Stern Men

4

THAT NIGHT, when Ruth Thomas told her father she had been to Ellis House, he said, “I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth.”

Ruth had gone looking for her father immediately after she left Mr. Ellis. She walked down to the harbor and saw that his boat was in, but the other fishermen said he’d long been done for the day. She tried him at their house, but when she called for him, there was no answer. So Ruth got on her bicycle and rode over to the Addams brothers’ house to see whether he was visiting Angus for a drink. And so he was.

The two men were sitting on the porch, leaning back in folding chairs, holding beers. Senator Simon’s dog, Cookie, was lying on Angus’s feet, panting. It was late dusk, and the air was shimmering and gold. Bats flew low and fast above. Ruth dropped her bicycle in the yard and stepped up on the porch.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, sugar.”

“Hey, Mr. Addams.”

“Hey, Ruth.”

“How’s the lobster business?”

“Great, great,” Angus said. “I’m saving up for a gun to blow my fucking head off.”

Angus Addams, quite the opposite of his twin brother, was getting leaner as he grew older. His skin was damaged from the years spent in the middle of all kinds of bad weather. He squinted, as if looking into a field of sun. He was going deaf after a lifetime spent too near loud boat engines, and he spoke loudly. He hated almost everyone on Fort Niles, and there was no shutting him up when he felt like explaining, in careful detail, why.

Most of the islanders were afraid of Angus Addams. Ruth’s father liked him. When Ruth’s father was a boy, he’d worked as a sternman for Angus and had been a smart, strong, ambitious apprentice. Now, of course, Ruth’s father had his own boat, and the two men dominated the lobster industry of Fort Niles. Greedy Number One and Greedy Number Two. They fished in all weather, with no limits on their catch, with no mercy for their fellows. The boys on the island who worked as sternmen for Angus Addams and for Stan Thomas usually quit after a few weeks, unable to take the pace. Other fishermen-harder drinking, fatter, lazier, stupider fishermen (in Ruth’s father’s opinion)-made easier bosses.

As for Ruth’s father, he was still the handsomest man on Fort Niles Island. He had never remarried after Ruth’s mother left, but Ruth knew he had liaisons. She had some ideas about who his partners were, but he never spoke about them to her, and she preferred not to think about them too much. Her father was not tall, but he had wide shoulders and thin hips. “No fanny at all,” he liked to say. He weighed the same at forty-five as he had at twenty-five. He was fastidiously neat about his clothing, and he shaved every day. He went to Mrs. Pommeroy once every two weeks for a haircut. Ruth suspected that something may have been going on between her father and Mrs. Pommeroy, but she hated the thought of it so much that she never pursued it. Ruth’s father’s hair was dark, dark brown, and his eyes were almost green. He had a mustache.

Ruth, at eighteen, thought her father was a fine enough person. She knew he had a reputation as a cheapskate and a lobster hustler, but she also knew that this reputation had grown fertile in the minds of island men who commonly spent the money from a week’s catch on one night in a bar. These were men who saw frugality as arrogant and offensive. These were men who were not her father’s equal, and they knew it and resented it. Ruth also knew that her father’s best friend was a bully and a bigot, but she had always liked Angus Addams, anyway. She did not find him to be a hypocrite, in any case, which put him above many people.

For the most part, Ruth got along with her father. She got along with him best when they weren’t working together or when he wasn’t trying to teach her something, like how to drive a car or mend rope or navigate by a compass. In such situations, there was bound to be yelling. It wasn’t so much the yelling that Ruth minded. What she didn’t like was when her father got quiet on her. He got real quiet, typically, on any subject having to do with Ruth’s mother. She thought he was a coward about it. His quietness sometimes disgusted her.

“You want a beer?” Angus Addams asked Ruth.

“No, thank you.”

“Good,” Angus said. “Makes you fat as all goddamn hell.”

“It hasn’t made you fat, Mr. Addams.”

“That’s because I work.”

“Ruth can work, too,” Stan Thomas said of his daughter. “She’s got an idea to work on a lobster boat this summer.”

“The two of you been saying that for damn near a month now. Summer’s almost over.”

“You want to take her on as a sternman?”

“You take her, Stan.”

“We’d kill each other,” Ruth’s father said. “You take her.”

Angus Addams shook his head. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t like to fish with anyone if I can help it. Used to be, we fished alone. Better that way. No sharing.”

“I know you hate sharing,” Ruth said.

“I fucking do hate sharing, missy. And I’ll tell you why. In 1936, I only made three hundred and fifty dollars the entire goddamn year, and I fished my balls off. I had close to three hundred dollars in expenses. That left me fifty to live on the whole winter. And I had to take care of my goddamn brother. So, no, I ain’t sharing if I can help it.”

“Come on, Angus. Give Ruth a job. She’s strong,” Stan said. “Come on over here, Ruth. Roll up your sleeves, baby. Show us how strong you are.”

Ruth went over and obediently flexed her right arm.

“She’s got her crusher claw here,” her father said, squeezing her muscle. Then Ruth flexed her left arm, and he squeezed that one, saying, “And she’s got her pincher claw here!”

Angus said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Is your brother here?” Ruth asked Angus.

“He went over to the Pommeroy house,” Angus said. “He’s all goddamn worried about that goddamn snot-ass kid.”

“He’s worried about Webster?”

“He should just goddamn adopt the little bastard.”

“So the Senator left Cookie with you, did he?” Ruth asked.

Angus growled again and gave the dog a shove with his foot. Cookie woke up and looked around patiently.

“At least the dog’s in loving hands,” Ruth’s father said, grinning. “At least Simon left his dog with someone who’ll take good care of it.”

“Tender loving care,” Ruth added.

“I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said.

“Really?” Ruth asked, wide-eyed. “Is that so? I didn’t know that. Did you know that, Dad?”

“I never heard anything about that, Ruth.”

“I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said. “And the fact that I have to feed it corrodes my soul.”

Ruth and her father started laughing.

“I hate this goddamn dog,” Angus said, and his voice rose as he recited his problems with Cookie. “The dog’s got a goddamn ear infection, and I have to buy it some goddamn drops, and I have to hold the dog twice a day while Simon puts the drops in. I have to buy the goddamn drops when I’d rather see the goddamn dog go deaf. It drinks out of the toilet. It throws up every goddamn day, and it has never once in its entire life had a solid stool.”

“Anything else bothering you?” Ruth asked.

“Simon wants me to show the dog some goddamn affection, but that runs contrary to my instinct.”

“Which is?” Ruth asked.

“Which is to stomp on it with heavy boots.”

“You’re terrible,” Ruth’s father said, and bent over laughing. “You’re terrible, Angus.”

Ruth went into the house and got herself a glass of water. The kitchen of the Addams house was immaculate. Angus Addams was a slob, but Senator Simon Addams cared for his twin brother like a wife, and he kept the chrome shining and the icebox full. Ruth knew for a fact that Senator Simon got up at four in the morning every day and made Angus breakfast (biscuits, eggs, a slice of pie) and packed sandwiches for Angus’s lunch on the lobster boat. The other men on the island liked to tease Angus, saying they wished they had things so good at home, and Angus Addams liked to tell them to shut their fucking mouths and, by the way, they shouldn’t have married such lazy fat goddamn whores in the first place. Ruth looked out the kitchen window to the back yard, where overalls and long underwear swayed, drying. There was a loaf of sweetbread on the counter, so she cut herself a piece and walked back out to the porch, eating it.

“None for me, thanks,” Angus said.

“Sorry. Did you want a piece?”

“No, but I’ll take another beer, Ruth.”

“I’ll get it on my next trip to the kitchen.”

Angus raised his eyebrows at Ruth and whistled. “That’s how educated girls treat their friends, is it?”

“Oh, brother.”

“Is that how Ellis girls treat their friends?”

Ruth did not reply, and her father looked down at his feet. It became very quiet on the porch. Ruth waited to see whether her father would remind Angus Addams that Ruth was a Thomas girl, not an Ellis girl, but her father said nothing.

Angus set his empty beer bottle on the floor of the porch and said, “I’ll get it my own self, I guess,” and he walked into the house.

Ruth’s father looked up at her. “What’d you do today, sugar?” he asked.

“We can talk about it at dinner.”

“I’m eating dinner here tonight. We can talk about it now.”

So she said, “I saw Mr. Ellis today. You still want to talk about it now?”

Her father said evenly, “I don’t care what you talk about or when you talk about it.”

“Does it make you mad that I saw him?”

That’s when Angus Addams came back out, just as Ruth’s father was saying, “I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth.”

“Who the hell is she spending her time with?” Angus asked.

“Lanford Ellis.”

“Dad. I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Those goddamn bastards again,” Angus said.

“Ruth had a little meeting with him.”

“Dad-”

“We don’t have to keep secrets from our friends, Ruth.”

“Fine,” Ruth said, and she tossed her father the envelope Mr. Ellis had given her. He lifted the flap and peered at the bills inside. He set the envelope on the arm of his chair.

“What the hell is that?” Angus asked. “What is that, a load of cash? Mr. Ellis give you that money, Ruth?”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”

“Well, you fucking give it back to him.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business, Angus. You want me to give the money back, Dad?”

“I don’t care how these people throw their money around, Ruth,” Stan Thomas said. But he picked up the envelope again, took out the bills, and counted them. There were fifteen bills. Fifteen twenty-dollar bills.

“What’s the goddamn money for?” Angus asked. “What the hell is that goddamn money for, anyhow?”

“Stay out of it, Angus,” Ruth’s father said.

“Mr. Ellis said it was fun money for me.”

“Funny money?” her father asked.

“Fun money.”

“Fun money? Fun money?”

She did not answer.

“This sure is fun so far,” her father said. “Are you having fun, Ruth?”

Again, she did not answer.

“Those Ellis people really know how to have fun.”

“I don’t know what it’s for, but you get your fanny over there and give it back,” Angus said.

The three sat there with the money looming between them.

“And another thing about that money,” Ruth said.

Ruth’s father passed his hand over his face, just once, as though he suddenly realized he was tired.

“Yes?”

“There’s another thing about that money. Mr. Ellis would really like it if I used some of it to go visit Mom. My mother.”

“Jesus Christ!” Angus Addams exploded. “Jesus Christ, you were gone all goddamn year, Ruth! You only just goddamn got back here, and they’re trying to send you away again!”

Ruth’s father said nothing.

“That goddamn Ellis family runs you all over the goddamn place, telling you what to do and where to go and who to see,” Angus continued. “You do every goddamn thing that goddamn family tells you to do. You’re getting to be just as bad as your goddamn mother.”

“Stay out of it, Angus!” Stan Thomas shouted.

“Would that be fine with you, Dad?” Ruth asked, gingerly.

“Jesus Christ, Stan!” Angus sputtered. “Tell your goddamn daughter to stay here, where she goddamn belongs.”

“First of all,” Ruth’s father said to Angus, “shut your goddamn mouth.”

There was no second of all.

“If you don’t want me to see her, I won’t go,” Ruth said. “If you want me to take the money back, I’ll take the money back.”

Ruth’s father fingered the envelope. After a brief silence, he said to his eighteen-year-old daughter, “I don’t care who you spend your time with.”

He tossed the envelope of money back to her.

“What’s the problem with you?” Angus Addams bellowed at his friend. “What’s the problem with all you goddamn people?”

As for Ruth Thomas’s mother, there was certainly a big problem with her.

The people of Fort Niles Island had always had problems with Ruth Thomas’s mother. The biggest problem was her ancestry. She was not like all the people on Fort Niles Island whose families had been in place there forever. She was not like all the people who knew exactly who their ancestors were. Ruth Thomas’s mother was born on Fort Niles, but she wasn’t exactly from there. Ruth Thomas’s mother was a problem because she was the daughter of an orphan and an immigrant.

Nobody knew the orphan’s real name; nobody knew anything at all about the immigrant. Ruth Thomas’s mother, therefore, had a genealogy that was cauterized at both ends-two dead ends of information. Ruth’s mother had no forefathers, no foremothers, no recorded family traits by which to define herself. While Ruth Thomas could trace back two centuries of her father’s ancestors without leaving the Fort Niles Island cemetery, there was no getting past the orphan and the immigrant who began and completed her mother’s blunt history. Her mother, unaccounted for as such, had always been looked at askance on Fort Niles Island. She’d been produced by two mysteries, and there were no mysteries in anyone else’s history. One should not simply appear on Fort Niles with no family chronicle to account for oneself. It made people uneasy.

Ruth Thomas’s grandmother-her mother’s mother-had been an orphan with the uninspired, hastily invented name of Jane Smith. In 1884, as a tiny baby, Jane Smith was left on the steps of the Bath Naval Orphans’ Hospital. The nurses collected her and bathed her and bestowed upon her that ordinary name, which they decided was as good a name as any. At the time, the Bath Naval Orphans’ Hospital was a relatively new institution. It had been founded just after the Civil War for the benefit of children orphaned by that war; specifically for the children of naval officers killed in battle.

The Bath Naval Orphans’ Hospital was a rigorous and well-organized institution, where cleanliness and exercise and regular bowels were encouraged. It is possible that the baby who came to be known as Jane Smith was the daughter of a sailor, perhaps even a naval officer, but there were no clues whatsoever on the baby to indicate this. There was no note, no telling object, no distinctive clothing. Just a healthy enough baby, swaddled tightly and set quietly on the orphanage steps.

In 1894, when the orphan called Jane Smith turned ten, she was adopted by a certain gentleman by the name of Dr. Jules Ellis. Jules Ellis was a young man, but he had already made a good name for himself. He was the founder of the Ellis Granite Company, of Concord, New Hampshire. Dr. Jules Ellis, it seemed, always took his summer holidays on the Maine islands, where he had several lucrative quarries in operation. He liked Maine. He believed the citizens of Maine to be exceptionally hardy and decent; therefore, when he decided it was time to adopt a child, he sought one from a Maine orphanage. He thought that would vouchsafe him a hearty girl.

His reason for adopting a girl was as follows. Dr. Jules Ellis had a favorite daughter, an indulged nine-year-old named Vera, and Vera insistently asked for a sister. She had several brothers, but she was bored to death with them, and she wanted a girl playmate for companionship over those long, isolated summers on Fort Niles Island. So Dr. Jules Ellis acquired Jane Smith as a sister for his little girl.

“This is your new twin sister,” he told Vera on her tenth birthday.

Ten-year-old Jane was a big, shy girl. On her adoption, she was given the name Jane Smith-Ellis, another invention that she accepted with no more protest than she had shown the first time she was christened. Mr. Jules Ellis had put a great red bow on the girl’s head the day he presented her to his daughter. Photographs were taken on that day; in them, the bow looks absurd on the big girl in the orphanage dress. The bow looks like an insult.

From that time forward, Jane Smith-Ellis accompanied Vera Ellis everywhere. On the third Saturday of every June, the girls traveled to Fort Niles Island, and on the second Saturday of every September, Jane Smith-Ellis accompanied Vera Ellis back to the Ellis mansion in Concord.

There is no reason to imagine that Ruth Thomas’s grandmother was ever considered for a moment to be the actual sister of Miss Vera Ellis. Although adoption made the girls legal siblings, the thought that they deserved equal respect in the Ellis household would have been farcical. Vera Ellis did not love Jane Smith-Ellis as a sister, but she fully relied on her as a servant. Although Jane Smith-Ellis had the responsibilities of a handmaid, she was, by law, a member of the family, and consequently received no salary for her work.

“Your grandmother,” Ruth’s father had always said, “was a slave to that goddamn family.”

“Your grandmother,” Ruth’s mother had always said, “was fortunate to have been adopted by a family as generous as the Ellises.”

Miss Vera Ellis was not a great beauty, but she had the advantage of wealth, and she passed her days exquisitely dressed. There are photographs of Miss Vera Ellis perfectly outfitted for swimming, riding, skating, reading, and, as she grew older, for dancing, driving, and marrying. These turn-of-the-century costumes were intricate and heavy. It was Ruth Thomas’s grandmother who kept Miss Vera Ellis tight in her buttons, who sorted her kidskin gloves, who tended to the plumes of her hats, who rinsed her stockings and lace. It was Ruth Thomas’s grandmother who selected, arranged, and packed the corsets, slips, shoes, crinolines, parasols, dressing gowns, powders, brooches, capes, lawn dresses, and hand purses necessary for Miss Vera Ellis’s summer sojourn on Fort Niles Island every year. It was Ruth Thomas’s grandmother who packed Miss Vera’s accoutrements for her return to Concord every autumn, without misplacing a single item.

Of course, Miss Vera Ellis was likely to visit Boston for a weekend, or the Hudson Valley during October, or Paris, for the further refinement of her graces. And she needed to be attended to in these circumstances as well. Ruth Thomas’s grandmother, the orphan Jane Smith-Ellis, served well.

Jane Smith-Ellis was no beauty, either. Neither woman was excellent to behold. In photographs, Miss Vera Ellis at least bears a remotely interesting expression on her face-an expression of expensive haughtiness-but Ruth’s grandmother shows not even that. Standing behind the exquisitely bored Miss Vera Ellis, Jane Smith-Ellis shows nothing in her face. Not smarts, not a determined chin, not a sullen mouth. There is no spark in her, but there is no mildness, either. Merely deep and dull fatigue.

In the summer of 1905, Miss Vera Ellis married a boy, from Boston, by the name of Joseph Hanson. The marriage was of little significance, which is to say that Joseph Hanson’s family was good enough, but the Ellises were much better, so Miss Vera retained all power. She suffered no undue inconvenience from the marriage. She never referred to herself as Mrs. Joseph Hanson; she was forever known as Miss Vera Ellis. The couple lived in the bride’s childhood home, the Ellis mansion in Concord. On the third Saturday of every June, the couple followed the established pattern of moving to Fort Niles Island and, on the second Saturday of every September, moving back to Concord.

What’s more, the marriage between Miss Vera Ellis and Joe Hanson did not in the least change Ruth’s grandmother’s life. Jane Smith-Ellis’s duties were still clear. She was, naturally, of service to Miss Vera on the wedding day itself. (Not as a bridesmaid. Daughters of family friends and cousins filled those roles. Jane was the attendant who dressed Miss Vera, managed the dozens of pearl buttons down the back of the dress, hooked the high wedding boots, handled the French veil.) Ruth’s grandmother also accompanied Miss Vera on her honeymoon to Bermuda. (To collect umbrellas at the beach, to brush sand from Miss Vera’s hair, to arrange for the wool bathing suits to dry without fading.) And Ruth’s grandmother stayed on with Miss Vera after the wedding and honeymoon.

Miss Vera and Joseph Hanson had no children, but Vera had weighty social obligations. She had all those events to attend and appointments to keep and letters to write. Miss Vera used to lie in bed each morning, after picking at the breakfast Ruth’s grandmother had delivered on a tray, and dictate-in an indulgent imitation of a person with a real job dictating to a real employee-the responsibilities of the day.

“See if you can take care of that, Jane,” she would say.

Every day, for years and years.

The routine would surely have continued for many more years but for a particular event. Jane Smith-Ellis became pregnant. In late 1925, the quiet orphan whom the Ellises had adopted from the Bath Naval Orphans’ Hospital was pregnant. Jane was forty-one years old. It was unthinkable. Needless to say, she was unmarried, and no one had considered the possibility that she might take a suitor. Nobody in the Ellis family, of course, had thought of Jane Smith-Ellis for a moment as a woman for intimacy. They’d never expected her to acquire a friend, no less a lover. It was nothing they had ever given thought to. Other servants were constantly getting entangled in all manner of idiotic situations, but Jane was too practical and too necessary to get in trouble. Miss Vera could not spare Jane long enough for Jane to find trouble. And why would Jane look for trouble in the first place?

The Ellis family, indeed, had questions about the pregnancy. They had many questions. And demands. How had this come to pass? Who was responsible for this disaster? But Ruth Thomas’s grandmother, obedient though she generally was, told them nothing except one detail.

“He is Italian,” she said.

Italian? Italian? Outrageous! What were they to surmise? Obviously, the man responsible was one of the hundreds of Italian immigrant workers in the Ellis Granite Company’s quarries on Fort Niles. This was incomprehensible to the Ellis family. How had Jane Smith-Ellis found her way to the quarries? Even more bewildering, how had a worker found his way to her? Had Ruth’s grandmother visited the peanut houses, where the Italians lived, in the middle of the night? Or-horrors!-had an Italian worker visited the Ellis House? Unthinkable. Had there been other encounters? Perhaps years of encounters? Had there been other lovers? Was this a lapse, or had Jane been living a perverse double life? Was it a rape? A whim? A love affair?

The Italian quarry workers spoke no English. They were constantly being replaced, and, even to their immediate supervisors, they were nameless. As far as the quarry foremen were concerned, the Italians may as well have had interchangeable heads. Nobody thought of them as individuals. They were Catholic. They had no social commerce with the local island population, no less with anyone connected to the Ellis family. The Italians were largely ignored. They were noticed, really, only when they came under attack. The newspaper of Fort Niles Island, which folded soon after the granite industry left, had run occasional editorials fulminating against the Italians.

From The Fort Niles Bugle in February 1905: “These Garibaldians constitute the poorest, the most vile, creatures of Europe. Their children and wives are crippled and bent by the depravities of the Italian men.”

“These Neapolitans,” reads a later editorial, “give shocks to our children, who must pass them as they chatter and bark frightfully on our roads.”

It was unthinkable that an Italian, a Garibaldian, a Neapolitan, could have gained access to the Ellis household. Still, when interrogated by the Ellis family about the father of her child, Ruth Thomas’s grandmother would reply only, “He is Italian.”

There was some talk of action. Dr. Jules Ellis wanted Jane to be immediately dismissed, but his wife reminded him that it would be difficult and a trifle rude to dismiss a woman who was, after all, not an employee but a legal member of the family.

“Disown her, then!” thundered Vera Ellis’s brothers, but Vera would not hear of it. Jane had lapsed, and Vera felt betrayed, but, still, Jane was indispensable. No, there was no way around it: Jane must stay with the family because Vera Ellis could not live without her. Even Vera’s brothers had to admit this was a good point. Vera, after all, was impossible, and without the constant tending of Jane, she would have been a murderous little harpy. So, yes, Jane should stay.

What Vera did demand, instead of punishment for Jane, was a measure of punishment for the Italian community on Fort Niles. She was probably unfamiliar with the expression “lynch mob,” but that was not far from what she had in mind. She asked her father whether it would be too much trouble to round up some Italians and have them beaten, or have a peanut house or two burned down, don’t you know. But Dr. Jules Ellis wouldn’t hear of it. Dr. Ellis was far too shrewd a businessman to interrupt work at the quarry or injure his good laborers, so it was decided to hush up the entire matter. It would be handled as discreetly as possible.

Jane Smith-Ellis remained with the Ellis family during her pregnancy, performing her chores for Miss Vera. Her baby was born on the island in June of 1926, on the very night the Ellis family arrived on Fort Niles for the summer. No one had considered altering the schedule to accommodate the hugely pregnant Jane. Jane shouldn’t have been anywhere near a boat in her condition, but Vera had her travel out there, nine months pregnant. The baby was practically delivered on the Fort Niles dock. And the little girl was named Mary. She was the illegitimate daughter of an orphan and an immigrant, and she was Ruth’s mother.

Miss Vera gave Ruth’s grandmother one week’s respite from her duties after the difficult delivery of Mary. At the end of the week, Vera summoned Jane and said, almost tearfully, “I need you, darling. The baby is lovely, but I need you to help me. I simply can’t do without you. You’ll have to tend to me now.”

Thus Jane Smith-Ellis began her schedule of staying up all night to care for her baby and working all day for Miss Vera-sewing, dressing, plaiting hair, drawing baths, buttoning and unbuttoning gown after gown. The servants of Ellis House tried to look after the baby during the day, but they had their own chores to attend to. Ruth’s mother, although legally and rightfully an Ellis, spent her infancy in the servants’ quarters, pantries, and root cellars, passed from hand to hand, quietly, as though she were contraband. It was just as bad in the winter, when the family returned to Concord. Vera gave Jane no relief.

In early July of 1927, when Mary was just over a year old, Miss Vera Ellis became ill with the measles and developed a high fever. A doctor, who was one of the family’s summer guests on Fort Niles, treated Vera with morphine, which eased her discomfort and caused her to sleep for long hours each day. These hours provided Jane Smith-Ellis with the first period of rest she had since coming to Ellis House as a child. This was her first taste of leisure, her first reprieve from duty.

And so, one afternoon, while Miss Vera and baby Mary were both sleeping, Ruth’s grandmother strolled down the steep cliff path on the eastern shore of the island. Was this her first outing? The first free hours of her life? Probably. She carried her knitting with her, in a black bag. It was a lovely clear day, and the ocean was calm. Down at the shore, Jane Smith-Ellis climbed up on a large rock jutting into the sea, and there she perched, quietly knitting. The waves rose and fell evenly and mildly far below her. Gulls circled. She was alone. She continued to knit. The sun shone.

Back at Ellis House, after several hours, Miss Vera awoke and rang her bell. She was thirsty. A housemaid came to her room with a tumbler of water, but Miss Vera would not have it.

“I want Jane,” she said. “You are a darling, but I want my sister Jane. Will you summon her? Wherever could she be?”

The housemaid passed the request to the butler. The butler sent for a young assistant gardener and told him to fetch Jane Smith-Ellis. The young gardener walked along the cliffs until he saw Jane, sitting below on her rock, knitting.

“Miss Jane!” he shouted down, and waved.

She looked up and waved back.

“Miss Jane!” he shouted. “Miss Vera wants you!”

She nodded and smiled. And then, as the young gardener later testified, a great and silent wave rose from the sea and completely covered the enormous rock on which Jane Smith-Ellis was perched. When the gigantic wave receded, she was gone. The tide resumed its easy motion, and there was no sign of Jane. The gardener called for the other servants, who rushed down the cliff path to search for her, but they found not so much as a shoe. She was gone. She had simply been removed by the sea.

“Nonsense,” Miss Vera Ellis declared when she was told that Jane had vanished. “Of course she has not vanished. Go and find her. Now. Find her.”

The servants searched and the citizens of Fort Niles Island searched, but nobody found Jane Smith-Ellis. For days, the search parties scoured the shores, but no trace was discovered.

“Find her,” Miss Vera continued to command. “I need her. No one else can help me.”

And so she continued for weeks, until her father, Dr. Jules Ellis, came to her room with all four of her brothers and carefully explained the circumstances.

“I’m very sorry, my dear,” Dr. Ellis said to his only natural-born daughter. “I’m sorry indeed, but Jane is gone. It is pointless for anyone to search further.”

Miss Vera set her face in a stubborn scowl. “At the very least, can’t someone find her body? Can’t someone dredge for it?”

Miss Vera’s youngest brother scoffed. “One cannot dredge the sea, Vera, as though it were a fishpond.”

“We shall postpone the funeral service as long as we can,” Dr. Ellis assured his daughter. “Perhaps Jane’s body will emerge in time. But you must stop telling the servants to find Jane. It’s a waste of their time, and the household must be tended.”

“You see,” explained Vera’s eldest brother, Lanford, “they will not find her. Nobody will ever find Jane.”

The Ellis family held off on a funeral service for Jane Smith-Ellis until the first week of September. Then, because they had to return to Concord within a few days, they could delay the event no further. There was no talk of waiting until they returned to Concord, where they could put a marker on the family plot; there was no place for Jane there. Fort Niles seemed to be as good a place as any for Jane’s funeral. With no corpse to bury, Ruth’s grandmother’s funeral was more a memorial service than a funeral. Such a service is not uncommon on an island, where drowning victims often are not recovered. A stone was placed in the Fort Niles cemetery, carved from Fort Niles black granite. It read:

JANE SMITH-ELLIS

? 1884-JULY 10, 1927

SORELY MISSED

Miss Vera resignedly attended the service. She did not yet accept that Jane had abandoned her. She was, in fact, rather angry. At the end of the service, Miss Vera asked some of the servants to bring Jane’s baby to her. Mary was just over a year old. She would grow up to be Ruth Thomas’s mother, but at this time she was a tiny little girl. Miss Vera took Mary Smith-Ellis in her arms and rocked her. She smiled down at the child and said, “Well, little Mary. We shall now turn our attention to you.”