“How are ya, Sis?”
Not even Domingo can stop my shivering now. I do not have to probe his face to be absolutely certain that Richard Midnight, lately of the Handyman’s shed in Holyoke, is my interlocutor. He lights a cigar, and I can catch his dark demean in the burning coals that resemble a ruthless eye. His chest isn’t bare at Tardy Tavern. It’s encased in a black leather jacket that a pirate might don while he pillaged and ruined people’s lives. I have no wish to engage him in banter or ask where he had gone after Miss Rebecca had forced him to vacate the shack. Lord, I am a better detective than even I had imagined. Richard Midnight had not vanished into some forlorn wilderness. He’d come to Amherst with his lady love. That’s what I was willing to wager.
It couldn’t be fortune alone that had landed him in the same place as Zilpah at the same time, or that the current rash of burglaries had started after Midnight was thrown out of Holyoke. He was the housebreaker who was haunting our village, who struck with such blind authority, pilfering from the finest houses at just the right intervals to preserve a picture of randomness. There was nothing random about his accomplice, Zilpah Marsh, and her yellow gloves. She now had a prodigious mask: she was housekeeper and maid to the village’s very own earl.
It was pointless to ask Richard Midnight about his next robbery. He’d lie until he went blue.
“You’re a touch untalkative for a lonesome girl,” says he.
“I have nothing much to say, Mr. Midnight.”
“That’s remarkable, considering that I once kissed your cheek.”
“You never did.”
He laughs in the dark like some jackal poised to attack.
“I should warn you, Mr. Midnight, I have my dog Carlo with me, right under the table. And if you make one rude gesture or remark, I will consign him to rip out your lungs.”
I have not foiled him in the least with my mention of Carlo. He only laughs the louder. “I’ll bet you would, Sis. I’ll bet you would. I was being hospitable, is all. I mean, I might be inclined to give your regards to ol’ Brainard when I’m next in New Haven.”
If Midnight was trying to stun, then he succeeded in doing so. His laughter turns into a terrible guffaw. And I can feel the same meanness that he had in Tom’s shed.
“I never got to see your bony little bottom, Sis.”
“Told you to be civil,” I growl at him.
“I’m as civil as can be. But I do have an appetite for ya, Sis.”
I’d rather be fondled by a tarantula. But that foolish man leaps out of the dark and lunges at me with amorous intent. I have to drink in his foul breath before Carlo bites into that fancy leather jacket, holds it in his jaws until half of Midnight’s arm disappears, then releases him, and sends Midnight flying across the room with a bump of his skull. Carlo isn’t a mean dog. He was protecting his mistress. And he wouldn’t have chewed off Midnight’s arm or leg unless I told him to.
I lean over Midnight and feed him a lick of water while he trembles and covers his head with his hands. I ought to rejoice in Midnight’s collapse, but I can’t. He starts to whine.
“Take that monster away. I swear on the Bible. I’ll be good.”
I don’t have to shove Carlo under the table. My dog disappears without a sign from me. Carlo would rather have nothing more to do with Richard Midnight.
“Where did you ever meet Brainard?” I ask, curious about my Domingo.
Midnight’s quiet for a moment, but without Carlo’s whiskers in his face he regains a little of his pluck.
“Right here, in this rummy house. I had many a beaker with him. He talked about ya.”
“Brainard wouldn’t mention me to the likes of you.”
“Wouldn’t he now?” Midnight says with a sneer. Zilpah must have leaked my fondness for rum resorts. “Ah, permit me to recollect. There was something about an altercation at a sugaring party. And about having a beaker with you in this prime establishment. He described you down to a tit—your rat’s red hair, eyes the color of rotting corn, your stick of a body, with the white thighs of a nun. And I says to myself, ‘Richard, ain’t that our Sis from the Female Academy?’”
I cannot bear to listen any longer, and I run out the room with Carlo, while Richard Midnight’s triumphant snort beats upon my back.
IT’S THE COLD WIND THAT DRIVES THE SOUND OF RICHARD Midnight from my brain. My composure seems to come back as I move along the Commons with Carlo, and once I reach our doorstep I wear a smile. I do not interrogate Zilpah like some captain of artillery with a hostile in the house. I watch her tend the stove in her yellow gloves. And when it is time for her to leave, I bid her goodbye, brooding under my own mask.
“Mistress, will ya be needing me early tomorrow?”
She has insinuated herself into Father’s affections and has begun baking his bread.
“No,” I answer. “I will tend to the Squire.”
She takes a lantern with her since it is well after dark, and hence it is simple enough for me to follow her without a lantern of my own that might lend some suspicion of light. I dare not bring Carlo with me, as he lopes like a lion in the snow. And so it is Zilpah herself who is my beacon as she plunges into the fields south of the cemetery and east of the livery stable. There is not another light on the horizon except for the houses on Main Street, with their harsh and eerie shimmer that rises off the snow.
She crosses Main Street, and with her lantern she winds down the road, past the hat factory that looks like an abandoned fort at night, and into that dark dead-end of Rooming-house Row, where the transients live with workers at the hat factory. She enters one of the rooming houses, with its crippled porch and crippled gate, and the lantern light disappears with her, as not one of the buildings in this blind alley is lit.
Lord, I have landed in a maze. And for a moment I wish I had a third of Lavinia’s newly-found religious zeal. Somehow I’d rather trust the Devil in this dark morass at Amherst’s eastern edge. But even the Devil has abandoned me. I’ve lost my bearings and do not have the means to walk out of this maze. And I wonder if I will have to spend the night curled up against a crippled porch.
And then Satan himself provides me with a miracle. I catch a whole cluster of swinging lanterns from within the heart of the maze. And I hear the favorite rigmarole of Brother’s fraternity, a nonsense song about Greek urns and the supernatural powers of Alpha Delta Phi, and I realize that the village’s only brothel must be hidden in the same cul-de-sac.
I do not have to cry for help. The lanterns’ conflicting light finally falls upon the old maid of Amherst.
“Gawd,” says one of the fraternity men, “I do believe we have found that missing harlot. Sister, speak your name, or forever be silent.”
“I am the ghost of Currer Bell,” I cry as loud as I can in my tiny voice.
The brothers are taken aback. They did not expect to stumble upon so literate a voice in this blind warren. They shine their lights upon me with much more precision.
“Brother Austin,” says the same fraternity man, “is she your sister or is she not?”
And Brother himself descends from the shadows while pulling up his pants and lurching from lantern to lantern like a drunken college boy. He is too muddled to have much anger on his face.
“Emily, what are you doing in this godforsaken corner?”
“The same as you, I imagine. Looking for adventure.”
“And what sort of adventure could you possibly find in Rooming-house Row?” asks my late intended, little Gould, his enormous ears suddenly materializing in front of my eyes.
“I am not much traveled, Mr. Gould, being a member of the female sex who is not permitted to venture far without a male. But I had an irresistible urge to see where the maids and housekeepers of our finest families live.”
“Without a lantern? And in the dark?”
“I did not worry, Mr. Gould, once I realized that Brother’s fraternity was chasing harlots on the very same streets. Harum-scarum, I knew I would r
un into Alpha Delta Phi.”
Little Gould disappears into the darkness again, while Austin puts his arm around me. It’s as much affection as I’ve gotten from him ever since that Tutor from Mars complicated his life and mine. Alpha Delta Phi escorts me back to West Street, singing their rigmarole as they stumble along, their lanterns swinging wildly, and under all that furor I can hear Austin’s heartbeat as he clutches me close.
But I ain’t comforted much. I might have done better without Austin and his Alphas. I could have slept on Zilpah’s porch and waited for the sun to rise. I would have learned something about that robbers’ roost of hers. But what if the robbers had swept me inside and I never saw Pa-pa and Carlo again? They wouldn’t have bothered ransoming an old maid. And suppose their leader, Richard Midnight, tried to peck at me with his filthy mouth while Zilpah guffawed with delight and savored her own triumph? She’d have Pa-pa all to herself. She’d inherit my pencils and writing paper, and Pa-pa would consider it a miracle to have a housekeeper who could scratch an occasional Verse. Lord, it was too much to bear.
20.
I WAIT LIKE A CROUCHING LIONESS FOR THE NEXT RASH OF robberies in our village, but there is none. Not even the most isolated farmhouse has been touched. The burglars of Rooming-house Row must have been asleep or preparing to pounce. But I promise myself not to allow them a convenient place to perch. I realize quickly enough that our head-quarters on West Street has become their new pilothouse, with Zilpah as an impeccable pilot. She is employed by Father, after all, and has his strictest confidence. Thus she can wander in her winter shawl as housekeeper to the earl, and select her targets without the least suspicion falling on her head.
But she hadn’t counted on a female detective whose primer is nothing more than her own pernicious mind. I cannot calculate the scene of any crime that has not yet been committed. But I can scout the particular haunt of these housebreakers. And so I return under the scrutiny of daylight to the dead-end streets behind the hat factory, bringing Carlo along as my companion, hoping he will frighten the larger rats who have to reside in such a filthy warren. But my Carlo did not crush any rats with his regal front paw. There was not a rat to be found in the whole rookery, nor was there the filth I had imagined.
The housebreakers’ little cul-de-sac is not unkempt. I discover many a flower bed behind the crippled gates, with roosters surveying the lawns and children playing on porches sturdy enough to hold them. I even discover a chaise parked between two houses.
Lord, it is no less a landscape than West Street. And if ever I have to flee from Father and live incognito for a little while, I might consider this cul-de-sac, except that the housebreakers themselves would unmask me, since they have Zilpah Marsh.
And just when I thought my reconnoitering had led me to very little, I notice a very blond man sally forth from Zilpah’s own rooming house with a wheelbarrow that holds a large ornate clock, the very same one or a facsimile of such that I have seen many a time during the Senior levees in President Hitchcock’s parlor. But that clock does not interest me half as much as the very blond man. It’s my Tom, dressed like the finest gentleman in a frock coat, his shoes made of Spanish leather, I’m sure, his cravat as profound as the blue of his eyes. He wheels his barrow toward me without the least alarm, though there is enough evidence within its metal walls to put Tom into the penitentiary.
What hurts me most is that Tom looks directly into my acorn-colored eyes and does not have the faintest idea who I am. Perhaps my own past with Tom is part fairy tale, and he a player in a dream of mine; I long to pinch myself and prove that I had nursed Tom one morning a couple of Valentine seasons ago, while he was ill in his shed.
I start to shiver at that lack of recognition in his face, and Lord help me, I must have swooned. I wake up in the wheelbarrow, nesting above the clock, with a blanket over me and Tom’s frock coat. In my delirium I shout, “Where’s Carlo?” For I am all alone in this cul-de-sac of housebreakers and handymen who are the fodder and foodstuff of dreams. But Tom reappears with a pitcher of water and a measuring cup. I adored Tom once in his handyman’s smock with soot all over him, but now his fine clothes feel foreign to me. And I’m mostly bitter. Tom’s wearing one of Pa-pa’s paisley scarves. That little housekeeper must have filched it from Pa-pa’s drawer.
“Where’s Carlo?” I have to ask again.
He pours the liquid and holds the cup while I drink. “Carlo,” I shout between sips. “My companion.”
“Ah, your dog,” says Tom like a savant. “He was hungry and I fed him.”
“But Carlo would never abandon me, not for all the chicken bones in China.”
The Handyman laughs, his blondness overwhelming in the sunlight. I feel certain to swoon again until I notice Carlo galloping toward us in one great leap. He licks Tom’s hand before he licks my face. I fancy he has found a master to replace his mistress and will move into this cul-de-sac with Tom.
“I thank you for the refreshment, Sir. Your liquid has revived me. But I must go.”
“Sit awhile,” he says. “What is your name, Miss?”
I dare not say Dickinson, because if my Tom is indeed Zilpah’s accomplice and paramour, I would not have him know I am Squire Dickinson’s daughter.
“I’m Currer Bell, visiting from England with my faithful dog. My dear uncle, Widower Rochester, is waiting, and I rather he not worry.”
I rise up off that ornate clock as if it were a coffin and signal to Carlo with one eye, but my faithful companion seems in small hurry to leave Tom the Handyman.
“Miss, you have yet to ask me my name.”
“Sorry, Sir, I am soft in the head. What is it?”
“Tom Harkins.”
And suddenly I am filled with remorse. Even with all my aristocratic upbringing, I had let Zilpah Marsh trick me into believing that a ward of Massachusetts like Tom might not own a surname. He was fixed forever as Tom the Handyman in my Holyoke hauteur.
He catches me looking at the clock. I couldn’t care less what he stole. He could have waylaid every last stick of furniture in the President’s mansion as long as he recognized me. It ain’t asking too much from a suitor, and then I have to recall that Tom Harkins never suitored me.
But it’s the clock that’s started cooking in his brain, the President’s clock.
“That old clock mean anything to you, Miss Currer Bell?”
“Oh, the clock’s a curiosity,” I say. “We have one just like it in Widower Rochester’s manor-house.”
“Then it’s recognizable,” says he, “and you might be able to describe it to a third party.”
His blue eyes turn a little mean. And if truth be told, I love his suspicion. Let him rattle my bones. It would prove that he’s taken an interest in me.
“It’s imbedded in my mind, Mr. Tom Harkins. I couldn’t disremember a single detail.”
I close my eyes, waiting for my beloved burglar to strike. But Tom don’t trespass upon my person. He whispers in my ear.
“Miss Currer Bell, I might be inclined to let ya go if you promise not to mention that clock to anyone, alive or dead.”
Alive or dead. That was a delicate touch. I suppose he’ll smother me now with a silk scarf.
“But I hardly know anyone in Massachusetts, Mr. Tom, alive or dead. And Widower Rochester is blind.”
I open my eyes, and there’s a smile on his beautiful face. Perhaps he sensed that I was a burglar too, a member of his trade, and that I would do him no harm. Or perhaps he saw through my disguise. Either way I wasn’t worthy enough to reckon with.
He bows to me in his frock coat, as if I were no more than an illusion with red hair.
“Please give my regards to the Widower, Miss Currer Bell.”
Tom removes himself with his wheelbarrow and Pa-pa’s paisley scarf, and leaves me all alone with Carlo in that cul-de-sac. I’m riven with gloom, as if a monster held me in its sway. I was nothing more than the possible witness to a stolen clock. How could I ever survive if I was s
o invisible to Tom? I had an urge to jump down Pa-pa’s well.
The last time I felt this dark was when I was thirteen and Cousin Sophia died of brain fever. I was allowed to visit with her during her final agony. I took off my shoes and tiptoed into the sick-room, where I looked at her pale eyes and chalk-white skin. Cousin Sophia wasn’t delirious. She recognized me, I think. And she muttered, Lord, I wish I could live inside a well. I wanted to hold her hand, but the doctor wouldn’t let me stay.
The month Sophia died I was so forlorn that I couldn’t go back to school. Pa-pa sent me to Boston to soften my grief. People thought it brave for a schoolgirl to travel on her own. I didn’t feel brave. I lived with an aunt on Poplar Street, and on the way back from Boston I stopped at Worcester, where I stayed with one of my uncles and visited the Lunatic Hospital at Pa-pa’s request. But I didn’t need his encouragement. I was dying to see our old housekeeper, Evelyn O’Hare, who had been locked away.
I trembled as I approached the hospital’s portico on Asylum Street. It wasn’t out of fear for myself, but out of anxiousness for Evelyn’s condition. But she wasn’t even a patient at the hospital. Evelyn, I would learn from the hospital’s keepers, had been cured of her “violent melancholy” and lived on the grounds as a maid. The warden spent an hour searching for Evelyn. It near destroyed me just to look at her. She’d been a maiden when she worked for Pa-pa, full of her own wishes to find a man. And now she didn’t have a tooth in her head. I hugged her anyway, and we cried like two sisters who had been lost on the road and found each other after five years. She said I looked like a fine little lady.
I kept touching her face, but she wouldn’t touch mine.
“Warden’s watching us,” she whispered in my ear. I couldn’t even have some cake with her in the refectory. She wasn’t allowed to dine with guests.
The warden kept signaling her to get to work. Suddenly there was a smile on her face, and she was the same stubborn girl I remembered. She hugged me and kissed my hair. “Bless you, Little Mistress.”
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Page 10