He's clinging onto something: a broken chair. The waves are rising and falling. Despite this turbulence there is no wind, and the air is piercingly clear. Past him, just out of reach, various objects are floating: a silver tray; a pair of candlesticks; a mirror; an engraved snuffbox; a gold watch, which is making a chirping noise, like a cricket. Things that were his father's once, but sold after his death. They're rising up from the depths like bubbles, more and more of them; as they reach the surface they roll slowly over, like bloating fish. They aren't hard, like metal, but soft; they have a scaly skin on them, like an eel's. He watches in horror, because now they're gathering, twining together, re-forming. Tentacles are growing. A dead hand. His father, in the sinuous process of coming back to life. He has an overwhelming sense of having transgressed.
He wakes, his heart is pounding; the sheets and comforter are tangled around him, the pillows are on the floor. He's soaked with sweat. After he's lain quietly for a time, reflecting, he thinks he understands the train of association that must have led to such a dream. It was Grace's story, with its Atlantic crossing, its burial at sea, its catalogue of household objects; and the overbearing father, of course. One father leads to another.
He checks the time by his pocket-watch, which is on the small bedside table: for once, he's slept in. Luckily his breakfast is late; but the surly Dora should be arriving at any moment, and he doesn't want to be surprised by her in his nightshirt, caught out in sloth. He throws on his dressing-gown and seats himself quickly at his writing table, turning his back to the door.
He will record the dream he's just had in the journal he keeps for such purposes. One school of French alienistes recommend the recording of dreams as a diagnostic tool; their own dreams, as well as those of their patients, for the sake of comparison. They hold dreams, like somnambulism, to be a manifestation of the animal life that continues below consciousness, out of sight, beyond reach of the will. Perhaps the hooks - the hinges, as it were - in the chain of memory, are located there?
He must reread Thomas Brown's work on association and suggestion, and Herbart's theory of the threshold of consciousness - the line that divides those ideas that are apprehended in full daylight from those others that lurk forgotten in the shadows below. Moreau de Tours considers the dream to be the key to the knowledge of mental illness, and Maine de Biran held that conscious life was only a sort of island, floating upon a much vaster subconscious, and drawing thoughts up from it like fish. What is perceived as being known is only a small part of what may be stored in this dark repository. Lost memories lie down there like sunken treasure, to be retrieved piecemeal, if at all; and amnesia itself may be in effect a sort of dreaming in reverse; a drowning of recollection, a plunging under....
Behind his back the door opens: his breakfast is making its entrance. Assiduously he dips his pen. He waits for the thump of the tray, the clatter of earthenware on wood, but he does not hear it.
"Just set it on the table, will you?" he says, without turning.
There is a sound like air going out of a small bellows, followed by a shattering crash. Simon's first thought is that Dora has hurled the tray at him - she has always suggested, to his mind, a barely repressed and potentially criminal violence. He shouts involuntarily, leaps up, and whirls around. Lying full-length upon the floor is his landlady, Mrs. Humphrey, in a shambles of broken crockery and ruined food.
He hurries over to her, kneels, and takes her pulse. At least she is still alive. He rolls open an eyelid, sees the opaque white. Swiftly he undoes the none-too-clean bibbed apron which she is wearing, and which he recognizes as the one habitually worn by slovenly Dora; then he unbuttons the front of her dress, noticing as he does so that there is a button missing, with the threads still hanging in place. He rummages around inside the layers of cloth, and at last succeeds in cutting her stay-laces with his pocket-knife, releasing an odour of violet-water, autumn leaves, and humid flesh. There is more to her than he would have supposed, although she is far from plump.
He carries her into his bedroom - the settee in his sitting room is too small for the purpose - and extends her upon the bed, placing a pillow beneath her feet to cause the blood to run back into her head. He considers removing her boots - which haven't been cleaned yet today - but decides that this would be an unwarranted familiarity.
Mrs. Humphrey has neat ankles, from which he averts his eyes; her hair is dishevelled from the fall. Seen this way she is younger than he's thought; and, with her habitual expression of strained anxiety wiped away by unconsciousness, much more attractive. He sets his ear against her breast, listening: the heartbeat is regular. A simple case of fainting, then. He moistens a towel with water from the jug and applies it to her face and neck. Her eyelids twitch.
Simon pours half a glass of water from the bottle on his nightstand, adds twenty drops of sal volatile - a medication he always carries with him on his afternoon visits, in case of any similar flimsiness on the part of Grace Marks, who is said to be prone to fainting - and, supporting Mrs. Humphrey with one arm, holds the glass to her lips.
"Swallow this."
She gulps awkwardly, then lifts a hand to her head. There is a red mark, he notices now, on the side of her face. Perhaps her scoundrel of a husband is a brute as well as a sot. Though this looks more like a hard slap, and surely such a man as the Major would employ a closed fist. Simon feels a wave of protective pity for her that he cannot really afford. The woman is only his landlady; apart from that she's a complete stranger to him. He has no wish to alter this situation, despite an image that leaps into his mind, unbidden - aroused no doubt by the sight of a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed - of Mrs. Humphrey, semi-conscious and with her hands fluttering helplessly in the air, minus her stays and with her chemise half torn off, her feet - curiously, still in their boots - kicking spasmodically, making faint mewing noises while being savaged by a hulking figure that bears no resemblance at all to himself; although - from above, and from the back, which is his point of view during this sordid scene - the quilted dressing-gown looks identical.
He has always been curious about these manifestations of the imagination as he has been able to observe them in himself. Where do they come from? If they occur in him, they must occur as well in the majority of men. He is both sane and normal, and he has developed the rational faculties of his mind to a high degree; and yet he cannot always control such pictures. The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend - a madman, say - lies, perhaps, merely in a thin veneer of willed self-restraint.
"You are quite safe," he says to her kindly. "You have had a fall. You must rest quietly until you feel better."
"But - I am on a bed." She gazes around her.
"It is my bed, Mrs. Humphrey. I was forced to carry you to it in the absence of any other suitable place."
The skin of her face is now flushed. She has noticed his dressing-gown. "I must leave at once."
"I beg you to remember that I am a doctor, and, for the time being, you are my patient. If you were to attempt to get up now, there might be a recurrence."
"Recurrence?"
"You collapsed, while carrying in" - it seems indelicate to mention it - "my breakfast tray. May I ask you - what has become of Dora?"
To his consternation, but not to his surprise, she begins to cry. "I could not pay her. I owed her three months' back wages; I had succeeded in selling some - some items of a personal nature, but my husband took the money from me, two days ago. He has not been back since. I do not know where he has gone." She makes a visible effort to control her tears.
"And this morning?"
"We had - words. She insisted on payment. I told her I could not, that it was not possible. She said in that case she would pay herself. She began to go through my bureau drawers, in search of jewellery, I suppose. Not finding any, she said she would have my wedding ring. It was gold, but very plain. I attempted to defend it from her. She said I was not honest. She ... struck me. Then she took it, a
nd said she would not be an unpaid slave to me any longer, and then she left the house. After that I prepared your breakfast myself, and carried it up. What else was I to do?"
So it was not the husband then, thinks Simon. It was that sow of a Dora. Mrs. Humphrey begins to cry again, gently, effortlessly, as if the sobs are a kind of birdsong.
"You must have some good woman friend you can go to. Or who can come to you." Simon is anxious to transfer Mrs. Humphrey from his own shoulders to those of someone else. Women help each other; caring for the afflicted is their sphere. They make beef tea and jellies. They knit comforting shawls. They pat and soothe.
"I have no friends in this place. We have only recently come to this city, having suffered - having undergone some financial difficulties in our previous abode. My husband discouraged visits. He did not want me going out."
A useful thought comes to Simon. "You must eat something. You will feel stronger."
At this she smiles wanly at him. "There is nothing in the house to eat, Dr. Jordan. Your breakfast was the last of it. I have not eaten for two days, ever since my husband left. What little there was, Dora ate up herself. I have had nothing but water."
And so Simon finds himself at the market, purchasing stores for the physical maintenance of his landlady, with his own money. He'd helped Mrs. Humphrey down the stairs to her own part of the house; she'd insisted on it, saying she could not afford to be found in the bedroom of her lodger in the event of her husband's return. He wasn't surprised to find that the rooms were essentially bare of furniture: a table and two chairs were all that remained in the parlour. But there was still a bed in the back bedroom, and onto it he had placed Mrs. Humphrey, in a state of nervous exhaustion. And starvation, too: no wonder she was so bony. He turned his mind away from the bed, and from the scenes of conjugal misery that must have been enacted upon it.
Then he went back upstairs to his own rooms, with a slop pail he'd located; the kitchen had been a shambles. He cleaned up the spilled breakfast and the broken dishes from his floor, noting that for once the now-ruined egg had been perfectly cooked.
He supposes he will have to give notice to Mrs. Humphrey, and change his lodgings, which will be an inconvenience; although preferable to the disruption of his life and work that would surely be the consequence if he were to stay. Disorder, chaos, the Bailiff's men coming for the furniture in his own chambers, no doubt. But if he leaves, what will become of the wretched woman? He does not want her on his conscience, which is where she will be if she starves to death on a street corner.
He buys some eggs, and some bacon and cheese, and some dirty-looking butter from an old farm woman at one of the stalls; and, at a shop, some tea twisted up in a paper. He would like bread, but there is none to be seen. He doesn't really know how to go about this. He's visited the market before, but only fleetingly, to obtain the vegetables with which he has been hoping to prod Grace's memory. Now he's on a different footing entirely. Where can he purchase milk? Why are there no apples? This is a universe he has never explored, having had no curiosity about where his food came from, as long as it did come. The other shoppers at the market are servants, their mistresses' shopping baskets over their arms; or else women of the poorer classes, in limp bonnets and bedraggled shawls. He feels they are laughing at him behind his back.
When he returns, Mrs. Humphrey is up. She's wrapped herself in a quilt and tidied her hair, and is sitting beside the stove, which is luckily alight - he himself would not know how to manage it - rubbing her hands together and shivering. He succeeds in making her some tea, and in frying some eggs and bacon, and in toasting a stale bun which he eventually found at the market. They eat these together, at the one remaining table. He wishes there were some marmalade.
"This is so good of you, Dr. Jordan."
"Think nothing of it. I could not let you starve." His voice is heartier than he intends, the voice of a jolly and insincere uncle who can scarcely wait to bestow the expected quarter-dollar on the grovelling poor-relation niece, pinch her cheek, and then make his getaway to the opera. Simon wonders what the bad Major Humphrey is doing right now, and curses him silently, and envies him. Whatever it may be, it is more enjoyable than this.
Mrs. Humphrey sighs. "I am afraid it will come to that. I am at the end of my resources." She is now quite calm, and is looking at her situation objectively. "The rent of the house must be paid, and there is no money. Soon they will come like vultures to pick over the bones, and I will be turned out. Perhaps I will even be arrested for debt. I would rather die."
"Surely there must be something you can do," says Simon. "To earn a living." She is clutching for her self-respect, and he admires her for it.
She gazes at him. Her eyes, in this light, are an odd shade of sea-green. "What do you suggest, Dr. Jordan? Fancy needlework? Women like me have few skills they can sell." There's a hint of malicious irony in her voice. Does she know what he was thinking as she lay unconscious on his unmade bed?
"I will advance you another two months' rent," he finds himself saying. He's a fool, a soft-hearted idiot; if he had any sense he would be out of here as if the Devil himself were in pursuit. "That should be sufficient to hold the wolves at bay, at least until you've had time to consider your prospects."
Her eyes fill with tears. Without a word, she lifts his hand from the table and presses it gently to her lips. The effect is only slightly dampened by the trace of butter that remains upon her mouth.
18.
Today Dr. Jordan looks more disarranged than usual, and as if he has something on his mind; he does not seem to know quite how to begin. So I continue with my sewing until he's had time to gather himself together; and then he says, Is that a new quilt you are working on, Grace?
And I say, Yes it is, Sir, it is a Pandora's Box for Miss Lydia.
This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing. Mr. Kinnear was like that as well. And he says, And do you know who Pandora was, Grace?
And I say, Yes, she was a Greek person from days of old, who looked into a box she had been told not to, and a lot of diseases came out, and wars, and other human ills; for I had learnt it a long time ago, at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's. Mary Whitney had a low opinion of the story, and said why did they leave such a box lying around, if they didn't want it opened.
He is surprised to find I know that, and says, But do you know what was at the bottom of the box?
Yes Sir, I say, it was hope. And you could make a joke of it, and say that hope was what you got when you scraped the bottom of the barrel, as some do who have to marry at last out of desperation. Or you could say it was a hope chest. But in any case it is all just a fable; although a pretty quilt pattern.
Well, I suppose we all need a little hope now and then, he says.
I am on the point of saying that I have been getting along without it for some time, but I refrain; and then I say, You do not look yourself today, Sir, I trust you are not ill.
And he smiles his one-sided smile, and says he isn't ill, only preoccupied; but that if I would continue with my story, it would be a help to him, as it would distract him from his worries; but he does not say what these worries might be.
And so I go on.
Now, Sir, I say, I will come to a happier part of my story; and in this part I will tell you about Mary Whitney; and then you will understand why it was her name I borrowed, when I was in need of it; for she was never one to refuse a friend in need, and I hope I stood by her as well, when the time came for it.
The house of my new employment was very grand, and was known as one of the finest houses in Toronto. It was situated on Front Street, overlooking the Lake, where there were many other big houses; and it had a curved portico with white pillars at the front. The dining room was oval in shape, as was the drawing room, and a marvel to behold, although drafty. And there was a library as big as a ballroom, with shelves up to the ceiling all stuffed full of books in leather covers
, with more words in them than you would ever want to read in your life. And the bedchambers had high tester bedsteads with hangings, and also netting to keep out the flies in summer, and dressing tables with looking glasses, and mahogany commodes, and chests of drawers all complete. They were Church of England, as all the best people were in those days, and also those who wanted to be the best, as it was Established.
The family consisted, first, of Mr. Alderman Parkinson, who was seldom visible, as he was much engaged in business and politics; he was the shape of an apple with two sticks stuck into it for legs. He had so many gold watch-chains and gold pins and gold snuffboxes and other trinkets, you could have got five necklaces out of him if he was melted down, with the earrings to match. Then there was Mrs. Alderman Parkinson, and Mary Whitney said she ought to have been the Alderman herself, as she was the better man. She was an imposing figure of a woman, and a very different shape out of her corsets than in them; but when she was firmly laced in, her bosom jutted out like a shelf, and she could have carried a whole tea service around on it and never spilt a drop. She came from the United States of America, and had been a well-to-do widow before being, as she said, swept off her feet by Mr. Alderman Parkinson; which must have been a sight to behold; and Mary Whitney said it was a wonder Mr. Alderman Parkinson had escaped with his life.
She had two grown sons who were away at college in the States; and also a spaniel dog named Bevelina, which I include as family because it was treated as such. I am fond of animals as a rule but this one took an effort.
Then there were the servants, which were many in number; and some left and others came while I was there, so I will not mention them all. There was Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's lady's maid, who claimed to be French although we had our doubts, and kept to herself; and Mrs. Honey the housekeeper, who had quite a large room at the back of the main floor, and so did the butler; and the cook and laundress lived next the kitchen. The gardener and stablemen lived in the outbuildings, as did the two kitchen maids, near the stable with the horses and three cows, where I went sometimes to help with the milking.