Jamintha

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  Jamintha

  I read the letter through twice. There was a dull ache at the back of my head and my hands trembled as I gathered up the pages scattered over the counterpane to put them back into the envelope. Jamintha was doing this for me. Brence meant nothing to her. She was using him to get information. Her letter had brought him to life so vividly. He was in love with her … I pulled the bell cord to summon Susie, feeling more wretched than I had ever been in my life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dower House was bustling with activity. A wagon-load of men had come from the village and were busily putting the place in order, beating the carpets and polishing the woodwork and washing the windows until they sparkled like crystal. A gardener clipped the shrubs and trimmed the lawn and raked up leaves. Hearty sounds rang in the air. Workmen with bronzed forearms went about their tasks with jovial industry. On the following morning another wagon arrived, this one loaded with crates of books and an enormous old mahogany desk, scarred and battered. Johnny Stone was helping unload, and naturally Susie was brimful of information.

  “Dower House has a new tenant,” she informed me. “Mister Charles is positively livid, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Some doctor has taken a lease for the winter, Doctor Clark, his name is. He plans to write a book or something and thinks the isolation will be ideal. No one has met him yet, but a manservant came to Danmoor and made all the arrangements and paid the workmen in advance. Doctor Clark should be arriving any day now. I imagine he’s terribly old and a bit eccentric. He’d have to be eccentric to rent a place like Dower House.”

  “He plans to write a book, you say?”

  Susie nodded. “He isn’t a doctor doctor, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t work in a hospital or treat wounds or prescribe medicine like Doctor Green. He does research and writes lengthy reports on nervous disorders and phren—phren-something-or-other.”

  “Phrenology?”

  “I guess that’s right,” Susie replied. “Johnny said that the servant told one of the workmen that Doctor Clark actually visits asylums and talks to the crazy people. Gives me the shivers, the very idea.”

  A flock of women came in to do the lighter work at Dower House, robust types in kerchiefs and starched aprons who scrubbed and polished and waxed the furniture. Their strident voices carried across the gardens, as did the smells of beeswax and soap and lemon oil. New curtains were hung at all the windows. Plumes of smoke curled from the chimneys, and the once deserted house began to take on a new face. Susie kept me informed on the progress, but I had too many other things on my mind to be much interested in Doctor Clark’s pending arrival.

  Although the headaches persisted, I seemed to be regaining some of my strength, and Doctor Green believed that a little exercise in the mornings might be good for me so long as I didn’t overdo it. I began to take short walks in the gardens, always returning to my room before eleven o’clock. I slept soundly during the afternoons, usually awakening around six. After a couple of hours of reading, I ate the meal brought to me on a tray and slept again until the morning sunshine came streaming into the room. I saw no one besides Susie. Charles Danver seemed to have forgotten my existence, Helene DuBois was occupied with her duties and Brence had no time to think about a sickly cousin confined to her room most of the day. I re-read Jamintha’s letter almost every day and eagerly awaited another.

  Saturday was fair day. Susie was in a flurry of excitement, eager to be gone. Cook had agreed to bring my lunch and dinner trays so that Susie could spend the day with Johnny. He was to pick her up at nine, and she came back to my room to model her dress again, looking a saucy and impudent hoyden with mischief in her eyes. Johnny Stone was going to have his hands full. I envied the girl her high spirits and her lively anticipation. Her bubbling gaiety and blooming health made me feel pale and listless, although I managed to hide it. Susie was a treasure, loyal, hard-working, devoted to me, and she deserved all the fun she could find.

  I felt lonely and restless when she left. My hair was tightly braided, the braids arranged in a severe coronet. I was wearing a long-sleeved gray dress. In the mirror my eyes looked enormous, faint violet shadows beneath them, and the skin was stretched taut over my high cheekbones. Susie and Johnny would have a lusty, rollicking time at the fair, and Brence would be there with Jamintha. I was alone, abysmally alone, a deep depression threatening to overcome me. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me, and I felt a mounting panic.

  I hated the face in the mirror. I hated plain, prim Jane Danver with her stiff mannerisms and her timidity and fears, her miserable headaches and poor health. I was just eighteen years old, but I felt eighty, overlooked by life, never to know the joyous secrets that made it worthwhile. I wanted to be pretty and blithe, like Jamintha. I wanted to go to the fair and laugh and flirt and dance. I felt trapped, doomed to be Jane for the rest of my days, dull, pale, sickly, a prisoner inside this body. These thoughts raced through my mind as I stared into the clouded glass, and the glass seemed to blur, suddenly misty. To my surprise I discovered tears in my eyes. I wiped them away irritably, scolding myself, wondering what momentary aberration had caused me to indulge in such pitiful fancies.

  The bedroom was confined and stuffy, smelling of sickness, bedcovers disheveled, a bottle of medicine on the bedstand, the room of a semi-invalid. I had to get out of it before I suffocated. I had to get away from Danver Hall if only for a little while.

  The moors called to me. I could no longer resist their call. Leaving the house and passing through the gardens, I hurried toward the freedom and serenity I knew awaited. The flat, barren gray-brown land comforted me, the soil itself seeming to give me strength. I watched a bird with widespread black wings circling slowly, rising higher and higher until it was no more than a speck of charred paper against a pearl gray sky stained with blue. I breathed in the smell of peat, strong, pungent, redolent of an ancient life force that had survived centuries and welcomed me now.

  My earlier dejection vanished, as had my headache. I belonged here. Here I was not an outsider, an intruder, and here it didn’t matter that I wasn’t pretty and capricious and bright. I climbed up the long sloping hill and stood for a moment, feeling stronger than I had. felt in weeks, as free as the circling bird, no longer tormented by worries and fears. The music of the waters could be heard now, a rushing, gurgling, sparkling sound that echoed through the valley of gray boulders. I walked toward those majestic stones, soon engulfed by them. I could smell moss and damp grass and the elusive, subtle fragrance of the delicate purple wildflowers that grew nowhere else.

  I leaned against a mica-encrusted boulder and watched a series of tiny waterfalls splashing down the rugged face of a giant stone, the water streaming down straight at the top, breaking and dividing into two streams, then four, glittering in the sun like liquid diamonds, transparent misty spray shot with all the colors of the rainbow. Here was age-old beauty, and if that beauty could be transformed into emotion it would be the emotion I felt for Brence Danver. I thought about him, indulging myself, forgetting my resolve. Love should be like this, shimmering, glistening, rushing over the hard gray surface of life, but mine must be welled up inside, a secret stream never exposed to the sunlight. I recalled his touch, the feel of his flushed, heavy body and the sensations it had awakened in me. How surprised he would be to know that stiff, thorny Jane could feel such exquisite things. How sad that he would never know.

  There was no place for melancholy here. Leaving the waterfalls behind, I followed the mossy path around the boulders, made small and insignificant by their great size. It was sad, yes, that he would never know, that I could never tell him, but it was better to have glimpsed the beauty and be denied it than never to have seen it at all. Brence Danver was a rake, irresponsible and cruel, unworthy of such love. I realized that. He would scorn it, demolish it, make a mockery of the beauty. Dammed up inside of me, kept secret, it was safe from his heartless plunder.

  I thought of the anguish he was feeling, the s
uffering Jamintha’s rejection was causing him. He had never been treated that way before, and it was infuriating and frustrating and completely maddening to a man like him. I loved him, yet I couldn’t help but feel a perverse satisfaction. She was deliberately tormenting him, and I could tell from her letter that she was enjoying every minute of it. Jamintha was wise in the ways of the world. She might be attracted to him—any woman would be—but she would never permit herself to fall in love with him.

  I frowned, thinking about her letter. In many ways Jamintha was hard, as merciless in matters of the heart as Brence was himself. She was bold and dashing, unconventional and defiant, caring not a jot that the women of Danmoor thought her a shameless hussy. She considered it all a grand lark and practiced her deceit without a qualm. She was a fascinating creature, beguiling and gay, but one couldn’t completely approve of her. Still, she was my champion and friend, and I realized how fortunate I was to have her. She had brought color and vitality to a drab existence at the school, coming to my aid in time of need, always there, always carefree and smiling. She had come to my aid again. I might not understand her, I might not approve of some of the things she did, but I could never feel anything but gratitude and deep affection for the one person who had made my life endurable these past eleven years.

  Lost in thought, really paying little attention to where I was going, I was almost upon the man before I noticed him. He was sitting on a rock beside the rushing blue-white stream. He stood up, closing the book he had been reading and slipping it into his jacket pocket. He smiled at my dismay, a warm, amiable smile.

  “Oh—” I said. “I—I didn’t see you.”

  “You were very preoccupied,” he said in a quiet, melodious voice.

  “I didn’t expect anyone else to be here—”

  “Nor did I,” he replied. “You must be Jane. I’m Doctor Gavin Clark. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  “You’re Doctor Clark?”

  “I moved into Dower House two days ago.”

  “How did you know who I am?”

  “I was guessing,” he said. “You obviously aren’t Helene DuBois, and you’re not a village girl. You’d have to be Jane, wouldn’t you? I heard all about Danver Hall and the people who live there before I took my lease. My manservant was brimming over with gossip when he returned to London.”

  Doctor Gavin Clark was tall and slender, dressed in dusty brown boots and a slightly rumpled rust-brown suit. Beautifully tailored, the suit was not quite shabby, but it had seen better days, as had his emerald green waistcoat. His hair was disheveled by the wind, a rich red, silvered at the temples, and his lightly tanned face was attractively lined although he couldn’t be much over thirty. His mouth was wide, the dry lips full curved and generous, and he had the warmest brown eyes I had ever seen. They were full of compassion, the eyes of a man concerned with life and dedicated to making it better.

  “I understand you’ve been ill,” he said.

  I nodded. Ordinarily I would have been awkward and ill at ease, nervous at meeting a stranger so unexpectedly, but there was something about Gavin Clark that inspired confidence. He had an aura of worn, mellowed gentility that did not detract from his obvious virility. One sensed strength and purpose, an integral part of him that added character to that handsome, rather ravaged face. His warmth, his gentility were reassuring, and I responded to him immediately.

  “Doctor Green told me something about your case,” he added. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Much better.”

  “Still bothered by headaches and weakness?”

  “Somewhat,” I replied, my voice a bit stiff.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to pry. I’m naturally interested, being a doctor myself. Are you going back to Danver Hall now? Mind if I walk along with you? I think I know the way back, but I’m not entirely certain.”

  “I—we expected you to be older,” I remarked as we followed the mossy bank of the stream.

  “I feel dreadfully old at times, particularly when I think of all the things I haven’t accomplished yet, all the work still undone. My field is relatively new and full of pitfalls—they’re doing some important work in Vienna, but most of my colleagues think psychology is about as valid as demonic possession.”

  “Psychology?” I pronounced the strange word dubiously.

  “That’s what we call it. It’s a pioneer field, and there is a lot of opposition to it, but young fellows like Freud are making remarkable breakthroughs. I’m a lightweight compared to those chaps, but if I can make even a minor contribution and help shed a ray or two of light I’ll feel that I’ve been successful.”

  “I thought you were writing a book on phrenology.”

  He smiled again. “Phrenology’s just a hobby, really. I don’t put much stock in it, but it’s interesting. No, my book is about nervous disorders, mental aberrations, what causes them and possible cures. That’s what psychology is all about.”

  “It sounds very complicated,” I said.

  “It is, extremely so. A medical doctor works on physical symptoms, the ailments of the body. He finds out what’s wrong, prescribes for it or, if necessary, operates. A great many illnesses are not physical in nature, caused not by malfunctions of the body but by malfunctions of the mind.”

  “Like migraine headaches?” I suggested.

  “Precisely. A person suffering from migraine is in very real pain. The headache is caused by tension and stress. Once the tension and stress is removed, the headache vanishes. The mind can do peculiar things to the body. For example, a Viennese doctor wrote a paper about a fourteen-year-old blind boy—are you interested in this? I tend to get carried away.”

  “I find it fascinating, Doctor Clark.”

  “This boy was totally blind, but there was positively no physical reason why he shouldn’t see as well as anyone else. The medical doctors were baffled, but Doctor Klienschmidt was intrigued. He took on the case, and after several months of daily sessions the boy recovered his sight. He was an orphan. His parents had burned to death—he had seen it happen. It was such a shock that his mind refused to acknowledge it, refused to let him see it, and he became blind as a result.”

  “How did Doctor Klien—schmidt? How did Doctor Klienschmidt make him see again?”

  “He probed into the boy’s mind—not with a scalpel but with carefully chosen questions. He got the boy to talk about himself and, eventually, made him acknowledge what he had seen. Once the boy faced that fact, once he admitted he had seen his parents burn to death, he recovered his sight almost immediately.”

  “And what did the medical doctors say?”

  “They said Kleinschmidt was a fraud,” he replied. “They said the boy had been faking his blindness all along. As I said, there’s a lot of opposition—the old and established always oppose anything new.”

  He shook his head, sighing. Gavin Clark was an extremely appealing man with his handsome, sensitive face and that rich quiet voice. I wondered why he had never married. Perhaps he had been too dedicated to his work, I thought. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers as we strolled. It seemed natural to be walking along beside him.

  “What do you do at Danver Hall?” he inquired.

  “I—well, I read a great deal. After the accident I’ve had to stay in bed most of the time. Today’s the first day I’ve attempted coming out. The sun was so glorious—”

  “The exercise should do you good,” he remarked.

  “What were you reading when I came up?” I asked.

  “Keats, I’m afraid.”

  “I adore Keats.”

  “I have a pile of weighty tomes I should be reading,” he said, “but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on them this morning. The sun, as you say, was so glorious, and the moors seemed to call to me.”

  “It’s strange that you should express it that way.”

  “Indeed? How so?”

  “That’s the way I felt, too. The moors seemed to call. I—something inside of m
e responds to them. I become a different person, stronger and not so—so timorous.”

  “Are you timorous, Jane?”

  “I—I’m terribly shy.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” he said casually.

  “That’s because—because of the way we met, I suppose. If I’d met you in a drawing room, I would have frozen. I’d have stared at the carpet and groped for words and—and been very uncomfortable.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the way I am.”

  “But you’re not that way now,” he remarked. “You seem perfectly natural. Charming, in fact.”

  “I’m not charming,” I said in a tight voice.

  “No?”

  “Please don’t make fun of me.”

  “Did you think that’s what I was doing?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You have no confidence in yourself, Jane.”

  “I know my limitations, Doctor Clark. I know that I’m dull and unattractive.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My teachers, my classmates, everyone—”

  “And you believed them?”

  “I—I really don’t care to discuss it,” I said.

  “I shan’t insist,” he said lightly, smiling that amiable smile.

  We were silent for several minutes as we walked, but it was a comfortable silence, despite the exchange that had gone before. Gavin Clark might have been an old and very dear friend. What magic did he possess to make me feel this way? I could hardly believe I had just met him.

  Across the wide, flat sweep of golden brown moor we could see Danver Hall in the distance. It seemed very small, and the worries and fears that besieged me there seemed small, too. I hated to go back, to be swallowed up by that atmosphere of mystery and tension. Here, on the sun swept land with its rich odors and wind voice and gleaming black patches, I was secure, unlike the Jane confined to her room with headaches and weary, exhausted body. I paused without being aware of it, and Gavin Clark stopped too, studying my face with concerned brown eyes.