by Baird Wells
James dropped his handful of blush pink roses, the last of the season from their garden, onto the black soil mound, then turned away. He made his way between the teeth of graves, back to a high iron gate that met the church’s gravel path. There he turned with a shallow stone gutter that ran along the village road. Rain soaked deeper through his coat and through the wool of his trousers, but he was certain of its not being cold enough to kill him. Certain enough to feel disappointed.
Premature dusk was falling when he reached home, welcomed on by billowing clouds of silver and slate which threatened to douse the world below well into the night. The windows were dark and no fire was lit, but a wreath of crape and boxwood was still visible on the door, a lone eye warning away the living. Inside, the hall was damp and chilled enough that felt no improvement upon removing his sodden coat. Their handful of servants, Mrs. Fane and Hettie and Mister Oates, had all been sent away for good the day before, and there was no one to greet him.
After tonight, he would have no need of them.
He got whiskey from the sideboard and a walnut case from a shelf of the upstairs closet, then brought them to the little round table in the parlor where he and Emily would sit and read the papers when breakfast was done.
James settled in his usual chair and placed the bottle just so, to his left. The case he set directly before him and with a finger traced a dull glint of its carving, lit by a fading gray glow that strained through Emily’s lace curtains. He drank from the bottle in silence, with not even the tick of the mantle clock for company. All the clocks had been stopped, probably by Emily’s superstitious mother or one of the servants.
When he’d consumed enough that the burn in his throat subsided and his limbs grew weighted, he wriggled up and went to a mirror behind the sofa, removing its black drape. No soul whispered out from the nether to possess him; no demon replaced his reflection.
He stared bleary-eyed at his silhouette, little more than black on black in the dark room, and weighed again the decision which he’d turned over in his mind for two days. When he’d peered into the glass at the world behind him, gazed long enough to feel satisfied that it should always look that way and never a moment further into his future, he returned to the table and pulled the box to his chest. Thirty-one years was time enough on the earth, with the prospect of facing all his remaining years without Emily. His fingers gripped the lid and pried it back with determination, and James realized he felt peace. For the first time in three days, there was no anguish, no worry, only relief.
He dug fingers around the pistol’s wood grip and pried it from the box’s velveteen liner. Was the fabric red or green? It had been so long that he couldn’t recall, and now it was too dark to see clearly. He fumbled over needless details, avoiding the barrel’s nickel lines which stretched long and thin, Death’s finger beckoning him on.
James palmed the grip and slipped his finger inside the cold trigger guard, and faltered for the first time. The hesitation was only reflex, the mind’s natural act of self-preservation, a thrashing, like the gurgling breaths of a drowned man. He stood, took the pistol back to the mirror, and kissed his temple with its steel mouth.
Movement outside the window caught his eye and he froze, his heart doing more than mechanically thudding ahead for a change. It pounded a frightened tattoo while he stared at a specter, coalescing into the outline of a woman. He glanced from the corner of his eye without daring to look straight at it, in case it would possess him.
Emily. Perhaps Emily had come to be with him at the end.
He blinked, and she was gone.
James closed his eyes and exhaled into a slouch, panting, the pistol shaking in his slack fingers. If Emily’s stained gown had raised the question of his sanity, James wondered how much more frightened he should be of the idea of her ghost, when there was no one there at all. He was losing his mind; fortunately, it wouldn’t matter much longer.
When a knock hammered the door a breath later, James nearly pissed himself.
It took a moment of sweat and panic cooling in equal measure for him to grasp that only something very corporeal would bother with manners and a few slats of wood. He lurched to his feet, swaying as his heartbeat slowed and his mind cleared. He would answer the knock, be rid of them, and finish his task. He tucked the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back, and weaved to reach the front hall.
He threw back the door, startling the woman almost as much as she had him in the window if her gasp and hand pressed to her chest were any indication. At first his drunk and tired eyes perceived her only as a pale face floating in the night. Squinting, James discovered that she was clad all in black, from the crape and silk of her bustled skirts and high-necked bodice to her velvet pork-pie hat and net veil.
He stared and waited for her to speak, and finally she cracked one eye and her face relaxed. “Doctor Grimshaw?”
“What of it?” he ground out.
She didn’t acknowledge his rudeness. Instead she reached out and darted a gloved hand, over his shoulder, his arm and chest. “You’re soaked!” she said. “And frozen!” She pushed past him into the house.
James turned and followed her, bemused. The only thing reassuring him that this wasn’t all a hallucination was his hand tucked behind his back, pressing against the pistol’s sobering lines.
“Are you here all by yourself?” she asked, but it was more of an exclamation, her bewilderment echoing back through the unlit house.
He didn’t want to answer her, couldn’t believe he had to, that she’d compelled him. He followed the sound of her voice with his footsteps. “Madam, perhaps word has been late in reaching you, but I no longer tend patients. In fact, I am not at home for visitors of any sort.”
She was in the parlor now, patting with a hand and banging at the mantle without answering. “Ah!” A match sputtered and flared, and a moment later, a candle followed suit. “You don’t know who I am?” she asked, shaking out the match.
He did not, nor did he wish to. James shook his head, weary beyond measure. All he wanted was for her to leave.
Her long limbs drew themselves into a regal posture. “Lady Hannah Webster.”
He frowned, waiting until her words filtered through his annoyance and inebriation. “Emily’s sister?”
“Mm.”
“We’ve never met,” he snapped. She was no different from a stranger; worse, if she hailed from the Lennox clan. Emily’s parents had already made their accusations, thrown their barbs. If that was her purpose in coming as well, then Lady Hannah was tardy and had missed her chance.
Still, something about her sudden appearance, her very presence, sent a guilty shiver up his spine. He slipped to the table at an angle from her and moved the pistol from his back to his lap in a drunken magic trick. He took the box and set it on the floor in a shadow beside the hearth.
Hannah placed her stoneware candlestick in the table’s center. “My sister was a baby when I went out into society, married. We were not close.” She rested a hand on Emily’s chair and pulled.
James kicked out his leg, hooked the under-seat with his toe, and slammed the chair up against the table. “That seat is not open.”
He expected, and hoped, that would be the end of it, and that she would storm out in a huff.
Hannah strangled the ladder back chair with long, black-gloved fingers. She yanked, dislodging his foot. In the candlelight and shrouded by her veil, there was no seeing her enough to read her expression, but he felt a sharp edge to her words. “We were separated by many things. That doesn’t mean that I did not love her.”
She drew the chair back further, settled her bustle, and sat without apology.
He sat, mouth agape, marveling at her audacity. Who did she think she was? What right did she have coming here, sitting in Emily’s chair?
He could leave. James realized that he didn’t have to tolerate Hannah, or her interference. Natural curiosity had got the better of him though, and he did her the minimal cou
rtesy of staring and waiting for an explanation.
Instead, Hannah craned her neck to glance around them, swept a glove over the tabletop and studied the result. “It’s clean in here,” she remarked, and her eyes fell on him again, a vibrant blue behind the sooty line of her lashes, their color divided into shards by her veil. He thought how they were nothing like Emily’s warm brown ones, and then wondered at the thought.
He had scrubbed and swept that morning, not wanting the house in disarray for whoever was burdened with it when he was gone, but that was none of her concern.
“Too clean,” she ground out, coming up from her chair. Hannah leaned across the table and snatched the pistol from his lap before his drunken hands could stop her. “Why might that be?” she demanded.
“Give that back at once!” He came half out of the chair. “Your interference is neither welcome, nor needed.”
Hannah turned and claimed a small black valise which he’d missed earlier in the dark. She snapped it open, dropped in the pistol, picked out something from inside, and snapped it shut again. “Even so, my interference is a fact. I have nowhere to stay and you are family. Visiting relations are an obligatory burden. Taking your own life shall have to wait.”
“Stay with Sir Charlton and Lady Harriette,” he sneered, “where you belong.”
Hannah slammed whatever was in her hand atop the table. “I would rather cut off parts of my face,” she hissed, “than subject myself to their presence for a single moment.” Then she straightened, all rigid posture and correct bearing, and exhaled. “Besides, they will not have me.”
Her information was the first thing to penetrate his anguish since losing Emily. He might not care for Hannah Webster’s interference, but he liked that she was unlikeable to her family.
“Who do you spend your time with?” she demanded. “What friends do you have here?”
“Harry Tate,” he muttered, not certain of their being friends anymore. He had refused each of Harry’s visits, had hardly spoken a word to him at the church. His last view of Harry had been a dejected pair of shoulders growing smaller across the churchyard after the funeral. “He returns to Millford in the morning.”
“Have a mouthful of this.” She pushed a brown glass bottle out into a pool of candlelight, “and then my driver will see you to wherever Harry resides. You’re to go and stay with him for the time being, for your own good.”
He shook his head. She was arrogant and assuming, just like the rest of her family. “I cannot show up in the middle of the night and burden Harry. Demand that he drop his affairs and tend me like an invalid.”
“The grieving are invalids,” she whispered. “We can hardly care for ourselves. So, we must be cared for, or care for others, until we are healed.” She held up the bottle, which he’d already forgotten. “Drink,” she said again.
He took it and smelled it. The odor was sweet and boozy with a hint of something bitter: Laudanum.
“No.” He batted it away. “Absolutely not. I will not medicate myself.”
“Because you’re a doctor, or a martyr?”
Whatever was left inside to snap, snapped. He slammed the table with a fist, jostled its meager contents, and swirled the candle near to extinguishing. “I do not want your help! I don’t need it!”
If his outburst ruffled her, she didn’t show any sign, and sat with her eyes never leaving his face. “My father has not a good word to say about you. You are the worst traits of a man, in his opinion. And poor,” she chuckled, “an unforgivable sin. But I heard you mentioned everywhere in the village today. Condolences offered from one person to another by proxy. Poor Doctor Grimshaw, who fixed Danny’s bad foot. God save you, Doctor Grimshaw, for saving our baby.” Hannah raised the bottle until it nearly pressed his nose. “You have clearly done a lot of good for these people. I think you will regret it, if you do this now.” She cocked her chin towards the pistol case, which he thought he’d hidden well. “I know they will.”
These people. It didn’t matter how many infected feet, how many fevers or mal-presenting babies he’d treated. He hadn’t been able to save the two people who mattered most. He grabbed the bottle and swigged deep, wincing at an awful tincture of sugar, liquor, and bitter poppy. He filled his mouth and then his throat, drowning down his grief. Its taste helped him admit that Hannah was right: The people of Meadowcroft had been good to him; at least he could do them the kindness of blowing open his skull somewhere else, surrounded by strangers.
He slammed down the bottle and sat back, panting, grudgingly admitting some gratitude for Hannah’s iron fist.
She pressed a tiny cork back into the bottle. He still couldn’t see her well, but thought he heard triumph in her voice. “I’ve already seen your friend Harry, at the village post office. He spotted me this morning and asked if I had come because of Mrs. Grimshaw. He’ll take you north, if you’re willing to go.”
“Harry sent a stranger to reason with me?” he slurred, eyes heavy at the tincture’s first efforts and an empty stomach. “How thoughtful.”
“He said you have refused to see him,” she chided. “Nobody refuses to see me.”
“That much is apparent.”
If she heard him, she ignored his barb. She gathered a sheet of stationery from a side table and a pencil, and set them in front of him. “Write his direction here.”
He scribbled out the inn’s address, then studied it twice and was still wasn’t certain he’d put it down correctly, then handed it back to her.
“Come. My carriage is waiting.” Hannah reached out and gripped his arm, helping haul him to his feet. She was only a little taller than his chin, but strong despite her willowy arms. That was good, because he wasn’t sure he could have managed on his own.
Hannah folded the paper and rested her hands at the flare of her hips. “Her things are still in the house, I take it?”
“All of them.” He planted a palm on the mantle. “There’s unfinished wash on the landing, and Mrs. Fane didn’t have time to arrange the kitchen. I haven’t been through the good parlor at all. The nursery –” He sucked in a breath, not able to do more than shake his head.
“I’ll see to it. You go with Harry.” Her hand pressed at his back, ushering him from the parlor’s dim light and into the hall. Hannah took down his coat and held it out, wonderfully deft at catching his useless arms and sliding them in.
The rain had stopped, and stars winked down from a small break in the clouds. He recalled struggling up into the carriage and falling into leather seats whose chill bit the backs of his knees. He remembered Hannah shutting the door, the driver shouting, and nothing more.
* * *
Hannah woke on the parlor sofa, rumpled, cold, and with no idea of the time. It wasn’t morning; no light, not even a gray pre-dawn glow, brightened the windows. She had taken up a post in the dark room and sat waiting, had expected James to reappear at any moment, run off from her driver or his friend Harry Tate. Meadowcroft’s villagers had been clear on two points regarding their beloved doctor: his decency and his determination.
He would have to be rather stubborn, she surmised, to have overcome and then endured her family. It was a guess, of course, no more informed than the other scant bits of information she’d swept together about James Grimshaw. Knowing how her father and mother traditionally punished social error, Hannah felt confident that her guess was an educated one.
Her family had detested and now loathed him; that was a high recommendation in her opinion. That Doctor Harter thought him negligent was no damnation, not by itself. Dearest Harter had blamed her own marital problems on defective womanly impulses for years, dismissing as pure female hysteria her assertions that marriage to a man who despised her was the culprit.
And what of Doctor Grimshaw’s purported victim? What had Emily had to say?
Hannah sat up and wrestled the pins from her lopsided hat, chilled by more than a cold room. There was not enough to fill a sheet of paper when it came to Emily’s thoughts
on her husband. Emily had written her twice during their rebellious courtship, once after the wedding, and then again to announce her expectant state. Still, Emily’s voice told her story, whispering to Hannah through the house. A neat cross-stitch hung proudly in the small entry hall; ‘James & Emily Grimshaw – August 1st, 1879’. A table beside the fireplace, the same one where James had tried denying her a seat, boasted a weathered surface of scuffs and grooves, proving the use it had seen on both sides while the couple shared it. She smiled, wistful as she imagined Emily sitting across from her husband, eating breakfast or arranging their day.
On the mantle stood a wedding photograph embraced by a carved walnut frame. If Hannah hadn’t met James, she wouldn’t have recognized either half of the pair staring back at her. Her sister was forever fixed in her memory as a gangly ten-year-old. She remembered leaving the chapel on her wedding day, staring through the carriage’s rear window at Emily growing smaller as her slender arm flapped like a bird’s wing.
Hannah took down the photo and held it close to better see it in the dim candlelight. Emily’s thick braid wrapped her head like a silky crown, her face framed by ringlets. Their rich, tawny luster was reduced to a charcoal shade, her lace collar silver-gray, lifeless and colorless in the picture like an omen of things to come. She stood at James's breast, her eyes bright and cheeks dimpled. James, all black and white and stark in his best suit and held up straight by a stiff collar, kept a stern expression, but Hannah caught a spark in his eyes which gave him away. There was warmth beneath the surface. She traced the young couple with a finger and ached for the brevity of their happiness. If there was no hope for James and Emily Grimshaw’s joy, what chance did she stand?
Hannah replaced the photograph and pressed fingertips to swollen eyes. Certain of not being able to sleep, she made up the parlor fire and then took a candle down to the kitchen. She found bread in the cupboard that didn’t look moldy, probably the last effort of the Grimshaw’s housekeeper. When a tin of tea leaves revealed itself, the label warped and magnified through a half-full jar of honey in the pantry, Hannah felt confident enough to light the stove. She boiled water, sliced bread, set out a cup. Pour, steep, toast, butter; she marched into the future one mindless task at a time, as only the bereaved know how. She fell into a rickety chair stationed at an old square table against the kitchen’s stone wall. Judging by its massacred silver wood, the table had seen more use as a cutting board than an eating surface.