it clean, and the both of them are in the dirtying of it together if the truth was to come out.

At that a chill ran over my whole body, and I did not ask her to explain herself. I didn’t want her saying anything bad about Dr. Jordan, as on the whole he has been very kind to me, and is also a considerable diversion in my life of monotony and toil.

When Dr. Jordan comes back, I am to be hypnotized. It has all been decided; Jeremiah, or I should think of him as Dr. DuPont because that is what I must now remember to call him, is to do the hypnotizing, and the others will watch and listen. The Governor’s wife has explained it all, and said I need not be afraid, as I will be among friends who mean well, and all I will have to do is sit in a chair and go to sleep when Dr. DuPont tells me to. When I am asleep they will ask me questions. In this way they hope to bring back my memory.

I told her I was not at all sure I wanted to have it back, although of course I would do as they wished. And she said she was glad to find me in a co-operative state of mind, and she had the greatest faith in me and was sure I would be found innocent.

After the evening meal Matron gave us some knitting, to take into our cells and finish after hours, as they are behind on the stockings. In the summer it is light until quite late, and no candle grease need be wasted on us.

So now I am knitting. I am a quick knitter, I can do it without looking as long as it is only stockings and nothing fancy. And as I knit, I think: What would I put into my Keepsake Album, if I had one? A bit of fringe, from my mother’s shawl. A ravelling of red wool, from the flowered mittens that Mary Whitney made for me. A scrap of silk, from Nancy‘s good shawl. A bone button, from Jeremiah. A daisy, from the daisy chain made for me by Jamie Walsh.

Nothing from McDermott, as I don’t wish to remember him.

But what should a Keepsake Album be? Should it be only the good things in your life, or should it be all of the things? Many put in pictures of scenes and events they have never witnessed, such as Dukes and Niagara Falls, which to my mind is a sort of cheating. Would I do that? Or would I be truthful to my own life.

A piece of coarse cotton, from my Penitentiary nightdress. A square of bloodstained petticoat. A strip of kerchief, white with blue flowers. Love-in-a-mist.

Chapter 47

The next morning, just after sunrise, Simon sets our for Richmond Hill, on a horse which he’s hired at the livery stable behind his hotel. Like all horses accustomed to a succession of strange riders the beast is obstinate, with a hard mouth, and tries twice to scrape him against fences. After that it settles down, and plods along at a dogged canter, varied by a brisk, jolting walk. Although dusty and rutted in places the road is better than Simon has expected, and with several stops at wayside inns for rest and water he reaches Richmond Hill shortly after noon.

It’s still not much of a town. There’s a general store, a blacksmith’s, a straggle of houses. The inn must be the same one Grace remembers. He goes into it, orders roast beef and beer, and enquires about the location of Mr. Kinnear’s former house. The landlord isn’t surprised: Simon is by no means the first to ask such a question. In fact, they were fairly swarmed back then, he says, at the time of the murders, and ever since there’s been a steady trickle of sightseers. The town is tired of being known only for that one thing: let the dead bury the dead, to his mind. But then, people want to gawk at tragedy; it’s indecent. You’d think they’d leave trouble alone — but no, they want to partake of it. Some go so far as to carry things away with them — pebbles from the driveway, flowers from the flower beds. The gentleman who owns the house now is not so bothered, as fewer people have been coming. Still, he doesn’t want idle curiosity.

Simon assures him that his own curiosity is far from idle: he’s a doctor, and is making a study of Grace. It’s a waste of time, says the landlord, because Grace was guilty. “She was good-looking woman,” he adds, with a kind of pride at having known her. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You’d never have guessed what she was plotting, under that smooth face.”

“Only fifteen at the time, I believe,” says Simon.

“But could have passed for eighteen. A shame, to have got so wicked, at her young age.” He says Mr. Kinnear was a fine gentleman though loose, and most people had liked Nancy Montgomery, even though she’d been living in sin. He’d known McDermott too; a prime athlete, and would have done well in the end, except for Grace. “It was her led him on, and it was her put a noose around his neck for him too.”

He says the women always get off easy.

Simon asks about Jamie Walsh, but Jamie Walsh is gone. To the city, say some; to the States, say others. After Kinnear’s place was sold off the Walshes had to shift. In fact there aren’t many left in the neighbourhood who were here back then, as there’s been a great deal of buying and selling and coming and going since; the grass being always greener on the other side of the fence. Simon rides north, and has little difficulty in identifying the Kinnear property. He hasn’t meant to go right up to the house — he’s only been intending to look at it from a distance — but the orchard which was young in Grace’s time has now grown up, partially obscuring the view. He finds himself halfway up the drive, and before he knows it he’s hitched his horse to the fence beside the two kitchens, and is standing at the front door.

The house is smaller, and somehow dingier, than he has imagined it. The porch with its pillars is in need of a coat of paint, and the rose bushes have run wild, and show only a few infested blooms. What can be gained from looking, Simon asks himself; apart, that is, from a vulgar frisson, and the indulgence of morbid interest? It’s like visiting the site of a battle: there is nothing to be seen except in the mind’s eye. Such confrontations with the actual are always a disappointment.

Nevertheless he knocks at the front door, then knocks again. No one answers. He’s turning to go away when the door is opened. A woman stands there, thin, sad-faced, not old but aging, soberly dressed in a dark print dress and apron. Simon has the sensation that this is what Nancy Montgomery would have turned into if she’d lived.

“You’re here to see the house,” she says. It isn’t a question. “The master’s not at home, but I have instructions to show you around.”

Simon is taken aback: how did they know he was coming? Perhaps they have a lot of visitors, still, despite what the innkeeper told him? Has the place become a grisly museum?

The housekeeper — for that’s what she must be — stands aside to allow Simon to pass into the front hall. “You’ll want to know about the well, I suppose,” she says. “They always do.”

“The well?” asks Simon. He’s heard nothing about a well. Perhaps his visit will be repaid, after all, with some fresh detail about the case, never before mentioned. “What about the well?”

The woman gives him an odd glance. “It’s a covered well, Sir, with a new pump. Surely you would want to know about the well, when looking to buy a place.”

“But I’m not looking to buy it,” says Simon, flustered. “Is it for sale?”

“Why else would I be showing it to you? Of course it’s for sale, and not for the first time neither. Those that live here never feel entirely comfortable. Not that there’s anything, no ghosts or such, though you’d think there might be, and I never like to go down to the cellar. But it draws the idle gawkers.”

She stares hard at him: if he’s not a buyer, what is he doing here? Simon doesn’t wish to be thought just another idle gawker. “I am a doctor,” he says.

“Ah,” she says, nodding shrewdly at him, as if this explains it. “So you want to see the house. We do get a lot of doctors who want to see it. More than the other sorts, even the lawyers. Well, now that you’re here, you might just as well. In here is the parlour, where they kept the piano, I’m told, in Mr. Kinnear’s time, that Miss Nancy Montgomery used to play at. She sang like a canary, so they say of her. Very musical, she was.” She smiles at Simon, the first smile she’s bestowed. Simon’s tour is thorough. He is shown the dining room, the library, the winter kitchen; the summer kitchen, the stable and loft, “where that scoundrel McDermott slept at night.” The upstairs bedrooms —

“Lord only knows what went on up here” — and Grace’s little room. The furniture is all different, of course. Poorer, shabbier. Simon tries to imagine what it must have looked like then, but fails. With a fine showmanship, the housekeeper saves the cellar till the last. She lights a candle and descends first, cautioning him against slipping. The light is dim, the corners cobwebbed. There’s a dank smell, of earth and stored vegetables. “He was found right here,” says the housekeeper with relish, “and she was hid over by that wall. Though why they bothered to hide her, I don’t know. Crime will out, and out it did. It’s a pity they didn’t hang that Grace, and I’m not alone in saying so.”

“I am sure you aren’t,” says Simon. He’s seen enough, he wants to be gone. At the front door he gives her a coin — it seems the right thing — and she nods and pockets it. “You can see the graves, too, in the churchyard in town,” she tells him. “There’s no names, but you can’t miss them. They’re the only ones with pickets round.”

Simon thanks her. He feels he’s sneaking away after some discreditable peepshow. What sort of a voyeur has he become? A thoroughgoing one, apparently, as he heads straight for the Presbyterian church; easy to find, since it’s the only steeple in sight.

Behind it is the graveyard, neat and green, the dead kept under firm control. No rambling weeds here, no tattered wreaths, no jumble and confusion; nothing like the baroque efflorescences of Europe. No angels, no Calvaries, no nonsense. Heaven, for the Presbyterians, must resemble a banking establishment, with each soul tagged and docketed, and placed in the appropriate pigeonhole. The graves he seeks are obvious. Each has a wooden picket fence around it, the only such fences in the graveyard: to keep the occupants penned in, no doubt, since the murdered have the reputation of walking. Even the Presbyterians, it appears, are not exempt from superstition. Thomas Kinnear’s picket fence is painted white, Nancy Montgomery’s black, an indication perhaps of the town’s judgment upon her: murder victim or not, she was no better than she should be. They hadn’t been buried in the same grave — no need to endorse the scandal. Oddly, Nancy‘s grave has been placed at Kinnear’s feet, and at right angles to him; the effect is of a sort of bed rug. There’s a large rose bush filling almost the whole of Nancy’s enclosure — the old broadsheet ballad, then, was prophetic —

but no vine in Thomas Kinnear’s. Simon picks a rose from Nancy‘s grave, with some half-formed notion of taking it back to Grace, but then thinks better of it.

He spends the night at an unprepossessing inn halfway back to Toronto. The windowpanes are so grimy he can scarcely see out of them, the blankets smell of mildew; directly below his room, a group of raucous drinkers carouses till well past midnight. These are the hazards of provincial travel. He places a chair against the door, to prevent unwelcome intrusion.

In the morning he arises early and inspects the various insect bites he’s acquired during the night. He douses his head in the scant basin of lukewarm water brought by the chambermaid, who doubles as the scullery maid downstairs; the water smells of onions.

After breakfasting on a slice of antediluvian ham and an egg of uncertain age, he continues on his way. Few others are abroad; he passes a wagon, an axeman felling a dead tree in his field, a labourer pissing into the ditch. Wisps of mist float here and there above the fields, dissipating like dreams in the rising light. The air is hazy, the roadside weeds hung with dew; the horse snatches mouthfuls of them as it passes. Simon curbs it halfheartedly, then lets it amble. He feels idle, remote from all goals and effort. Before taking his afternoon train, he has one more errand. He wants to visit the grave of Mary Whitney. He wants to make sure she really exists.

The Adelaide Street Methodist Church is the one Grace named; he’s looked it up in his notes. In the graveyard, polished granite is replacing marble, and verses are becoming scarce: ostentation lies in size and solidity, not in ornamentation. The Methodists like their monuments monumental; block-like, unmistakable, like the thick black lines drawn under finalized accounts in his father’s ledger book: Paid In Full.

He walks up and down the rows of graves, reading over the names — the Biggs and the Stewarts, the Flukes and the Chambers, the Cooks and the Randolphs and the Stalworthys. At last he finds it, over in a corner: a small grey stone, which looks older than the nineteen years that have passed. Mary Whitney; the name, nothing more. But Grace did say that the name was all she could afford. Conviction leaps in him like a flame — her story is true, then — but it dies as quickly. What are such physical tokens worth? A magician produces a coin from a hat, and because it’s a real coin and a real hat, the audience believes that the illusion too is real. But this stone is only that: a stone. For one thing, it has no dates on it, and the Mary Whitney buried beneath it may not have any connection with Grace Marks at all. She could be just a name, a name on a stone, seen here by Grace and used by her in the spinning of her story. She could be an old woman, a wife, a small infant, anyone at all. Nothing has been proved. But nothing has been disproved, either.

Returning to Kingston, Simon travels first class. The train is almost full, and to avoid the crowding it’s worth the expense. As he’s carried eastward and Toronto recedes behind him, and Richmond Hill and its farms and meadows, he finds himself wondering what it would be like to live back there, in that lush and peaceful countryside; in, for instance, Thomas Kinnear’s house, with Grace as his housekeeper. Not only his housekeeper: his locked and secret mistress. He’d keep her hidden, under a different name. A lazy, indulgent life it would be, with its own slow delights. He pictures her sitting in a chair in the parlour, sewing, the lamplight falling on the side of her face. But why only mistress? It comes to him that Grace Marks is the only woman he’s ever met that he would wish to marry. It’s a sudden notion, but once he’s had it he turns it over, considering it. He thinks, with a certain mordant irony, that she may also be the only one who would satisfy all of his mother’s oft-hinted requirements, or almost all: Grace is not, for instance, rich. But she has beauty without frivolity, domesticity without dullness, and simplicity of manner, and prudence, and circumspection. She is also an excellent needlewoman, and could doubtless crochet rings around Miss Faith Cartwright. His mother would have no complaints on that score. Then there are his own requirements. There is passion in Grace somewhere, he’s certain of it, although it would take some hunting for. And she’d be grateful to him, albeit reluctantly. Gratitude by itself does not enthral him, but he likes the idea of reluctance.

But then there’s James McDermott. Has she been telling the truth in that respect? Did she really dislike and fear the man as much as she’s claimed? He’d touched her, certainly; but how much, and with how much of her consent? Such episodes appear differently in retrospect than in the heat of the moment; nobody knows that better than he, and why should it be any different for a woman? One prevaricates, one makes excuses for oneself, one gets out of it the best way one can. But what if, some evening in the lamplit parlour, she were to reveal more than he would care to know?

But he does care to know.

Madness, of course; a perverse fantasy, to marry a suspected murderess. But what if he’d met her before the murders? He considers this, rejects it. Before the murders Grace would have been entirely different from the woman he now knows. A young girl, scarcely formed; tepid, bland, and tasteless. A flat landscape.

Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace towards him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand. Thirteen - Pandora’s Box

Chapter 48

They wait in the library of Mrs. Quennell’s house, each in a straight-backed chair, each turned not too obviously towards the door, which is slightly open. The curtains, which are of maroon plush with black trim and tassels and remind Simon of Episcopalian funerals, have been drawn shut; a globe-shaded lamp has been lit. It stands in the centre of the table, which is oblong and made of oak; and they sit around it, silent, expectant, decorous and wary, like a jury before the trial.

Mrs. Quennell, however, is relaxed, her hands folded placidly in her lap; she anticipates wonders, but will evidently not be surprised by them, whatever they may be. She has the air of a professional guide for whom the ravishments of, say, Niagara Falls have become a commonplace, but who hopes to enjoy vicariously the raptures of visiting neophytes. The Governor’s wife wears an expression of yearning piety, tempered with resignation, whereas Reverend Verringer manages to look both benign and disapproving; there’s a glinting around his eyes as if he’s wearing spectacles, although he is not. Lydia, who is seated to Simon’s left, is dressed in some cloudy, shiny material, a light mauve shot through with white, cut low enough to reveal her charming collarbone; she exudes a moist aroma of lily of the valley. She’s nervously twisting her handkerchief; but when her eyes meet Simon’s, she smiles. As for Simon, he senses that his face is set in a sceptical and not very pleasant sneer; but that’s a false face, as underneath it he’s eager as a schoolboy at a carnival. He believes in nothing, he expects trickery and longs to discover how it is worked, but at the same time he wishes to be astonished. He knows this is a dangerous state of mind: he must preserve his objectivity.

There’s a knock at the door, which opens wider; and Dr. Jerome DuPont comes in, leading Grace by the hand. She isn’t wearing a cap, and her coiled hair shines redly in the lamplight. She has on a white collar, which is something he’s never seen her in; and she looks astonishingly young. She walks tentatively, as if blind, but her eyes are wide open, fixed upon DuPont with the timorousness, the tremulousness, the pale and silent appeal, which Simon — he now realizes — has been hoping for in vain.

“I see you are all assembled,” says Dr. DuPont. “I am gratified by your interest, and, I hope I may say, by your trust. The lamp must be removed from the table. Mrs. Quennell, may I impose upon you? And turned down, please. And the door closed.”

Mrs. Quennell rises and silently moves the lamp to a small desk in the corner. Reverend Verringer shuts the door firmly.

“Grace will sit here,” says Dr. DuPont. He places her with her back to the curtains. “Are you quite comfortable? Good. Do not be afraid, no one here wishes to hurt you. I have explained to her that all she has to do is listen to me, and then go to sleep. Do you understand, Grace?”

Grace nods. She’s sitting rigidly, her lips pressed together, the pupils of her eyes huge in the weak light. Her hands grip the arms of the chair. Simon has seen attitudes like this in the wards of hospitals — those in pain, or awaiting an operation. An animal fear.

“This is a fully scientific procedure,” says Dr. DuPont. He is talking to the rest of them, rather than to Grace. “Please banish all thoughts of Mesmerism, and other such fraudulent procedures. The Braidian system is completely logical and sound, and has been proven by European experts beyond a shadow of a doubt. It involves the deliberate relaxation and realignment of the nerves, so that a neuro-hypnotic sleep is induced. The same thing may be observed in fish, when stroked along the dorsal fin, and even in cats; although in higher organisms the results are of course more complex. I do ask you to avoid sudden movements and loud noises, as these can be shocking, and perhaps even damaging, to the subject. I request that you remain completely silent until Grace is asleep, after which you may converse in low voices.”

Grace stares at the closed door as if thinking of escape. She’s so high-strung Simon can almost feel her vibrating, like a stretched rope. He’s never seen her so terrified. What has DuPont said or done to her before bringing her here? It’s almost as if he must have threatened her; but when he speaks to her she looks up at him trustingly. Whatever else, it isn’t DuPont she’s afraid of. DuPont turns the lamp down lower. The air in the room seems to thicken with barely visible smoke. Grace’s features are now in shadow, except for the vitreous gleam of her eyes. DuPont begins his procedure. First he suggests heaviness, drowsiness; then he tells Grace that her limbs are floating, drifting, that she is sinking down, down, down, as if through water. His voice has a soothing monotony. Grace’s eyelids droop; she is breathing deeply and evenly.

“Are you asleep, Grace?” DuPont asks her.

“Yes,” she says, in a voice that is slow and languid, but clearly audible.

“You can hear me.”

“Yes.”

“You can hear only me? Good. When you wake, you will remember nothing of what is done here. Now, go deeper.” He pauses. “Please lift your right arm.”

Slowly the arm rises as if pulled by a string, until it is held out straight. “Your arm,” says DuPont, “is an iron bar. No one can bend it.” He looks around at them. “Would anyone care to try?” Simon is tempted, but decides not to risk it; at this point he wants neither to be convinced, nor to be disillusioned. “No?”

says DuPont. “Then allow me.” He places his two hands on Grace’s outstretched arm, leans forward. “I am using all my force,” he says. The arm does not bend. “Good. You may lower your arm.”

“Her eyes are open,” says Lydia, alarmed; and sure enough there are two half-moons of white showing between the lids.

“It is normal,” says DuPont, “but of no import. In this condition the subject appears able to discern certain objects, even with the eyes closed. It is a peculiarity of the nervous organization which must involve some sensory organ not yet measurable by human agency. But let us proceed.”

He bends over Grace as if listening to her heart. Then he takes from some hidden pocket a square of fabric — an ordinary woman’s veil, light grey — and drops it gently over her head, where it billows and settles. Now there’s only a head, with the merest contour of a face behind it. The suggestion of a shroud is unmistakable.

It’s too theatrical, too tawdry, thinks Simon; it reeks of the small-town lecture halls of fifteen years ago, with their audiences of credulous store clerks and laconic farmers, and their drab wives, and the smooth-talking charlatans who used to dole out transcendental nonsense and quack medical advice to them as an excuse for picking their pockets. He’s striving for derision; nevertheless, the back of his neck creeps.

“She looks so — so odd,” whispers Lydia.

“”What hope of answer or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil,“” says Reverend Verringer, in his quoting voice. Simon can’t tell whether or not he intends to be jocular.

“Pardon?” says the Governor’s wife. “Oh yes — dear Mr. Tennyson.”

“It helps the concentration,” says Dr. DuPont in a low voice. “The inner sight is keener when hidden from outward view. Now, Dr. Jordan, we may safely travel into the past. What is it you would wish me to ask her?”

Simon wonders where to begin. “Ask her about the Kinnear residence,” he says.

“What part of it?” says DuPont. “One must be specific.”

“The verandah,” says Simon, who believes in starting gently.

“Grace,” says DuPont, “you are on the verandah, at Mr. Kinnear’s. What do you see there?”

“I see flowers,” says Grace. Her voice is heavy, and somehow damp. “It’s the sunset. I am so happy. I want to stay here.”

“Ask her,” says Simon, “to get up now, and walk into the house. Tell her to go towards the trapdoor in the front hall, the one leading to the cellar.”

“Grace,” says DuPont, “you must…”

Suddenly there’s a loud single knock, almost like a small explosion. It has come from the table, or was it the door? Lydia gives a little shriek and clutches at Simon’s hand; it would be churlish of him to pull away, so he does not, especially as she’s shivering like a leaf.

“Hush!” says Mrs. Quennell in a piercing whisper. “We have a visitor!”

“William!” cries the Governor’s wife softly. “I know it’s my darling! My little one!”

“I beg you,” says DuPont, with irritation. “This is not a’séance!”

Under the veil, Grace stirs uneasily. The Governor’s wife sniffles into her handkerchief. Simon glances over at Reverend Verringer. In the dimness it’s hard to be sure of his expression; it seems to be a pained smile, like a baby with gas.

“I’m frightened,” says Lydia. “Turn up the light!”

“Not yet,” Simon whispers. He pats her hand.

There are three more sharp raps, as if someone is knocking at the door, imperiously demanding entry.

“This is unconscionable,” says DuPont. “Please request them to go away.”

“I will try,” says Mrs. Quennell. “But this is a Thursday. They’re used to coming on Thursdays.” She bows her head and clasps her hands. After a moment there’s a series of little staccato pops, like a handful of pebbles rattling down a drainspout. “There,” she says, “I think that’s done it.”

There must be a confederate, thinks Simon — some accomplice or apparatus, outside the door, under the table. This is, after all, Mrs. Quennell’s house. Who knows how she may have rigged it up? But there’s nothing under the table except their feet. How is it all worked? Just by sitting here he is rendered absurd, an ignorant pawn, a dupe. But he can’t leave now.

“Thank you,” says DuPont. “Doctor, please pardon the interruption. Let us proceed.”

Simon is increasingly conscious of Lydia‘s hand in his. It’s a small hand, and very warm. In fact the entire room is too close for comfort. He would like to detach himself, but Lydia is clutching him with a grip of iron. He hopes no one can see. His arm tingles; he crosses his legs. He has a sudden vision of Rachel Humphrey’s legs, naked except for her stockings, and of his hands on them, holding her down while she struggles. Deliberately struggles, watching him through the lashes of her almost-closed eyes to see the effect she’s having on him. Writhes like an artful eel. Begs like a captive. Slippery, a skin of sweat on her, hers or his, her dank hair across her face, across his mouth, every night. Imprisoned. Her skin where he’s licked her shines like satin. It can’t go on.

“Ask her,” he says, “whether she ever had relations with James McDermott.” He hasn’t been intending to pose this question; certainly not at first, and never so directly. But isn’t it — he sees it now — the one thing he most wants to know?

DuPont repeats the question to Grace in a level voice. There is a pause; then Grace laughs. Or someone laughs; it doesn’t sound like Grace. “Relations, Doctor? What do you mean?” The voice is thin, wavering, watery; but fully present, fully alert. “Really, Doctor, you are such a hypocrite! You want to know if I kissed him, if I slept with him. If I was his paramour! Is that it?”

“Yes,” says Simon. He’s shaken, but must try not to show it. He was expecting a series of monosyllables, mere yes’s and no’s dragged out of her, out of her lethargy and stupor; a series of compelled and somnolent responses to his own firm demands. Not such crude mockery. This voice cannot be Grace’s; yet in that case, whose voice is it?

“Whether I did what you’d like to do with that little slut who’s got hold of your hand?” There is a dry chuckle.

Lydia gasps, and withdraws her hand as if burned. Grace laughs again. “You’d like to know that, so I’ll tell you. Yes. I would meet him outside, in the yard, in my nightdress, in the moonlight. I’d press up against him, I’d let him kiss me, and touch me as well, all over, Doctor, the same places you’d like to touch me, because I can always tell, I know what you’re thinking when you sit in that stuffy little sewing room with me. But that was all, Doctor. That was all I’d let him do. I had him on a string, and Mr. Kinnear as well. I had the two of them dancing to my tune!”

“Ask her why,” says Simon. He can’t understand what’s happening, but this may be his last chance to understand. He must keep his head, and pursue a straight line of enquiry. His voice, to his own ears, is a hoarse croak.

“I would breathe like this,” says Grace. She utters a high erotic moan. “I would twist and twine. After that, he’d say he’d do anything.” She titters. “But why? Oh Doctor, you are always asking why. Poking your nose in, and not only your nose. You are such a curious man! Curiosity killed the cat, you know, Doctor. You should watch out for that little mouse beside you; and her little furry mousehole too!”

To Simon’s astonishment, Reverend Verringer giggles; or perhaps he is coughing.

“This is an outrage,” says the Governor’s wife. “I won’t sit here and listen to such filth! Lydia, come with me!” She half rises; her skirts rustle.

“Please,” says DuPont. “Bear with me. Modesty must take second place to the interests of science.”

For Simon this whole occasion is reeling out of control. He must seize the initiative, or at least try to seize it; he must keep Grace from reading his mind. He’s been told of the clairvoyant powers of those under hypnosis, but he’s never believed in them before. “Ask her,” he says sternly, “if she was in the cellar of Mr. Kinnear’s house, on Saturday, July 23rd, 1843.”

“The cellar,” says DuPont. “You must picture the cellar, Grace. Go back in time, descend in space….”

“Yes,” says Grace, in her new, thin voice. “Along the hallway, lift the trapdoor; go down the cellar stairs. The barrels, the whisky, the vegetables in the boxes full of sand. There on the floor. Yes, I was in the cellar.”

“Ask her if she saw Nancy there.”

“Oh yes, I saw her.” A pause. “As I can see you, Doctor. From behind the veil. And I can hear you too.”

DuPont looks surprised. “Irregular,” he mutters, “but not unknown.”

“Was she alive?” asks Simon. “Was she still alive, when you saw her?”

The voice sniggers. “She was partly alive. Or partly dead. She needed” — a high twittering — “to be put out of her misery.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Reverend Verringer. Simon can feel his own heart pounding. “Did you help to strangle her?” he says.

“It was my kerchief that strangled her.” A fresh chirping, a giggling. “Such a pretty pattern it had on it!”

“Infamous,” murmurs Verringer. He must be thinking of all the prayers he’s expended on her, and all the ink and paper too. The letters, the petitions, the faith.

“It was a shame to lose that kerchief; I’d had it such a long time. It was my mother’s. I should have taken it off Nancy‘s neck. But James wouldn’t let me have it, nor her gold earrings neither. There was blood on it, but that would have washed out.”

“You killed her,” breathes Lydia. “I always thought so.” She sounds, if anything, admiring.

“The kerchief killed her. Hands held it,” says the voice. “She had to die. The wages of sin is death. And this time the gentleman died as well, for once. Share and share alike!”

“Oh Grace,” moans the Governor’s wife. “I thought better of you! All these years you have deceived us!”

The voice is gleeful. “Stop talking rubbish,” she says. “You’ve deceived yourselves! I am not Grace!

Grace knew nothing about it!”

No one in the room says anything. The voice is humming now, a high tiny music, like a bee. “”Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee! Let the water, and the blood…‘“

“You are not Grace,” says Simon. Despite the warmth of the room, he feels cold all over. “If you are not Grace, who are you?”

“”Cleft for me…Let me hide myself, in thee…‘“

“You must answer,” says DuPont. “I command it!”

There is another series of raps, heavy, rhythmical, like someone dancing on the table in clogs. Then a whisper: “You can’t command. You must guess!”

“I know you are a spirit,” says Mrs. Quennell. “They can speak through others, in the trance. They make use of our material organs. This one is speaking through Grace. But sometimes they lie, you know.”

“I am not lying!” says the voice. “I am beyond lying! I no longer need to lie!”

“You can’t always believe them,” says Mrs. Quennell, as if talking about a child or a servant. “It may be James McDermott, come here to sully Grace’s reputation. To accuse her. It was his last act in life, and those who die with vengeance in their hearts are often trapped on the earthly plane.”

“Please, Mrs. Quennell,” says Dr. DuPont. “It is no spirit. What we are witnessing here must be a natural phenomenon.” He’s sounding a little desperate.

“Not James,” says the voice, “you old fraud!”

“Nancy, then,” says Mrs. Quennell, who doesn’t seems at all affected by the insult. “They are often rude,” she says. “They call us names. Some are angry — those earthbound spirits who cannot tolerate being dead.”

“Not Nancy, you stupid fool! Nancy can’t say anything, she can’t say a word, not with her neck like that. Such a pretty neck, once! But Nancy isn’t angry any more, she doesn’t mind, Nancy is my friend. She understands now, she wants to share things. Come, Doctor,” says the voice, cajoling now. “You like riddles. You know the answer. I told you it was my kerchief, the one I left to Grace, when I, when I…”

She begins to sing again: “”Oh no, “twas the truth in her eye ever dawning, That made me love Mary…‘”

“Not Mary,” says Simon. “Not Mary Whitney.”

There is a sharp clap, which appears to come from the ceiling. “I told James to do it. I urged him to. I was there all along!”

“There?” says DuPont.

“Here! With Grace, where I am now. It was so cold, lying on the floor, and I was all alone; I needed to keep warm. But Grace doesn’t know, she’s never known!” The voice is no longer teasing. “They almost hanged her, but that would have been wrong. She knew nothing! I only borrowed her clothing for a time.”

“Her clothing?” says Simon.

“Her earthly shell. Her fleshly garment. She forgot to open the window, and so I couldn’t get out! But I wouldn’t want to hurt her. You mustn’t tell her!” The little voice is pleading now.

“Why not?” asks Simon.

“You know why, Dr. Jordan. Do you want to see her back in the Asylum? I liked it there at first, I could talk out loud there. I could laugh. I could tell what happened. But no one listened to me.” There is a small, thin sobbing. “I was not heard.”

“Grace,” says Simon. “Stop playing tricks!”

“I am not Grace,” says the voice, more tentatively.

“Is that really you?” Simon asks it. “Are you telling the truth? Don’t be afraid.”

“You see?” wails the voice. “You’re the same, you won’t listen to me, you don’t believe me, you want it your own way, you won’t hear….” It trails off, and there is silence.

“She’s gone,” says Mrs. Quennell. “You can always tell when they go back to their own realm. You can feel it in the air; it’s the electricity.”

For a long moment nobody says anything. Then Dr. DuPont moves. “Grace,” he says, bending over her.

“Grace Marks, can you hear me?” He lays his hand on her shoulder.

There’s another long pause, during which they can hear Grace breathing, unevenly now, as if in troubled sleep. “Yes,” she says at last. It’s her usual voice.

“I am going to bring you up now,” says DuPont. He lifts the veil gently from her head, lays it aside. Her face is stilled and smooth. “You are floating up, up. Up out of the depths. You will not recall what happened here. When I snap my fingers, you will awake.” He goes to the lamp, turns it up, then comes back and places his hand close to Grace’s head. His fingers snap.

Grace stirs, opens her eyes, looks around wonderingly, smiles at them. It’s a calm smile, no longer tense and fearful. The smile of a dutiful child. “I must have been asleep,” she says.

“Do you remember anything?” asks Dr. DuPont anxiously. “Anything of what has just passed?”

“No,” says Grace. “I was asleep. But I must have been dreaming. I dreamt about my mother. She was floating in the sea. She was at peace.”

Simon is relieved; DuPont too, from the look of him. He takes her hand, assists her from the chair. “You may feel a little dizzy,” he tells her gently. “It is frequently the case. Mrs. Quennell, would you see that she is placed in a bedchamber where she may lie down?”

Mrs. Quennell leaves the room with Grace, holding her by the arm as if she’s an invalid. But she walks lightly enough now, and seems almost happy.

Chapter 49

The men remain in the library. Simon is glad he’s sitting down; he’d welcome nothing so much at the moment as a good stiff glass of brandy, to steady his nerves, but in present company there’s not much hope of that. He feels light-headed, and wonders if his earlier fever is returning.

“Gentlemen,” DuPont begins, “I am at a loss. I have never had an experience quite like this before. The results were most unexpected. As a rule, the subject remains under the control of the operator.” He sounds quite shaken.

“Two hundred years ago, they would not have been at a loss,” says Reverend Verringer. “It would have been a clear case of possession. Mary Whitney would have been found to have been inhabiting the body of Grace Marks, and thus to be responsible for inciting the crime, and for helping to strangle Nancy Montgomery. An exorcism would have been in order.”

“But this is the nineteenth century,” says Simon. “It may be a neurological condition.” He would like to say must be, but he doesn’t wish to contradict Verringer too bluntly. Also he is still quite unsettled, and unsure of his intellectual ground.

“There have been cases of this kind,” DuPont says. “As early as 1816, there was Mary Reynolds, of New York, whose bizarre alternations were described by Dr. S. L. Mitchill of New York; are you familiar with the case, Dr. Jordan? No? Since then, Wakley of The Lancet has written extensively on the phenomenon; he calls it double consciousness, although he emphatically rejects the possibility of reaching the so-called secondary personality through Neuro-hypnotism, as there is too much chance of the subject’s being influenced by the practitioner. He has always been a great foe of Mesmerism and related means, being a conservative in that respect.”

“Puysegeur describes something of the sort, as I recall,” says Simon. “It may be a case of what is known as dédoublement — the subject, when in a somnambulistic trance, displayed a completely different personality than when awake, the two halves having no knowledge of each other.”

“Gentlemen, it’s most difficult to credit,” says Verringer. “But stranger things have happened.”

“Nature sometimes produces two heads on one body,” says DuPont. “Then why not two persons, as it were, in one brain? There may exist examples, not only of alternating states of consciousness, as claimed by Puysegeur, but of two distinct personalities, which may coexist in the same body and yet have different sets of memories altogether, and be, for all practical purposes, two separate individuals. If, that is, you’ll accept — a debatable point — that we are what we remember.”

“Perhaps,” says Simon, “we are also — preponderantly — what we forget.”

“If you are right,” says Reverend Verringer, “what becomes of the soul? We cannot be mere patchworks! It is a horrifying thought, and one that, if true, would make a mockery of all notions of moral responsibility, and indeed of morality itself, as we currently define it.”

“The other voice, whatever it was,” says Simon, “was remarkable for its violence.”

“But not without a certain logic,” says Verringer dryly, “and an ability to see in the dark.”

Simon remembers Lydia‘s warm hand, and finds himself flushing. At the moment he wishes Verringer at the bottom of the sea.

“If two persons, why not two souls?” DuPont continues. “That is, if the soul must be brought into it at all. Or three souls and persons, for that matter. Consider the Trinity.”

“Dr. Jordan,” says Reverend Verringer, ignoring this theological challenge, “what will you say about this, in your report? Surely the evening’s proceedings are scarcely orthodox, from a medical point of view.”

“I shall have to consider my position,” says Simon, “very carefully. Although you do see that if Dr. DuPont’s premise is accepted, Grace Marks is exonerated.”

“To admit such a possibility would require a leap of faith,” says Reverend Verringer. “One that I myself will pray for the strength to make, as I have always believed Grace to be innocent; or hoped, rather, although I must admit I have been somewhat shaken. But if what we have witnessed is a natural phenomenon, who are we to question it? The ground of all phenomena is God, and he must have his reasons, obscure though they may appear to mortal eyes.”

Simon walks back to the house alone. The night is clear and warm, with a moon, almost full, enclosed in a nimbus of mist; the air smells of mown grass and horse manure, with an undertone of dog. Throughout the evening he’s maintained a plausible self-control, but now his brain feels like a roasting chestnut, or an animal on fire. Silent howls resound inside him; there’s a confused and frenzied motion, a scrambling, a dashing to and for. What happened in the library? Was Grace really in a trance, or was she play-acting, and laughing up her sleeve? He knows what he saw and heard, but he may have been shown an illusion, which he cannot prove to have been one.

If he describes what he witnessed in his report, and if his report finds its way into any petition submitted on Grace Marks’ behalf, he knows it would immediately scotch all possible chances of success. It’s Ministers of Justice and their kind who read such petitions; they are hard-headed, practical men, who require solid evidence. If the report were to become public, and a matter of record, and widely circulated, he would become an instant laughing-stock, especially among the established members of the medical profession. That would be the end of his plans for an Asylum, for who would subscribe to such an institution, knowing it to be run by some crack-brained believer in mystical voices?

There’s no way he can write the report Verringer desires without perjuring himself. The safest thing would be to write nothing at all, but Verringer will hardly let him off the hook so easily. However, the fact is that he can’t state anything with certainty and still tell the truth, because the truth eludes him. Or rather it’s Grace herself who eludes him. She glides ahead of him, just out of his grasp, turning her head to see if he’s still following.

Brusquely he dismisses her, and turns to thoughts of Rachel. She at least is something he can grapple with, take hold of. She will not slip through his fingers.

The house is in darkness; Rachel must be asleep. He doesn’t wish to see her, he feels no desire for her this evening — quite the opposite; the thought of her, of her tense and bone-coloured body, her scent of camphor and withered violets, fills him with a faint disgust; but he knows all that will change as soon as he steps over the threshold. He’ll begin to tiptoe up the stairs, intending to avoid her. Then he’ll turn around, make his way to her room, shake her roughly awake. Tonight he’ll hit her, as she’s begged him to; he’s never done that before, it’s something new. He wants to punish her for his own addiction to her. He wants to make her cry; though not too loudly, or Dora will hear them, and trumpet scandal. It’s a wonder she hasn’t heard them before; they’ve become increasingly careless.

He knows he’s reaching the end of the repertoire; the end of what Rachel can offer; the end of her. But what will come before the end? And the end itself — what shape will it take? There must be some conclusion, some finale. He can’t think. Perhaps, tonight, he should abstain. He unlocks the door with his key, opens it as quietly as he can. She’s there, just inside; waiting for him in the hall, in the dark, in her ruffled peignoir, which gleams wanly in the moonlight. She winds her arms around him and draws him inward, pressing against him. Her body shakes. He has an urge to beat her away, as if she’s a spiderweb across his face, or a skein of entangling jelly. Instead he kisses her. Her face is wet; she’s been crying. She’s crying now.

“Hush,” he murmurs, stroking her hair. “Hush, Rachel.” This is what he’s wanted Grace to do — this trembling and clinging; he’s pictured it often enough, though, he now sees, in a suspiciously theatrical way. Those scenes were always skilfully lit, the gestures — his included — languid and graceful, with a kind of luxurious quivering, as in the death scenes at the ballet. Melting anguish is a good deal less attractive now that he actually has to contend with it up close and in the flesh. Wiping the doe-like eyes is one thing, wiping the doe-like nose quite another. He rummages for his pocket-handkerchief.

“He’s coming back,” Rachel says in a piercing whisper. “I’ve had a letter from him.” For an instant Simon has no idea who she means. But of course it’s the Major. Simon has consigned him, in imagination, to some bottomless debauch or other, and then forgotten him.

“Oh, what will become of us?” she sighs. The melodrama of the expression does not diminish the emotion, at least not for her.

“When?” Simon whispers.

“He wrote me a letter,” she sobs. “He says I must forgive him. He says he’s reformed — he wishes to start a new life — it’s what he always says. Now I must lose you — it’s unbearable!” Her shoulders are shaking, her arms around him tighten convulsively.

“When is he coming?” Simon asks again. The scene he used to envisage, with a pleasurable prickling of fear — himself embedded in Rachel, the Major appearing in the doorway, all outrage and drawn sword

— returns with new vividness.

“In two days,” says Rachel in a choking voice. “The day after tomorrow, in the evening. On the train.”

“Come,” says Simon. He leads her along the hall to her bedroom. Now that he knows his own escape from her is not only possible but necessary, he feels an intense desire for her. She’s lit a candle; she knows his tastes. The hours remaining to them are few; discovery looms; panic and fear are said to quicken the heartbeat and heighten desire. He makes a mental note to himself — it’s true — as for perhaps the last time he pushes her backwards onto the bed and falls heavily on top of her, rummaging through the layers of cloth.

“Don’t leave me,” she moans. “Don’t leave me alone with him! You don’t know what he’ll do to me!”

This time her agonized writhing is real. “I hate him! If only he were dead!”

“Hush,” whispers Simon. “Dora may hear.” He almost hopes she does; he feels, at this moment, in great need of an audience. Around the bed he ranges a shadowy assemblage of watchers: not only the Major, but the Reverend Verringer, and Jerome DuPont, and Lydia. Above all, Grace Marks. He wants her to be jealous.

Rachel stops moving. Her green eyes open, and look straight into Simon’s. “He doesn’t have to come back,” she says. The irises of her eyes are huge, the pupils mere pinpricks; has she been taking laudanum again? “He might have an accident. If nobody sees him. He could have an accident, in the house; you could bury him in the garden.” This isn’t impromptu: she must have been making a plan. “We couldn’t stay here, he might be found. We could cross to the States. On the railway train! We’d be together then. They’d never find us!”

Simon puts his mouth on hers, to silence her. She thinks this means he’s consented. “Oh, Simon,” she sighs. “I knew you would never leave me! I love you more than my life!” She kisses his face all over; her movements become epileptic.

It’s another of her scenarios for inducing passion, in herself above all. Resting beside her shortly afterwards, Simon tries to picture what she must have been imagining. It’s like some third-rate shocker, Ainsworth or Bulwer-Lytton at their most bloodthirsty and banal: the Major reeling drunkenly up the front steps, alone, in the dusk, then entering the front hall. Rachel is there: he strikes her, then clutches her cringing form with sottish lust. She shrieks and begs for mercy, he laughs like a fiend. But rescue is at hand: there’s a sharp blow with the spade, on his head, from behind. He falls with a wooden thud and is dragged by the heels down the passageway to the kitchen, where Simon’s leather satchel awaits. A quick incision to the jugular with a surgical knife; blood gurgles into a slop bucket; and all is over. A spate of digging in the moonlight, and into the cabbage patch he goes, with Rachel in a becoming shawl and clutching a dark lantern, and swearing she will be eternally his, after what he’s dared for her sake. But here is Dora, watching from the kitchen door. She cannot be allowed to escape; Simon chases her around the house, corners her in the scullery, and sticks her like a pig, with Rachel trembling and fainting, but then pulling herself together like a true heroine and coming to his aid. Dora requires more digging, a deeper hole, followed by an orgiastic scene on the kitchen floor.

So much for the midnight burlesque. Then what? Then he’ll be a murderer, with Rachel as the only witness. He’ll be wedded to her; chained to her; melded to her, which is what she wants. He will never be free. But here’s the part she has surely failed to imagine: once they’re in the States, she’ll be incognito. She’ll be without a name. She’ll be an unknown woman, of the kind often found floating in canals or other bodies of water: Unknown Woman Found Floating In Canal. Who would suspect him?

What method will he use? In bed, at the moment of delirium, her own hair coiled around her neck, only a slight pressure. That has a definite frisson, and is worthy of the genre. She’ll have forgotten all about it, in the morning. He turns to her again, arranges her. He strokes her neck. Sunlight wakens him; he’s still beside her, in her bed. He forgot to return to his own room last night, and no wonder: he was exhausted. From the kitchen he can hear Dora, clattering and thumping. Rachel is lying on her side, propped on one arm, watching him; she’s naked, but has twined herself in the sheet. There’s a bruise on her upper arm, which he can’t remember making.

He sits up. “I must go,” he whispers. “Dora will hear.”

“I don’t care,” she says.

“But your reputation…”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’ll only be here for two more days.” Her tone is practical; she regards it as settled, like a business arrangement. It occurs to him — and why for the first time only? — that she may be insane, or verging on it; or a moral degenerate, at the very least. Simon creeps up the stairs, carrying his shoes and jacket, like a naughty undergraduate returning from a romp. He feels chilled. What he’s viewed as merely a kind of acting, she’s mistaken for reality. She truly thinks that he, Simon, is going to murder her husband, and out of love for her. What will she do when he refuses? There’s a swirling in his head; the floor under his feet seems unreal, as if it’s about to dissolve. Before breakfast, he seeks her out. She’s in the front parlour, on the sofa; she rises, greets him with a passionate kiss. Simon detaches himself, and tells her that he’s ill; it’s a recurrent malarial fever, which he contracted in Paris. If they are to fulfil their intentions — he puts it that way, to disarm her — he will have to have the proper medicine for it, at once, or he can’t answer for the consequences. She feels his forehead, which he’s taken the precaution of dampening with his sponge, upstairs. She’s suitably alarmed, yet there’s an undertone of elation as well: she’s getting ready to nurse him, to indulge herself in yet another role. He can see what’s in her mind: she’ll make beef tea and jellies, she’ll pack him in blankets and mustard, she’ll bandage any part of him that sticks out or looks likely. He will be weakened, he will be enfeebled and helpless, he will be firmly in her possession: that is her goal. He must save himself from her while there’s still time.

He kisses the tips of her fingers. She must help him, he says tenderly. His life depends on her. Into her hand he presses a note, addressed to the Governor’s wife: it requests the name of a doctor, as he knows no one locally. Once she has the name, she must hurry to the doctor and obtain the medicine. He’s written down the prescription, in an illegible scribble; he gives her the money for it. Dora can’t go, he says, as she can’t be trusted to hurry. Time is of the essence: his treatment must begin immediately. She nods, she understands: she will do anything, she tells him fervently. White-faced and trembling, but with lips set, she puts on her bonnet and hurries away. As soon as she’s out of sight, Simon dries off his face and begins to pack. He sends Dora for a hired carriage, bribing her with a generous tip. While waiting for her return he composes a letter to Rachel, bidding her a polite farewell, pleading the health of his mother. He doesn’t address her as Rachel. He includes several banknotes, but no terms of endearment. He’s a man of the world, and won’t be trapped that way, or blackmailed either: no Breach of Promise suit for him in case her husband dies. Perhaps she’ll kill the Major herself; she’s more than capable of it.

He thinks of writing a note to Lydia as well, but thinks better of it. It’s a good thing he’s never made a formal declaration.

The carriage arrives — it’s more like a cart — and he hurls his two valises into it. “To the railway station,” he says. Once he’s safely away he will write to Verringer, promising some sort of report, stalling for time. He may after all be able to work up something; something that will not entirely discredit him. But above all he must put this disastrous interlude firmly behind him. After a quick visit to his mother, and a rearrangement of his economies, he will go to Europe. If his mother can manage on less — and she can

— he can just barely afford it.

He doesn’t begin to feel safe until he’s in the railway carriage, with the doors firmly shut. The presence of a train conductor, in a uniform, is reassuring to him. Order of a sort is reasserting itself. Once in Europe, he’ll continue his researches. He will study the many prevailing schools of thought, but he will not add to them; not yet. He has gone to the threshold of the unconscious, and has looked across; or rather he has looked down. He could have fallen. He could have fallen in. He could have drowned. Better, perhaps, to abandon theories, and concentrate on ways and means. When he returns to America he will bestir himself. He’ll give lectures, he’ll attract subscribers. He’ll build a model Asylum, with well-tended grounds and the very best sanitation and drainage. What Americans prefer above all is the appearance of comfort, in any sort of institution at all. An Asylum with large comfortable rooms, facilities for hydrotherapy, and a good many mechanical devices, could do very well. There must be little wheels that go around with a whirring sound, there must be rubber suction cups. Wires to attach to the cranium. Apparatus for measuring. He will include the word “electrical” in his prospectus. The main thing must be to keep the patients clean and docile — drugs will be a help — and their relatives admiring and satisfied. As in schools for children, those who must be impressed are not the actual inmates, but those who pay the bills.

All of this will be a compromise. But he has now — very abruptly it seems — reached the right age for it. The train moves out of the station. There’s a cloud of black smoke, and then a long plaintive wail, which follows him like a baffled phantom along the track.

Not until he’s halfway to Cornwall does he allow himself to consider Grace. Will she think he’s deserted her? Lost faith in her, perhaps? If she is indeed ignorant of last evening’s events, she will be justified in so thinking. She’ll be bewildered by him, as he has been by her.

She can’t know yet that he’s left the city. He pictures her sitting in her accustomed chair, sewing at her quilt; singing, perhaps; waiting for his footfall at the door.

Outside it’s begun to drizzle. After a time the motion of the train lulls him to sleep; he slumps against the wall. Now Grace is coming towards him across a wide lawn in sunshine, all in white, carrying an armful of red flowers: they are so clear he can see the dewdrops on them. Her hair is loose, her feet bare; she’s smiling. Then he sees that what she walks on is not grass but water; and as he reaches to embrace her, she melts away like mist.

He wakes; he’s still on the train, with the grey smoke blowing past the window. He presses his mouth to the glass.

Fourteen - The Letter X

Chapter 50

To Mrs. C. D. Humphrey; from Dr. Simon Jordan, Kingston, Canada West. August 15th, 1859.

Dear Mrs. Humphrey:

I write in haste, having been summoned home most urgently by a family matter which it is imperative I respond to at once. My dear Mother has suffered an unforeseen collapse in her always imperfect health, and is presently at death’s door. I only pray that I may be in time to attend her in her last moments.

I am sorry I could not stay to bid you farewell in person, and to thank you for your kind attentions to me whilst I was a lodger at your house; but I am certain that with your woman’s heart and sensibility, you will quickly divine the necessity of my instant departure. I do not know how long I may be away, or if indeed I shall ever be able to return to Kingston. Should my Mother pass away, I will be needed to tend to the family affairs; and should she be spared to us for a time, my place is by her side. One who has sacrificed so much for her son, must surely deserve some not inconsiderable sacrifice from him in return.

My return to your city in future is most unlikely; but I will always preserve the memories of my days in Kingston — memories of which you form an esteemed part. You know how I admire your courage in the face of adversity, and how I respect you; and I hope you will find it in your heart to feel the same, towards,

Your most sincere,

Simon Jordan.

P.S. In the attached envelope I have left you a sum which I assume will cover any little amounts which remain outstanding between us.

P.P.S. I trust that your husband will soon be happily restored to you.

— S.

From Mrs. William P. Jordan, Laburnum House, Loomisville, Massachusetts, The United States of America; to Mrs. C. D. Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West. September 29th, 1859.

Dear Mrs. Humphrey:

I take the liberty of returning to you the seven letters addressed by you to my dear Son, which have accumulated here in his absence; they were opened in mistake by the Servant, which will account for the presence of my own seal upon them, in place of yours. My Son is at present making a tour of Private Mental Asylums and Clinics in Europe, an investigation very necessary to the work he is engaged upon — work of the utmost significance, which will alleviate human suffering, and which must not be interrupted for any lesser considerations, however pressing these may appear to others who do not understand the importance of his mission. As he is constantly travelling, I was unable to forward your letters to him; and I return them now, supposing that you would wish to know the reason for the lack of reply; although I beg to observe, that no reply is in itself a reply. My Son had mentioned that you might make some attempt to reestablish your acquaintance with him; and although he very properly did not elaborate, I am not such an invalid, nor so cloistered from the world, that I was unable to read between the lines. If you will accept some frank but well-intentioned advice from an old woman, permit me to observe, that in permanent unions between the sexes, discrepancies in age and fortune must always be detrimental; but how much more so, are discrepancies in moral outlook. Rash and ill-advised conduct is understandable in a woman placed as you have been — I fully realize the unpleasantness of not knowing where one’s husband may be located; but you must be aware, that in the event of the demise of such a husband, no man of principle would ever make his wife, a woman who had anticipated that position prematurely. Men, by nature and the decree of Providence, have a certain latitude allowed them; but fidelity to the marriage vow is surely the chief requirement in a woman. In the early days of my widowhood, I found a daily reading of the Bible quite soothing to the mind; and some light needlework also helps to occupy one’s thoughts. In addition to these remedies, perhaps you have a respectable female friend, who may comfort you in your distress without wishing to know the cause of it. What is believed in society, is not always the equivalent of what is true; but as regards a woman’s reputation, it amounts to the same thing. It is as well to take all steps to preserve that reputation, by not spreading one’s misery abroad where it may become the subject of malicious gossip; and to that end, it is wise to avoid the expression of one’s feelings in letters, which must run the gauntlet of the public posts, and may fall into the hands of persons who may be tempted to read them unbeknownst to the sender. Please accept, Mrs. Humphrey, the sentiments I have expressed, in the spirit of a genuine desire for your future well-being, in which they are offered, by,

Yours most sincerely,

(Mrs.) Constance Jordan.

From Grace Marks, The Provincial Penitentiary, Kingston, Canada West; to Dr. Simon Jordan. December 19th, 1859.

Dear Dr. Jordan:

I am writing to you with the help of Clarrie, who has always stood my friend, and got this paper for me, and will post it when the time comes in return for extra help with the laces and stains. The trouble is that I don’t know where to send it, as I am ignorant of where you have gone. But if I find it out, then I will send this. I hope you can read my writing, as I am not much accustomed to it; and can only spend a short time at it each day.

When I heard you went off so quick, and without sending any word to me, I was very distressed, as I thought you must have been taken ill. I could not understand it, that you would go without a goodbye, after all the talking we had done together; and I fainted dead away in the upstairs hall, and the chambermaid went into a panic, and threw a vase of flowers over me, water, vase and all; which quickly brought me round, although the vase broke. She thought I was going off into fits, and would run mad again; but this was not the case, and I took very good control of myself, and it was just the shock of hearing about it in that sudden manner, and the palpitations of the heart which I have often been troubled from. I suffered a gash on my forehead from the vase. It is astonishing what a great quantity of blood may flow from a wound to the head, even if it is a shallow one.

I was unhappy that you left, as I was enjoying our talks; but also they said you were to write a letter to the Government on my behalf, to set me free, and I was afraid that now you would never do so. There is nothing so discouraging as hopes raised and then dashed again, it is almost worse than not having the hopes raised in the first place.

I do very much hope you will be able to write the letter in my favour, which I would be very thankful for, and hope you are keeping well,

From,

Grace Marks.

From Dr. Simon P. Jordan, care of Dr. Binswanger, Bellevue, Kreutzlinger, Switzerland; to Dr. Edward Murchie, Dorchester, Massachusetts, The United States of America. January 12th, 1860.

My dear Ed:

Forgive me for having taken so long to write to you, and to acquaint you with my change of address. The fact is that things have been somewhat muddled, and it has taken me some time to straighten myself out. As Burns has remarked, “The best laid schemes o‘ mice and men gang aft a-gley,” and I was forced to make a hasty escape from Kingston, as I found myself in complicated circumstances which could rapidly have become quite damaging, both to myself and to my future prospects. Someday over a glass of sherry I may tell you the whole story; although it seems to me at present less a story, than a troubled dream.

Among its elements is the fact that my study of Grace Marks took such an unsettling turn at the last, that I can scarcely determine whether I myself was awake or asleep. When I consider with what high hopes I commenced upon this undertaking — determined, you may be sure, on great revelations which would astonish the admiring world, I have cause almost for despair. Yet, were they indeed high hopes, and not mere self-seeking ambition? From this vantage point I am not altogether sure; but if only the latter, perhaps I have been well repaid, as in the whole affair, I may have been engaged on a wild goose chase, or a fruitless pursuit of shadows, and have come near to addling my own wits, in my assiduous attempts to unpick those of another. Like my namesake the apostle, I have cast my nets into deep waters; though unlike him, I may have drawn up a mermaid, neither fish nor flesh but both at once, and whose song is sweet but dangerous. I do not know whether to view myself as an unwitting dupe, or, what is worse, a self-deluded fool; but even these doubts may be an illusion, and I may all along have been dealing with a woman so transparently innocent that in my over-subtlety I did not have the wit to recognize it. I must admit

— but only to you — that I have come very close to nervous exhaustion over this matter. Not to know — to snatch at hints and portents, at intimations, at tantalizing whispers — it is as bad as being haunted. Sometimes at night her face floats before me in the darkness, like some lovely and enigmatic mirage —

But excuse my brain-sick ramblings. I have intimations of some vast discovery still, if I could only see my way clear; though as yet I wander in darkness, led only by marsh-lights. To more positive matters: the Clinic here is run along very clean and efficient lines, and is exploring various lines of treatment, including water therapy; and might act as a model for my own project, should it ever come to fruition. Dr. Binswanger has been most hospitable, and has given me access to some of the more interesting cases here. Much to my relief, there are no celebrated murderesses among them, but only what the worthy Dr. Workman of Toronto terms

“the innocent insane,” as well as the usual sufferers from nervous complaints, and the inebriates and syphilitics; although of course one does not find the same afflictions among the well-to-do as among the poor.

I was overjoyed to hear that you may soon favour the world with a miniature copy of yourself, through the kind offices of your esteemed wife — to whom, please send my respectful regards. How calming it must be, to have a settled family life, with a trustworthy and dependable woman capable of providing it! Tranquillity is indeed much undervalued by men, except those who lack it. I envy you!

As for myself, I fear I am doomed to wander the face of the earth alone, like one of Byron’s gloomier and more lugubrious outcasts; though I would be much heartened, my dear fellow, to be able to grasp once more your true friend’s hand. This chance may soon come, as I understand that the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current differences between North and South are not hopeful, and the Southern States talk seriously of secession. In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, my duty to my country will be clear. As Tennyson says in his overly botanical fashion, it is time to pluck “the blood-red blossom of war.” Given my present tumultuous and morbid mental state, it will be a relief to have a duty of some kind set before me, no matter how deplorable the occasion for it.

Your brain-sore and weary, but affectionate friend,

Simon.

From Grace Marks, the Provincial Penitentiary, Kingston; to Signor Geraldo Ponti, Master of Neuro-Hypnotism, Ventriloquist, and Mind-Reader Extraordinaire; care of The Prince of Wales Theatre, Queen Street, Toronto, Canada West.

September 25th, 1861.

Dear Jeremiah:

Your Show was on a poster, which Dora got hold of one of them, and pinned it to the laundry wall, to liven it up; and I knew at once it was you, even though you have another name and have grown your beard very wild. One of the gentlemen paying attentions to Miss Marianne saw the Show when it was at Kingston, and said the Future Told in Letters of Fire was a first-class item, and worth the price of admission, as two ladies fainted; and he said your beard was bright red. So I expect you have dyed it, unless it is a wig.

I did not attempt to contact you while in Kingston, as it might have resulted in difficulties if discovered. But I saw where the Show was next to be performed, and that is why I am sending this to the Theatre in Toronto, in hopes it will find you. It must be a new Theatre, as they had none of that name when I was last there; but that is twenty years ago now, although it seems a hundred. How I would like to see you again, and to talk over old times, in the kitchen at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, when we would all have such fun, before Mary Whitney died and misfortune overtook me! But in order to pass muster here, you would have to disguise yourself more, as a red beard would not be enough at close quarters. And if they found you out, they would think you had tricked them, as what is done on a stage is not as acceptable, as the very same thing done in a library; and they would want to know why you are no longer Dr. Jerome DuPont. But I suppose the other pays better.

Since the Hypnotism, the people here seem to treat me better, and with more esteem, although perhaps it is only that they are more afraid of me; sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. They will not speak about what was said on that occasion, as they are of the opinion that it might unsettle my reason; which I doubt would be the case. But although I have the run of the house again, and tidy the rooms and serve the tea as formerly, it has not had any effect on my being set free.

I have often pondered about why Dr. Jordan left so suddenly, right after; but as you yourself left quite soon as well, I expect you do not know the answer. Miss Lydia was very taken aback at Dr. Jordan’s departure, and would not come down to dinner for a week, but had it sent up on a tray; and she lay in bed as if ill, which made it very difficult to tidy her room, with her face all pale and dark circles under her eyes, and acted the tragedy queen. But young ladies are permitted to carry on in that way.

After that she took to going out to more parties with more young men than ever, and especially a certain Captain, which nothing came of him; and she got the name of a romp amongst the military men; and then there were rows with her mother, and when another month had gone by it was announced that she was engaged to be married to the Reverend Verringer; which was a surprise, as she always used to make fun of him behind his back, and say he looked like a frog. The wedding date was set a great deal sooner than is usual, and I was kept very busy sewing from morning to night. Miss Lydia‘s travelling dress was of blue silk, with self-covered buttons and two layers to the skirt; and I thought I would go blind hemming it. They had their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, which they say is an experience not to be missed, I have only seen pictures of it; and when they came back she was a different person, very subdued and pale, with no high spirits any more. It is not a good plan to marry a man you do not love, but many do and get used to it in time. And others marry from love and repent at leisure, as they say. I thought for a while that she had a liking for Dr. Jordan; but she would not have been happy with him, nor he with her, as she would not have understood his interest in lunatics, and his curiosities, and the strange questions about vegetables that he used to ask. So it was just as well. As for the help Dr. Jordan promised me, I have heard nothing of it, and nothing of him, except that he has gone off to the Southern war, which news I had through Reverend Verringer; but whether he is alive or dead I do not know. In addition to which, there was a great many rumours going about, concerning him and his landlady, who was a widow of sorts; and after he left, she could be seen wandering in a distracted manner by the lakeshore in a black dress and cloak and a black veil blowing in the wind, and some said she was intending to throw herself in. It was much talked about, especially in the kitchen and laundry; and we got many an earful from Dora, who was once the servant there. What she had to tell, you would scarcely credit, of two such outwardly respectable people, with screams and groans and horrifying goings-on at night, as bad as a haunted house, and the bed linen a shambles every morning, and in such a state as made her blush to look at it. And Dora said it was a wonder he hadn’t killed this lady and buried the body in the yard outside, as she’d seen the spade for it standing ready, and a grave already dug, which made her blood run cold; as he was the sort of man who would ruin one woman after another and then tire of them, and murder them just to get rid of them, and every time he looked at the widow lady it was with fearsome blazing eyes like a tiger’s, as if ready to spring on her and sink his teeth into her. And it was the same with Dora herself, and who knew but that she might have been the next to fall victim to his ravenous frenzies? She had a willing audience in the kitchen, as there are many who like to listen to a shocking tale, and I must say she made a good story out of it. But I thought myself she got carried away.

At that same time the Governor’s wife called me into the parlour, and asked me very earnestly if Dr. Jordan had ever made any improper advances to me; and I said that he had not, and that in any case the door to the sewing room had always been kept open. Then she said she had been deceived as to his character, and she had been harbouring a viper in the bosom of her family; and next she said that the poor lady in black had been interfered with by him, having been alone in her house with the servant gone, although I was not to speak of it, as to do so would cause more harm than good; and although this lady was a married lady, and her husband had been abominable to her, and thus it was not quite so bad as if she’d been a young girl, still Dr. Jordan had behaved most improperly, and it was a mercy things with Miss Lydia had never gone so far as an engagement.

Not that I think there was any idea of such, in Dr. Jordan’s mind at all; nor do I believe everything that was being said against him, as I know what it is to have lies told about a person, and you not able to defend yourself. And widows are always up to tricks, until they get too old for it.

But that is all idle gossip. This is what I would especially like to ask you: Did you really see into the future, when you looked into my palm and said five for luck, which I took to mean all would come out well in the end? Or were you only trying to comfort me? I would very much like to know, as sometimes the time stretches out so long, I can scarcely endure it. I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. The Reverend Verringer often prays with me, or I should say he prays and I listen; but it is not much good, as it only makes me tired. He says he will get up another Petition, but I fear it will not be of any more use than the others have been, and he might as well not waste the paper. The other thing I would like to know is, why did you want to help me? Was it as a challenge, and to outwit the others, as with the smuggling you used to do; or was it out of affection and fellow-feeling? You said once we were of the same sort, and I have often pondered over that. I hope this will reach you, but if it does, I don’t know how you will get word back to me, as any letter I might have they would be sure to open. However I think you did send me a message, as some months ago I received a bone button, addressed to me though with no signature, and the Matron said, Grace, why would anyone send you a single button? And I said I did not know. But as it was the same pattern as the button you gave to me in the kitchen at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, I felt it must be you, to let me know I was not altogether forgotten. Perhaps there was another message in it also, as a button is for keeping things closed up, or else for opening them; and you may have been telling me to keep silent, about certain things we both know of. Dr. Jordan believed that even common and unregarded objects can have a meaning, or else recall to memory a thing forgotten; and you may only have been reminding me of yourself, which indeed was not needed, as I have never forgotten you and your kindnesses to me, nor ever will. I hope you are in good health, dear Jeremiah, and that your Magic Show is a great success, From, your old friend,

Grace Marks.

From Mrs. William P. Jordan, Laburnum House, Loomisville, Massachusetts, The United States of America; to Mrs. C. D. Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West. May 15th, 1862.

Dear Mrs. Humphrey:

Your communication to my dear Son came to hand this morning. I open all his mail nowadays, for reasons I will shortly explain. But first permit me to remark, that I could have wished you to express yourself in a less extravagant manner. To threaten to do yourself an injury, by jumping off a bridge or other elevated location, might carry weight with an impressionable and tender-hearted young man, but it does not, with his more experienced Mother. In any case, your hope of an interview with him must be disappointed. Upon the outbreak of our current lamentable war, my Son joined the Union army to fight for his country in the capacity of Military Surgeon, and was sent at once to a field hospital near the front. The postal services have been sadly disrupted, and the troops are moved about so quickly due to the railroads, and I had no word of him for some months, which was not like him as he has always been a most regular and faithful correspondent; and I feared the worst.

In the meantime I did what I could in my own limited sphere. This unfortunate War had already killed and wounded so many, and we saw the results daily, as yet more men and boys were brought in to our improvised Hospitals, mutilated and blinded, or out of their minds with infectious fevers; and every one of them a dearly loved Son. The ladies of our town were kept thoroughly occupied, in visiting them and arranging for them any little home-like comforts it was within our power to supply; and I myself aided them as best I could, despite my own indifferent state of health; as I could only hope that if my dear Son were lying ill and suffering elsewhere, some other Mother was doing the same for him.

At last, a convalescent soldier from this town reported hearing a rumour that my dear Son had been struck in the head by a piece of flying debris, and when last heard of had been lingering between this world and the next. Of course I was almost dead with worry, and moved Heaven and earth to discover his whereabouts; until much to my joy, he was returned to us, still alive but sadly weakened both in body and spirit. As a result of his wound he had lost a part of his memory; for although he recalled his loving Parent, and the events of his childhood, his more recent experiences had been completely erased from his mind, among them his interest in Lunatic Asylums, and the period of time he spent in the city of Kingston; including whatever relations of any kind he may or may not have had with yourself.

I tell you this that you may see things in a broader — and I may add, a less selfish perspective. One’s own personal doings look small indeed, when faced with the momentous travails of History, which we can only trust are for the greater good.

Meanwhile, I must congratulate you on the fact that your husband has been at last located, although I must also commiserate with you on the unfortunate circumstances. To discover that one’s spouse has passed away due to prolonged intoxication and the resulting delirium, cannot have been at all pleasant. I am happy to hear that he had not yet exhausted his entire means; and would suggest to you, as a practical matter, a dependable Annuity, or — what has served me quite well during my own trials — a modest investment in railway shares, if a solid company, or else in Sewing Machines, which are sure to make great progress in the future. However, the course of action you propose to my Son is neither desirable nor feasible, even should he be in any condition to entertain it. My Son was under no engagement to you, nor is he under any obligation. What you yourself may have understood, does not constitute an understanding. It is also my duty to inform you, that before his departure my Son became as good as engaged to be married, to Miss Faith Cartwright, a young lady of fine family and impeccable moral character, the only obstacle remaining, being his own honour, which prevented him from requesting that Miss Cartwright bind herself to a man whose life was so soon to be imperilled; and despite his damaged and at times delirious state, she is resolved to respect the wishes of the two families, as well as those of her own heart, and is at present helping me to nurse him with loyal devotion. He does not yet remember her in her proper person, but persists in believing that she is called Grace — an understandable confusion, as Faith is very close to it in concept; but we persevere in our efforts, and as we daily show him various little homely objects once dear to him, and lead him on walks through local spots of natural beauty, we have increasing hopes that his full memory will shortly return, or at least as much of it as is necessary, and that he will soon be well enough to fulfil his marital undertakings. It is the foremost concern of Miss Cartwright, as it should be for all those who love my Son disinterestedly, to pray for his restoration to health and the full use of his mental faculties.

In closing, let me add that I trust your future life will be more productive of happiness, than has been the recent past; and that the evening of your life will bring with it a serenity, which the vain and tempestuous passions of youth so often unfortunately, if not disastrously, preclude. Yours most sincerely,

(Mrs.) Constance P. Jordan.

P.S. Any further communication from you, will be destroyed unread. From the Reverend Enoch Verringer, Chairman, The Committee to Pardon Grace Marks, Sydenham Street Methodist Church, Kingston, Ontario, The Dominion of Canada; to Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street, Toronto, Ontario, The Dominion of Canada. Kingston, October 15th, 1867.

Dear Dr. Bannerling:

I presume to write to you, Sir, in connection with the Committee of which I am the Chairman, upon a worthy mission which cannot be unfamiliar to you. As the former medical attendant upon Grace Marks, when she was in the Toronto Lunatic Asylum almost fifteen years ago, I know you have been approached by the representatives of several previous committees charged with submitting petitions to the Government, on behalf of this unfortunate and unhappy, and to some minds, wrongly convicted woman, in hopes that you would append your name to the petitions in question — an addition which, as I am sure you are aware, would carry considerable weight with the Government authorities, as they have a tendency to be respectful of informed medical opinion such as your own.

Our Committee consists of a number of ladies, my own dear wife among them, and of several gentlemen of standing, and clergymen of three denominations, including the Prison Chaplain, whose names you will find appended. Such petitions have in the past been unsuccessful, but the Committee expects, as well as hopes, that with the recent political changes, most notably the advent of a fully representational Parliament under the leadership of John A. Macdonald, this one will receive a favourable reception denied to its predecessors.

In addition, we have the advantage of modern science, and the advances made in the study of the cerebral diseases and mental disorders — advances which must surely tell in favour of Grace Marks. Several years ago our Committee engaged a specialist in nervous ailments, Dr. Simon Jordan, who came very highly recommended. He passed a number of months in this city in making a detailed examination of Grace Marks, with particular attention to her gaps in recollection concerning the murders. In an attempt to recover her memory, he subjected her to Neuro-hypnosis, at the hands of a skilled practitioner of that science — a science which, after a long eclipse, appears to be coming back into favour, both as a diagnostic and as a curative method, although it has thus far gained more favour in France than in this hemisphere. As a result of this session and the astonishing revelations it produced, Dr. Jordan gave it as his opinion that Grace Marks’ loss of memory was genuine, not feigned — that on the fatal day she was suffering from the effects of an hysterical seizure brought on by fright, which resulted in a form of auto-hypnotic somnambulism, not much studied twenty-five years ago but well documented since; and that this fact explains her subsequent amnesia. In the course of the neuro-hypnotic trance, which several of our own Committee members witnessed, Grace Marks displayed not only a fully recovered memory of these past events, but also pronounced evidence of a somnambulistic double consciousness, with a distinct secondary personality, capable of acting without the knowledge of the first. It was Dr. Jordan’s conclusion, in view of the evidence, that the woman known to us as “Grace Marks” was neither conscious at the time of the murder of Nancy Montgomery, nor responsible for her actions therein — the memories of these actions being retained only by her secondary and hidden self. Dr. Jordan was of the added opinion that this other self gave strong manifestations of its continued existence during her period of mental derangement in 1852, if the eyewitness reports of Mrs. Moodie and others are any indication.

I had hoped to have a written report to set before you, and our Committee has delayed the submission of its Petition from year to year, in expectation of it. Dr. Jordan had indeed fully intended to prepare such a report; but he was called away suddenly by a family illness, followed by urgent business on the Continent; after which the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he served in the capacity of a military surgeon, was a serious impediment to his efforts. I understand he was wounded in the course of the hostilities, and although providentially now making a recovery, has not yet regained sufficient strength to be able to complete his task. Otherwise I have no doubt that he would have added his earnest and heartfelt entreaties, to ours. I myself was present at the neuro-hypnotic session referred to, as was the lady who has since consented to become my dear wife; and both of us were most profoundly affected by what we saw and heard. It moves me to tears to think how this poor woman has been wronged through lack of scientific understanding. The human soul is a profound and awe-inspiring mystery, the depths of which are only now beginning to be sounded. Well may St. Paul have said, “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” One can only guess at the purposes of our Creator, in fashioning of Humanity such a complex and Gordian knot.

But whatever you may think of Dr. Jordan’s professional opinion — and I am well aware that his conclusions may be difficult to credit, for one not familiar with the practice of Neuro-hypnosis, and who was not present at the events to which I allude — surely Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a great many years, more than sufficient to atone for her misdeeds. She has suffered untold mental agony, and agony of body as well; and she has bitterly repented whatever part she may have taken in this great crime, whether conscious of having taken it or not. She is by no means any longer a young woman, and is in but indifferent health. If she were at liberty, something might surely be done for her temporal, as well as her spiritual weal, and she might have an opportunity of meditating on the past, and of preparing for a future life. Will you — can you, in the name of charity — still persist in refusing to join your name to the Petition for her release, and thereby perchance close the gates of Paradise to a repentant sinner?

Surely not!

I invite you — I beg you once again — to aid us in this most praiseworthy endeavour. Yours very truly,

Enoch Verringer, M.A., D. Div.

From Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street, Toronto; to the Reverend Enoch Verringer, Sydenham Street Methodist Church, Kingston, Ontario.

November 1st, 1867.

Dear Sir:

I acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 10th of October, and its account of your puerile antics in regards to Grace Marks. I am disappointed in Dr. Jordan; I had some previous correspondence with him, in which I warned him explicitly against this cunning woman. They say there is no fool like an old fool, but I say there is no fool like a young one; and I am astonished that anyone with a medical degree would allow himself to be imposed upon by such a blatant piece of charlatanism and preposterous tomfoolery as a “Neuro-hypnotic trance,” which is second in imbecility only to Spiritism, Universal Suffrage, and similar drivel. This rubbishy “Neuro-hypnotism,” however beribboned with new terminologies, is only Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism, re-writ; and that sickly nonsense was discredited long ago, as being merely a solemn-sounding blind, behind which men of questionable antecedents and salacious natures might obtain power over young women of the same, asking them impertinent and offensive questions and ordering them to perform immodest acts, without the latter appearing to consent to it.

So I fear that your Dr. Jordan is either credulous to an infantile degree, or himself a great scoundrel; and that, should he have composed his self-styled “report,” it would not have been worth the paper it was written on. I suspect that the wound of which you speak, was incurred, not during the war, but before it; and that it consisted of a sharp blow to the head, which is the only thing that would account for such idiocy. If Dr. Jordan keeps on with this disorderly course of thought, he will soon belong in the private asylum for lunatics, which, if I recall aright, he was once so set upon establishing.

I have read the so-called “testimony” of Mrs. Moodie, as well as some of her other scribblings, which I consigned to the fire where they belong — and where they for once cast a little light, which they certainly would not have done otherwise. Like the rest of her ilk, Mrs. Moodie is prone to overwrought effusions, and to the concoction of convenient fairy tales; and for the purposes of truth, one might as well rely on the “eye-witness reports” of a goose. As for the gates of Paradise to which you refer, I have no control whatever over them, and if Grace Marks is worthy to enter there she will doubtless be admitted without any interference on my part. But certainly the gates of the Penitentiary will never be opened to her through any act of mine. I have studied her carefully, and know her character and disposition better than you can possibly do. She is a creature devoid of moral faculties, and with the propensity to murder strongly developed. She is not safe to be entrusted with the ordinary privileges of society, and if her liberty were restored to her the chances are that sooner or later other lives would be sacrificed.

In closing, Sir, allow me to remark that it ill becomes you, as a man of the cloth, to pepper your screeds with allusions to “modern science.” A little learning is a dangerous thing, as I believe Pope once observed. Busy yourself with the care of consciences, and with the delivery of edifying sermons for the improvement of public life and private morals, which God knows the country is in need of, and leave the brains of the degenerate to the authorities who specialize in them. Above all, in future, be pleased to desist from pestering with these important and ridiculous appeals, Your most humble and obedient servant.

(Dr.) Samuel Bannerling, M.D.

Fifteen - The Tree of Paradise

Chapter 51

I have often thought of writing to you and informing you of my good fortune, and I’ve written many letters to you in my head; and when I’ve arrived at the right way of saying things I will set pen to paper, and thus you will have news of me, if you are still in the land of the living. And if you are not, you will have learnt about all of this anyway.

Perhaps you heard of my Pardon, but perhaps you did not. I didn’t see it in any of the newspapers, which isn’t strange, as by the time I was finally set free it was an old worn-out story, and nobody would have wanted to read about it. But no doubt that was just as well. When I learnt of it, I knew for certain that you must have sent the letter to the Government after all, because it got the results in the end, along with all the petitions; although I must say they took a good long time about it, and said nothing about your letter, but only that it was a general amnesty.

The first I heard of the Pardon was from the Warden’s oldest daughter, whose name was Janet. This would not be a Warden you ever saw, Sir, as there were many changes since you went away, and a new Warden was one of them, and there had been two or three new Governors as well, and so many new guards and keepers and matrons I could scarcely keep track of them. I was sitting in the sewing room, where you and I used to have our afternoon talks, mending stockings — for I continued to serve in a household capacity under the new Governors, as I’d done before — when Janet came in. She had a kind manner and always gave me a smile, unlike some, and although never a beauty, she’d managed to become engaged to a respectable young farmer, for which she had my heartfelt good wishes. There are some men, especially of the simpler kind, that prefer their wives to be plain rather than handsome, as that sort buckles down to the work and complains less, and there is not a great chance of their running off with another man, as what other man would go to the bother of stealing them?

On this day Janet hurried into the room, and she seemed very excited. Grace, she said, I have the most astonishing news.

I did not even bother to stop sewing, as when people told me they had astonishing news it always concerned somebody else. I was ready to hear it of course, but not ready to miss a stitch over it, if you see what I mean, Sir. Oh? I said.

Your Pardon has come through, she said. From Sir John Macdonald, and the Minister of Justice, in Ottawa. Isn’t that wonderful? She clasped her hands, and at that moment she looked like a child, although a large and ugly one, gazing at a beautiful gift. She was one of those who never did believe me to be guilty, being soft-hearted and of a sentimental nature.

At this news I put down my sewing. I felt very cold all at once, as if I was about to faint, which I hadn’t done for a long time, ever since you left, Sir. Can it be true? I said. If it was another person I would have thought she might be playing a cruel joke on me, but Janet did not relish jokes of any kind. Yes, she said, it is really true. You are pardoned! I am so happy for you!

I could see that she felt some tears were in order, and I shed several. That night, and even though her father the Warden didn’t have the paper actually in hand, but only a letter about it, nothing would do but that I had to be moved out of my prison cell and into the spare bedroom at the Warden’s house. This was the doing of Janet, the good soul, but she had the assistance of her mother, as my Pardon was indeed an unusual event in the dull routine of the prison, and people like to have some contact with events of that sort, so they can talk about them to their friends afterwards; so I was made a fuss of.

After I’d blown out my candle I lay in the best bed, wearing one of Janet’s cotton nightdresses instead of the coarse yellowy prison one, and looking up at the dark ceiling. I tossed and turned, and somehow I couldn’t get comfortable, I guess comfort is what you’re accustomed to, and by that time I was more accustomed to my narrow prison bed than to a spare bedroom with clean sheets. The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else’s face, and I recalled my poor mother in her shroud, as they were sliding her into the sea, and how I thought that she had already changed inside the sheet, and was a different woman, and now the same thing was happening to me. Of course I wasn’t dying, but it was in a way similar.

The next day at breakfast, the Warden’s whole family sat beaming at me with moist eyes, as if I was some rare and cherished thing, like a baby snatched out of a river; and the Warden said we should give thanks for the one lost lamb that had been rescued, and they all said a fervent Amen. That is it, I thought. I have been rescued, and now I must act like someone who has been rescued. And so I tried. It was very strange to realize that I would not be a celebrated murderess any more, but seen perhaps as an innocent woman wrongly accused and imprisoned unjustly, or at least for too long a time, and an object of pity rather than of horror and fear. It took me some days to get used to the idea; indeed, I am not quite used to it yet. It calls for a different arrangement of the face; but I suppose it will become easier in time.

Of course to those who do not know my story I will not be anybody in particular. After breakfast on that day I was strangely dejected. Janet noticed it and asked me why, and I said, I’ve been in this prison now for almost twenty-nine years, I have no friends or family outside it, and where am I to go and what am I to do? I have no money, nor any means of earning any, and no proper clothing, and I am unlikely to obtain a situation anywhere in the vicinity, as my story is too well known — because despite the Pardon, which is all very well, a mistress in any right-thinking family would not want me in the house, as she would be afraid for the safety of her loved ones, it is only what I would do myself in their position.

I did not say to her, And I am also too old to go on the town, as I did not wish to shock her, she having been well brought up, and a Methodist. Though I must tell you, Sir, the thought did cross my mind. But what chance would I have, at my age and with so much competition, it would be a penny a time with the worst drunken sailors up an alley somewhere, and I’d be dead of disease within a year; and it made my heart fail even to consider it.

So now, instead of seeming my passport to liberty, the Pardon appeared to me as a death sentence. I was to be turned out into the streets, alone and friendless, to starve and freeze to death in a cold corner, with nothing but the clothes on my back, the ones I’d come into the prison with; and perhaps not even those, as I had no idea what might have become of them; for all I knew they had been sold or given away long ago.

Oh no, dear Grace, said Janet. All has been thought of. I did not want to tell you everything at once, as we feared the shock of such happiness coming after such misery might be too much for you, it sometimes has that effect. But a good home has been provided for you, it is in the United States, and once you have gone there you may leave the sad past behind you, as no one there need ever know about it. It will be a new life.

She did not use exactly these words, but that was the gist of it.

But what am I to wear? said I, still in despair. Perhaps I was indeed unsettled in my wits, as a person altogether in her right mind would have asked first about the good home that was being provided, and where it was, and what I was to do there. I thought later about the way she had put it, A good home provided, it is what you say of a dog or a horse that is too old to work any more, and that you don’t wish to keep yourself or have put down.

I have thought of that too, said Janet. She was really a most helpful creature. I have looked in the storage rooms, and by some miracle the box you brought with you was still in there with your name on a label, I suppose it is because of all the petitions that were got up in your favour after the trial. They may have kept your things at first because they thought you were soon to be released, and then after that they must have forgotten all about it. I will have it brought up to your room and then we will open it, shall we?

I felt a little comforted, although I had some misgivings. And I was right to have them, for when we opened the box we found that the moths had been in and had eaten up the woollens, my mother’s thick winter shawl among them, and some of the other things were much discoloured and musty-smelling from being shut up for so long in a dampish place; the threads in some were almost rotted through, and you could put your hand right through them. Any piece of cloth needs a good airing every once in a while, and these had been given none.

We took everything out and spread the things around the room, to see what could be saved. There were Nancy‘s dresses, so pretty when fresh, now for the most part ruined, and the things I’d had from Mary Whitney; I’d prized them so much at the time and now they looked shoddy and outmoded. There was the dress I’d made at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, with the bone buttons from Jeremiah, but nothing could be saved of it except the buttons. I found the piece of Mary’s hair, tied with a thread and wrapped up in a handkerchief as I’d left it, but the moths had been into that too, they will eat hair if nothing better is left and it is not stored in cedar.

The emotions I experienced were strong and painful. The room seemed to darken and I could almost see Nancy and Mary beginning to take shape again inside their clothes, only it was not a pleasant notion, as by now they themselves would be in much the same dilapidated state. I felt quite faint, and had to sit down and ask for a glass of water, and for the window to be opened.

Janet herself was taken aback; she was too young to have realized what the effects of twenty-nine years shut up in a box might be, although she made the best of it according to her nature. She said that in any case the dresses were now sadly out of fashion and we could not have me going to my new life looking like a scarecrow, but that some of the things could yet be used, such as the red flannel petticoat and some of the white ones, which could be washed in vinegar to get rid of the smell of mildew and then bleached in the sun, and they would come out white as anything. This was not quite the case, as once we had done it they were indeed lighter in colour but not what you would call white. As for the other things, she said, we would have to look about us. I would need a wardrobe, she said. I do not know how it was done — I suspect she begged a dress from her mother and went around among her acquaintance and collected up some other things, and I do believe the Governor contributed the money for the stockings and shoes — but at the end she’d gathered together a store of garments. I found the colours over bright, such as a green print, and a broadcloth with stripes in a magenta tone on a sky blue; it was the new chemical dyes that are now in use. These colours didn’t exactly suit me; but beggars can’t be choosers, as I’ve learnt on many occasions.

The two of us sat together and made the dresses over to fit. We were like a mother and daughter working on a trousseau, very friendly and cosy, and after a time I was quite cheered up. My only regret was the crinolines; they’d gone out of fashion and now it was all wire bustles and big bunches of cloth pulled to the back, with ruchings and fringes, more like a sofa to my mind; and so I never would have the chance to wear a crinoline. But we cannot have everything in this life. Bonnets were gone, too. Now it was all hats, tied under the chin and quite flat and tilted forward, like a ship sailing on top of your head, with veils floating out behind them like the wake. Janet obtained one for me and I did feel queer the first time I put it on and looked in the mirror. It did not cover my streaks of grey hair, although Janet said I looked ten years younger than I really was, almost a girl in fact; and it’s true that I’d kept my figure and most of my teeth. She said I looked a real lady, which is possible, as there is less difference in dress between maid and mistress how than there used to be, and the fashions are easily copied. We had a merry enough time trimming the hat with silk flowers and bows, although several times I broke down in tears because I was overwrought. A change in fortune often has that effect, from bad to good as well as the other way around, as I am sure you have noticed in life, Sir. As we were packing and folding, I snipped some pieces out of the various dresses I’d worn long ago, but which were now to be discarded; and I asked if I might have a prison nightdress of the sort I was accustomed to sleep in, as a keepsake. Janet said she thought it a strange keepsake, but she made the request for me and it was granted. I needed something of my own to take away with me, you see. When all was ready I thanked Janet with deep gratitude. I was still fearful of what was to come, but at least I would look like an ordinary person and no one would stare, and that is worth a great deal. Janet gave me a pair of summer gloves, almost new, I don’t know where she got them. And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she’d been reading.

Chapter 52

August the 7th of 1872 was the day of my departure, and I will never forget it as long as I live. After breakfast with the Warden’s family, at which I could scarcely eat anything I was so nervous, I put on the dress I was to travel in, the green one, with the straw hat trimmed to match and the gloves Janet had given me. My box was packed; it was not Nancy‘s box, as that one smelled too much of mildew, but another one provided by the Penitentiary, leather and not much worn. It probably belonged to some poor soul who had died there, but I was long past looking a gift horse in the mouth. I was taken in to see the Warden, it was a formality and he did not have much to say except that he congratulated me upon my release; in any case he and Janet were to accompany me to the home provided, at the special request of Sir John Macdonald himself, as it was intended I should get there safely and they knew perfectly well I wasn’t accustomed to modern modes of travel, having been so long shut away; and also there were many rough men about, discharged soldiers from the Civil War, some crippled and others with no means of support, and I might be in some danger from them. So I was very glad for the company.

I passed through the gates of the Penitentiary for the last time as the clock struck noon, and it went through my head like a thousand bells. Until that instant I couldn’t quite trust my senses; while dressing for the journey I’d felt more numb than anything, and the objects around me appeared flat and lacking in colour, but now all sprang to life. The sun was shining and every stone of the wall seemed as clear as glass and lighted up like a lamp, it was like passing through the gates of Hell and into Paradise, I do believe the two are located closer together than most people think.

Outside the gates was a chestnut tree, and each leaf of it seemed rimmed by fire; and sitting in the tree there were three white pigeons, which shone like the angels of Pentecost, and at that moment I knew that I had truly been set free. At such times of more than ordinary brightness or darkness I used to faint, but on this day I asked Janet for her smelling salts and so remained upright, although leaning on her arm; and she said it would not have been in nature for me to have remained unmoved, on such a momentous occasion.

I wished to turn and look back, but I remembered Lot‘s wife and the pillar of salt, and refrained from doing so. To look back would also have meant that I regretted my departure and had a wish to return, and this was certainly not the case, as you may imagine, Sir; but you will be surprised to hear me say that I did indeed have a sort of regret. For although the Penitentiary was not exactly a homey place, yet it was the only home I’d known for almost thirty years; and that is a long time, longer than many people spend on this earth, and although it was forbidding and a place of sorrow and punishment, at least I knew its ways. To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die. After this moment I was back again in ordinary daylight, although light-headed. It was a hot and humid day, such as the climate beside the Lakes produces in August, but as there was a breeze coming off the water, the weather was not too oppressive; there were some clouds, but only the white kind that do not foretell rain or thunder. Janet had a parasol, which she held over both of us as we proceeded. A parasol was one item I lacked, as the silk of Nancy‘s pink one had all rotted away. We went to the railway station in a light carriage driven by the Warden’s servant. The train was not due to leave until one-thirty but I was anxious about being late, and once there could not sit quietly in the Ladies’ Waiting Room but had to walk up and down the platform outside, as I was very agitated. Finally the train drew in, a large shining iron monster puffing smoke. I’d never seen a train so close up, and although Janet assured me it was not dangerous, I had to be assisted up the steps. We took the train as far as Cornwall, but though it was a short enough journey I felt I should never survive it. The noise was so loud and the motion so rapid I thought I would go deaf, and there was a great deal of black smoke; and the blowing of the train whistle startled me nearly out of my wits, although I took hold of myself and did not scream.

I felt better when we descended at the Cornwall station and went from there to the docks in a pony trap, and took a ferry across the end of the Lake, as that form of travel was more familiar to me and I could get some fresh air. The motion of the sunlight on the waves was at first bewildering to me, but this effect ceased when I stopped looking at it. Refreshment was offered, which the Warden had brought with him in a basket, and I managed to eat a little cold chicken and drink some lukewarm tea. I occupied my mind with looking at the costumes of the ladies on board, which were varied and brightly coloured. Sitting down and standing up I had some trouble managing my bustle, as a thing like that takes practice, and I am afraid I wasn’t overly graceful, it was like having another bum tied on top of your real one and the two of them following you around like a tin bucket tied to a pig, although of course I did not say anything so coarse to Janet.

On the other side of the Lake we passed through the Customs House of the United States, and the Warden said we had nothing to declare. Then we took another train, and I was glad the Warden had come, as otherwise I would not have known what to do about the porters and luggage. While we were sitting on this new train, which rattled less than the previous one, I asked Janet about my final destination. We were going to Ithaca, New York — that much I’d been told — but what would happen to me after that? What was the home provided to be like, and was I to be a servant in it; and if so, what had the household there been told about me? I didn’t wish to be placed in a false position, you see, Sir, or expected to conceal the truth about my past.

Janet said that there was a surprise awaiting me, and as it was a secret she could not tell me what it was; but it was a good surprise, or so she hoped it would be. She went so far as to tell me it concerned a man, a gentleman she said; but as she was in the habit of using this term of anything in trousers above the station of a waiter, I was not any the wiser.

When I said what gentleman, she said she couldn’t tell; but he was an old friend of mine, or so she’d been given to understand. She became very coy, and I couldn’t get another word out of her. I thought back over all the men it might be. I hadn’t known very many of these, not having had the chance you might say; and the two I’d perhaps known the best, although by no means the longest, were dead, by which I mean Mr. Kinnear and James McDermott. There was Jeremiah the peddler, but I did not think he would be in the business of providing good homes, as he had never seemed the domestic type. There were also my former employers, such as Mr. Coates and Mr. Haraghy, but surely by now all were either dead themselves or very elderly. The only other one I could think of, Sir, was you yourself. I must admit that the idea did cross my mind.

And so it was with anxiety but also expectation that I descended at last onto the station platform at Ithaca. There was a crush of people meeting the train, and all talking at once; and the hustling of the porters, and the many trunks and boxes being carried and wheeled about on carts, made it hazardous to stand there. I held on tightly to Janet while the Warden arranged about the luggage, and then he conducted us to the other side of the station building, the side away from the trains, where he began to look about him. He frowned at not finding what he expected, and glanced at his watch, and at the station clock; and then he consulted a letter which he took from his pocket, and my heart began to sink. But he looked up and smiled, and said, Here’s our man, and there was indeed a man hurrying towards us. He was above the average height and bulky, but lanky at the same time, by which I mean that his arms and legs were long but he had a more solid and rounder middle part to him. He had red hair and a large red beard, and was wearing a black suit of the Sunday-best kind that most men have now if they are at all comfortable in worldly goods, with a white shirt and a dark stock, and a tall hat which he was carrying in his hands, held in front of him like a shield, by which I could tell that he too was apprehensive. He wasn’t a man I’d ever seen before in my life, but as soon as he came up to us he gave me a searching glance and then flopped onto his knees at my feet. He seized my hand, glove and all, and said, Grace, Grace, can you ever forgive me? Indeed he almost shouted it, as if he’d been practising it for some time. I struggled to pull my hand away, thinking he was a madman, but when I turned to Janet for help she was in a flood of sentimental tears, and the Warden was beaming away as if he had hoped for nothing better; and I saw that I was the only one who was completely at sea.

The man let go of my hand and stood up. She doesn’t know me, he said sadly. Grace, don’t you know me? I would have known you anywhere.

And I looked at him, and there was indeed something a little familiar about him, but still I could not place it. And then he said, It’s Jamie Walsh. And I saw that it was.

We then repaired to a new hotel close to the railway station, where the Warden had arranged accommodations, and partook together of some refreshments. As you may imagine, Sir, a good deal of explanation was then required, for the last time I’d seen Jamie Walsh was at my own trial for murder, when it was his testimony that turned the minds of judge and jury so much against me for the wearing of a dead woman’s clothes.

Mr. Walsh — for so I will now call him — proceeded to tell me that he’d thought at that time I was guilty, although he hadn’t wished to think so, as he’d always had a liking for me, which was true enough; but as he’d grown older and had considered the matter, he’d come to be of the opposite persuasion, and had been overcome with guilt for the part he’d played in my conviction; though he was only a young lad at the time, and no match for the lawyers, who’d led him into saying things he did not see the results of until afterwards. And I was consoling to him, and said it was the sort of thing that could happen to anyone.

After Mr. Kinnear’s death, he and his father were forced to leave the property, as the new owners had no use for them; and he took a position in Toronto, which he obtained due to his having made such a good impression as a bright and up-and-coming lad, at the trial, which was what they wrote about him in the newspapers. So you might say he’d got his start in life on account of me. And he saved up his money for several years, and then went to the States, as he was of the opinion that there was more opportunity for becoming a self-made man down there — you were what you had, not what you’d come from, and few questions asked. He worked on the railroads and also out West, saving all the while, and now owned his own farm and two horses all complete. He took care to mention the horses early on, as he knew how fond I once was of Charley.

He had married, but was now a widower, with no children; and he’d never ceased to be tormented by what had become of me through him, and had written several times to the Penitentiary to see how I was getting on; but he did not write direct to me, as he did not wish to upset me. And it was in this way that he heard of my Pardon, and arranged matters with the Warden.

The upshot was that he begged me to forgive him, which I did readily. I did not feel I could hold a grudge, and told him I would no doubt have been put in prison anyway, even if he hadn’t mentioned Nancy‘s dresses. And when we had gone through all of that, he pressing my hand the whole time, he asked me to marry him. He said that although not a millionaire he could certainly offer me a good home, with all that might be required, as he had some money put by in the bank. I made a show of hanging back, though the reality of it was that I did not have many other choices, and it would have been most ungrateful of me to have said no, as so much trouble had been taken. I said I did not want him to marry me out of mere duty and guiltiness, and he denied that such were his motives, and claimed that he’d always had very warm feelings towards me, and that I’d scarcely changed at all from the way I was as a young woman — I was still a fine looker, was how he put it. And I remembered the daisies in Mr. Kinnear’s orchard with the stumps, and I knew he did think that. The hardest thing for me was viewing him as a full-grown man, as I’d known him only as the gawky lad who’d played the flute the night before Nancy died, and was sitting on the fence the very first day I came to Mr. Kinnear’s.

Finally I said yes. He had the ring all ready, in a box in his vest pocket, and he was so overcome with emotion that he dropped it twice onto the tablecloth before putting it on my finger; for which I had to remove my glove.

Matters for the wedding were arranged as quickly as possible, and we remained at the hotel meanwhile, with hot water brought to the room every morning, and Janet stayed with me as being more proper. All was paid by Mr. Walsh. And we had a simple ceremony with a Justice of the Peace, and I remembered Aunt Pauline saying so many years before that I would no doubt marry beneath me, and wondered what she would think now; and Janet stood bridesmaid, and cried.

Mr. Walsh’s beard was very large and red, but I assured myself that it could be altered in time.

Chapter 53

It is almost thirty years to the day, since when not yet sixteen years of age, I first went up the long driveway to Mr. Kinnear’s. It was June then, as well. Now I am sitting on my own verandah in my own rocking chair; it is late afternoon, and the scene before me is so peaceful you would think it was a picture. The roses at the front of the house are in bloom — Lady Hamiltons they are and very fine, although subject to aphids. The best thing, they say, is to dust them with arsenic, but I do not like to have such a thing about the house.

The last of the peonies are flowering, a pink and white variety and very full of petals. I don’t know the name, as I did not plant them; their scent reminds me of the soap that Mr. Kinnear used for shaving. The front of our house faces southwest and the sunlight is warm and golden, although I do not sit right in it, as it is bad for the complexion. On such days I think, This is like Heaven. Although Heaven was not a place I ever used to think of myself as going.

I have been married to Mr. Walsh for almost a year now, and although it is not what most girls imagine when young, that is perhaps for the better, as at least the two of us know what sort of a bargain we have got into. When people marry young they often change as they grow older, but as the two of us have already grown older there will not be as much disappointment in store. An older man has a character already formed and is not as likely to take to drink or other vices, because if he was going to do such a thing he would have done it by now; or that is my opinion, and I hope that time will prove me right. I have prevailed on Mr. Walsh to trim his beard somewhat and to indulge his pipe smoking only out of doors, and in time perhaps both of these things, the beard and the pipe too, will disappear altogether, but it’s never a good idea to nag and push a man, as it only makes them the more obstinate. Mr. Walsh does not chew tobacco and spit, as some do, and as always I am thankful for small mercies. Our house is an ordinary farmhouse, white in colour, and with shutters painted green, but commodious enough for us. It has a front hall with a row of hooks for the coats in winter, although mostly we use the kitchen door, and a staircase with a plain bannister. At the head of the stairs is a cedar chest for the storage of quilts and blankets. There are four upstairs rooms — a little one intended for a nursery, then the main bedchamber and another in case of guests, although we neither expect nor wish for any; and a fourth, which is empty at present. The two furnished bedchambers each have a washstand, and each has an oval braided rug, as I don’t want heavy carpets; they are too difficult to drag down the stairs and beat in spring, which would be worse as I get older.

There is a cross-stitch picture over each bed which I did myself, flowers in a vase in the best room and fruit in a bowl in ours. The quilt in the best room is a Wheel of Mystery, the one in ours a Log Cabin; I bought them at a sale, from people who’d failed and were moving West; but I felt sorry for the woman, and so paid more than I should. There have been a great many things to be seen to, in order to make everything cosy, since Mr. Walsh had developed bachelor’s habits after the death of his first wife, and some things had become none too savoury. I had a large array of cobwebs and hanks of slut’s wool to sweep out from under the beds, and also a fair deal of scrubbing and scouring to do. The summer curtains in both bedchambers are white. I like a white curtain myself. Downstairs we have a front parlour with a stove, and a kitchen with pantry and scullery all complete, and the pump inside the house, which is a great advantage in winter. There is a dining room, but we don’t have that sort of company very often. For the most part we eat at the kitchen table; we have two kerosene lamps, and it is very snug there. I use the dining-room table for sewing, which is especially handy when cutting out the patterns. I have a Sewing Machine now, which is worked by a handwheel and is just like magic, and I am certainly glad to have it as it saves a great deal of labour, especially for the plain sewing such as the making of curtains and the hemming of sheets. I still prefer to do the finer sewing by hand, although my eyes are not what they used to be.

In addition to what I have described, we have the usual — a kitchen garden, with herbs and cabbages and root vegetables, and peas in the spring; and hens and ducks, cow and barn, and a buggy and two horses, Charley and Nell, who are a great pleasure to me, and good company when Mr. Walsh is not here; but Charley is worked too hard, as he is the plough horse. They say there are machines coming in soon that will do all of that sort of work and if so, then poor Charley can be turned out to pasture. I would never let him be sold for glue and dog meat, as is the habit of some. There is a hired man who helps on the farm, but he doesn’t live on the premises. Mr. Walsh wanted to employ a girl as well, but I said I would prefer to do the work of the house myself. I wouldn’t want to have a servant living in, as they pry too much, and listen at doors; and also it’s much easier for me to do a task right myself the first time, than to have someone else do it wrong and then do it over. Our cat is named Tabby; she is the colour you might expect and a good mouser, and our dog is named Rex, he is a setter and not bright, although well-meaning, and the most beautiful shade of reddish brown, like a polished chestnut. These are not very original names, but we don’t wish to get a reputation in the neighbourhood for being too original. We attend the local Methodist church, and the preacher is a lively one and fond of a little Hell Fire on Sundays; however I do not think he has any notion of what Hell is really like, no more than the congregation; they are worthy souls, though narrow. But we have thought it best not to reveal too much of the past, to them or anyone, as it would only lead to curiosity and gossip, and thence to false rumours. We’ve given out that Mr. Walsh was my childhood sweetheart, and that I married another, but was lately widowed; and that since Mr. Walsh’s wife died, we arranged to meet again, and to marry. That is a story easily accepted, and it has the advantage of being romantic, and of causing pain to no one.

Our little church is very local and old-fashioned; but in Ithaca itself they are more up to date, and have a good number of Spiritualists there, with celebrated mediums coming through and staying at the best homes. I don’t go in for any of that, as you never know what might come out of it; and if I wish to commune with the dead I can do it well enough on my own; and besides, I fear there is a great deal of cheating and deception.

In April I saw one of the celebrated mediums advertised, a man, with a picture of him; and though the picture was printed very dark, I thought, That must be Jeremiah the peddler; and indeed it was, as Mr. Walsh and I had occasion to drive into town for some errands and shopping, and I passed him on the street. He was more elegantly dressed than ever, with his hair black again and his beard trimmed in the military fashion, which must inspire confidence, and his name is Mr. Gerald Bridges now. He was doing a very good imitation of a man who is distinguished and at home in the world, but with his mind on the higher truth; and he saw me too, and recognized me, and gave a respectful tip of the hat, but very slight, so it wouldn’t be remarked; and also a wink; and I waved my hand at him, just a little, in its glove, as I always wear gloves to town. Fortunately Mr. Walsh did not notice either of these things, as it would have alarmed him.

I would not wish any here to learn my true name; but I know my secrets are safe with Jeremiah, as his are safe with me. And I remembered the time I might have run away with him, and become a gypsy or a medical clairvoyant, as I was certainly tempted to do; and in that case my fate would have been very different. But only God knows whether it would have been better or worse; and I have now done all the running away I have time for in this life.

On the whole, Mr. Walsh and I agree, and things go on very well with us. But there is something that has troubled me, Sir; and as I have no close woman friend I can trust, I am telling you about it, and I know you will keep the confidence.

It is this. Every once in a while Mr. Walsh becomes very sad; he takes hold of my hand and gazes at me with the tears in his eyes, and he says, To think of the sufferings I have caused you. I tell him he did not cause me any sufferings — it was others that caused them, and also having plain bad luck and bad judgment — but he likes to think it was him that was the author of all, and I believe he would claim the death of my poor mother too, if he could think of a way to do it. He likes to picture the sufferings as well, and nothing will do but that I have to tell him some story or other about being in the Penitentiary, or else the Lunatic Asylum in Toronto. The more watery I make the soup and the more rancid the cheese, and the worse I make the coarse talk and proddings of the keepers, the better he likes it. He listens to all of that like a child listening to a fairy tale, as if it is something wonderful, and then he begs me to tell him yet more. If I put in the chilblains and the shivering at night under the thin blanket, and the whipping if you complained, he is in raptures; and if I add the improper behaviour of Dr. Bannerling towards me, and the cold baths naked and wrapped in a sheet, and the strait-waistcoat in the darkened room, he is almost in ecstasies; but his favourite part of the story is when poor James McDermott was hauling me all around the house at Mr. Kinnear’s, looking for a bed fit for his wicked purposes, with Nancy and Mr. Kinnear lying dead in the cellar, and me almost out of my wits with terror; and he blames himself that he wasn’t there to rescue me.

I myself would as soon forget about that portion of my life, rather than dwelling on it in such a mournful way. It’s true that I liked the time when you were at the Penitentiary, Sir, as it did make a break in my days, which were mostly the same then. Now that I come to think of it, you were as eager as Mr. Walsh is to hear about my sufferings and my hardships in life; and not only that, but you would write them down as well. I could tell when your interest was slacking, as your gaze would wander; but it gave me joy every time I managed to come up with something that would interest you. Your cheeks would flush and you would smile like the sun on the parlour clock, and if you’d had ears like a dog they would have been pricked forward, with your eyes shining and your tongue hanging out, as if you’d found a grouse in a bush. It did make me feel I was of some use in this world, although I never quite saw what you were aiming at in all of it.

As for Mr. Walsh, after I have told him a few stories of torment and misery he clasps me in his arms and strokes my hair, and begins to unbutton my nightgown, as these scenes often take place at night; and he says, Will you ever forgive me?

At first this annoyed me very much, although I did not say so. The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble. If they were only less weak and careless, and more foresightful, and if they would keep from blundering into difficulties, think of all the sorrow in the world that would be spared.

I had a rage in my heart for many years, against Mary Whitney, and especially against Nancy Montgomery; against the two of them both, for letting themselves be done to death in the way that they did, and for leaving me behind with the full weight of it. For a long time I could not find it in me to pardon them. It would be much better if Mr. Walsh would forgive me, rather than being so stubborn about it and wanting to have it the wrong way around; but perhaps in time he will come to see things in a truer light. When he first began this, I said I had nothing to forgive him for, and he shouldn’t worry his head about it; but that wasn’t the answer he wanted. He insists on being forgiven, he can’t seem to go on comfortably without it, and who am I to refuse him such a simple thing?

So now every time this happens, I say I forgive him. I put my hands on his head as if in a book, and I turn my eyes up and look solemn, and then kiss him and cry a little; and then after I’ve forgiven him, he is back to his usual self the next day, playing on his flute as if he’s a boy again and I am fifteen, and we are out in the orchard making daisy chains at Mr. Kinnear’s.

But I don’t feel quite right about it, forgiving him like that, because I am aware that in doing so I am telling a lie. Though I suppose it isn’t the first lie I’ve told; but as Mary Whitney used to say, a little white lie such as the angels tell is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.

I think of Mary Whitney frequently these days, and of the time we threw the apple peelings over our shoulders; and it has all come true after a fashion. Just as she said, I married a man whose name begins with a J; and as she also said, I first had to cross over water three times, since it was twice on the ferry to Lewiston, going and coming back, and then once again on the way here. Sometimes I dream that I am again in my small bedchamber at Mr. Kinnear’s, before all the horror and tragedy; and I feel so safe there, not knowing what is to come. And sometimes I dream that I am still in the Penitentiary; and that I will wake to find myself once more locked in my cell, shivering on the straw mattress on a cold winter morning, with the keepers laughing outside in the yard. But I am really here, in my own house, in my own chair, sitting on the verandah. I open and shut my eyes and pinch myself, but it remains true.