by Sean Munger
She stood up and went to the window. In a few moments she made her decision. “Savannah,” she said, and added nothing more. But I’ll wire Julian first, she thought, and carefully decided not to tell Rachael about this part of her plan.
“There’s an afternoon train,” said Rachael. “Two o’clock, I think. It’s almost noon now. Between Miss Wicks and my maid we can probably get our belongings packed up in time.”
Anine looked out the window at the sand and the glinting Atlantic waves. Despite the horrible way Mrs. Quain died she wondered if the troubled woman was at peace now. She hoped so.
That afternoon, Anine sent the following wire from the Western Union telegraph office adjacent to the St. Augustine rail depot:
Dear J. Heard of the horrible attack in New York. Am shocked and afraid. Many questions and fears. Some about you. Am going to Savannah. Not alone. If my fears are not resolved I will sail for Sweden in few days. Cannot live like this. Beklagar [sorry]. A.
Upon her arrival at the railway station in Savannah, she was handed this telegram in reply:
Cannot say all that needs to be said over telegraph wire. Can answer questions and fears. Will be leaving for Savannah in A.M. If you ever loved me you will not sail for Sweden until we have talked. I do love you always have. Wire me name of your hotel in Savannah. Karlek [love] J.
She remained, of course. What else could she do? There was a ship, the S.S. Patuxent, sailing for Liverpool on Wednesday the 8th, but when Anine sent Clea to the steamship office to inquire she found the vessel was lightly-booked and there was no urgency to buy her ticket yet. The two days she spent at the Marshall House hotel, sitting on a verandah watching carriages come and go along Savannah’s elegant gas-lit streets, were both empty and anxious. She turned over and over again in her mind the possibilities of what might have happened and why. She found, curiously, the question that began to preoccupy her the most was this one: Is the house quiet now? Perhaps Julian didn’t know, or he might lie to her and say that it was just to get her to return. But it was this slender chance—the chance that the house could finally be at peace, and that they might be able to resume their lives there on some normal basis—that kept her in Savannah and kept her hope alive.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” he said, almost his first words upon meeting her, “that it feels very awkward. I’m sorry.”
They stood together on the porch of the Marshall House. Something about Julian looked different. His slightly awkward look, his red hair, his silly mustache: all were the same, but the look in his eyes was now calmer, more docile. Anine was too used to seeing those eyes flash with rage and fury; now he was quiescent and diminutive.
She wore her blue and yellow Princess dress and a small feathered hat, and carried her parasol against the sun that had just come out after nearly two days of dreary drizzle. “Let’s walk in the square,” she suggested. “Savannah is full of such beautiful squares. This is the only city I’ve seen in America that almost looks like Stockholm.”
“That makes it sound like you’re eager to return.”
She shrugged. For perhaps the first time in their entire marriage she felt as if she was in control. “Not until I’ve heard what you have to say.”
They walked among the trees along the brick-lined paths. Wrought-iron fences and wall-like hedges hid the façades of the Southern mansions that surrounded the square.
“I know what your fear is,” said Julian. “I’ll tell you now that I had nothing to do with the attack. I was as horrified as anyone else. The police did interview me. In fact I went to them eagerly, hoping I could clear up any misunderstanding that might have arisen because of the bad blood between me and Mrs. Quain. I was at my office when it happened. I went to the police station straight away after the news broke. I showed them everything—the legal papers between myself and Minthorn, the notes we’d exchanged, everything. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered but I didn’t want there to be any question. It was two thugs who did it, just two murderous thugs. They probably came from the Bowery or the Five Points. The police have scoured the rookeries looking for them, but no one’s talking. Sadly they’ll probably never solve it.”
He sounds sincere, Anine thought, but that means nothing. He’s not above lying to me if it suits his purposes. “It’s so hard to believe. Happening three blocks from the house. You can’t blame me for thinking that…” She did not want to sound as if she was accusing him. “…well, that it’s not a coincidence.”
“I have done horrible things in my life, Anine. I admit that. I’ve done some of them to you, and for that I’m sorry. But I didn’t do this. You know I couldn’t have done this.”
“The Indian—did you kill him?”
Julian shook his head. “No. I was present when he was killed, though. I’ve felt guilty about it for four years. I should have told you and Dr. Dorr the whole truth. I was traveling across the country with two friends. One of them, a man called Parmenter, came into conflict with the Indian on the train. He shot him through the head. I was trying to stop it but I didn’t act in time. I never saw Parmenter again after that night.”
This too sounded like the truth, and she suspected it was, but again it was hard to tell what it really meant.
“I think the doppelgänger had something to do with the attack,” she said. “Three blocks, and just before Mrs. Quain was to return there—it has to have been connected.”
“I’ve thought so too. I couldn’t tell the police that, of course.”
“Why would the spirit want to prevent Mrs. Quain from coming back? It would seem the opposite would be true.”
“Who knows? Maybe it feared coming face-to-face with the missing part of its being. Maybe it hoped that somehow I would be blamed for killing her, or that I’d feel guilty about it, and it would be another way to torment us. Maybe it thought that if it killed her you’d accuse me and it would drive us apart. Or maybe it always intended to kill her, and you and I were just pawns in some game we can’t even fathom. I know nothing about the supernatural. I don’t want to know any more. I’ve had enough.”
I must know. There’s nothing to be gained by obscuring the point anymore.
“Julian, is it gone now? Have you been back to the house?”
He stopped walking. He looked at her seriously, his sea-green eyes trying to communicate as much sincerity as possible.
“I think so. I haven’t stayed a night in the house since you left. I’ve been staying at the Grand Central Hotel. After the attack happened I was even more frightened. But I was also very curious. Two days ago, the day you wired from St. Augustine, I returned because I knew you’d ask what you just asked. I went alone—didn’t bring Bryan or anyone else. I went inside just as it was getting dark. I lit the gas, I walked through the parlors, the bedrooms, everywhere that anything ever happened. There was nothing. Silence. And I couldn’t feel anything. You know how when you’re in the house it feels like something, like someone, is watching you? I couldn’t feel anything. Except…well, for one thing.”
“What was that?”
He began walking again, and she kept pace with him. “Peace,” he said, in almost a sigh. “I felt a sense of peace, of tranquility. Maybe it was coming more from me than from anything outside of me. But it would make sense, especially if the doppelgänger somehow caused what happened to Mrs. Quain. Maybe it knew that killing her would finally bring it peace. That was what I think it wanted all along. Some sort of closure. Now it has it.”
Is he lying? Anine honestly did not know. This was in many ways the hardest thing, that she didn’t trust him, couldn’t trust him. But again, how much of that mistrust was a result of the spöke, and not of Julian’s own character? That question could not be answered in Sweden, or here in Savannah; indeed it couldn’t be answered anywhere except for one particular address. Anine was astonished at herself that she was actually considering going back there
.
“What’s the status of the house now?” she asked him. “Do we still own it?”
“Yes. The Minthorns have no legal claim on it. I returned the $50,000 to Gertrude Minthorn. The draft had already been processed by the bank and they took out some expenses, but they got the vast majority of it back. I can’t think of a reason why the Minthorns would even want the house now. Lucius bought the life estate solely for Mrs. Quain to live out her remaining years. I had our furniture put back in the house until we decide what to do. I still have the suite at the Grand Central Hotel. I’ve made no plans. When I got your wire I just dropped everything and came right here.”
“And what do you want to do?”
This will be telling, she thought. If he tries to control me, to make demands—
“I want to give our marriage another try. I want to put this all behind us. I want to try to be a better husband to you, and, God willing, a father to the children we might have. But if you can’t come back—if this has been too much for you, too painful—I understand.” With a slightly mournful tone he said, “I won’t contest a divorce, if that’s what you want. You can have anything I have. I’ll say anything you want me to say, to anybody, if that will lessen the scandal either here or back in Sweden. Or if you prefer to live in Sweden, separated from me, but not get divorced, I’ll accept that too. It’s up to you.”
She was touched by this offer. Would he really do that? Most interesting, though, was that he had interpreted her question as asking what he wanted to do about their marriage. “I meant the house,” she said. “What do you want to do about the house?”
“Burn it down,” he muttered.
“You don’t mean that.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps I don’t. But the house is largely irrelevant. I’ll sell it, if you like. Now that it’s associated with even more infamy I’m certain we’ll take a loss on it. Maybe the best thing to do is tear it down and sell the land. But that doesn’t matter anymore. We can live anywhere. Boston, Atlanta, the West—there are lots of opportunities. That is, if you think you want to give our life together another chance.”
So the decision is up to me. That in itself is a change.
Anine closed her parasol and felt the warmth of the sun, dappled by the tendrils of an old weeping willow, casting across her face. “Do I have to decide now?”
Julian smiled. “No. Of course not.”
She was not ready to give in, and still not certain how she should evaluate all he’d told her. But there’s time to consider all that. And maybe one more test will do the trick.
“What if I were to tell you to go back to New York without me and stay in the house a while? I’ll remain here in Savannah—maybe a week, maybe two. If the doppelgänger is gone and the house is at peace, you’ll know it. And I can make up my mind and we can decide from there.”
“I would do that. But on one condition.”
“Yes?”
“If you do decide to go back to Sweden, will you go from New York, not from here? Come back and let us say goodbye properly, and we can make whatever settlement you think is equitable. Let us at least part amicably.”
She nodded. “Agreed.”
They walked in silence back to the hotel. Toward the end of the walk Anine slipped her gloved hand into Julian’s. He took it gently and didn’t let go. It was less his words and the way he’d said them that began to sway her back towards him. It was more the warmth of his touch, and the fact that after all that had happened he finally seemed to need her. If there was hope that they could resume their lives together, it would have to spring from that basis.
Even if she hadn’t decided to remain in Savannah for a few more days there was no question of leaving. That very evening Rachael Norton took sick, and Anine found herself suddenly presiding over a crisis of considerable complexity.
Rachael was listless when they got off the train from St. Augustine. “I’m just tired,” she sighed apologetically. “Traveling always makes me tired. A nap will do me some good.” She was well enough to join Anine for dinner at the Marshall House’s dining room but immediately afterward she said she felt ill and would return to bed. They had rented adjoining rooms upstairs. At eight o’clock in the evening, as Anine sat in her room reading a book and pondering all that Julian had said, Gertie, Rachael’s maid, knocked on the door of her suite.
“Ma’am, Miss Norton is very ill. She’s calling for you.”
Uneasy, Anine went to her friend’s room. In the bedroom Rachael was laid out on the bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, her long dark hair laying wavy and doll-like on the white pillow. Her face was ashen and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. Her eyes slowly swiveled to meet Anine’s gaze. Anine was alarmed by Rachael’s appearance. Two hours earlier she’d seemed, if not perfectly fine, certainly nothing like this.
“Anine,” said Rachael, in a harsh and anguished whisper. Her right hand was under the covers, her left resting on the blanket. She raised her left hand but only slightly. Her fingers twitched. She squinted her eyes shut and Anine saw tears starting from them. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry to do this to you.”
How could she deteriorate so quickly? Anine rushed forward and grasped Rachael’s hand. It was already cold. “We must call a doctor.” She called to Gertie through the open bedroom door. “Miss Fitch, send for a surgeon immediately. Have Miss Wicks bring us a fresh pitcher and bowl and some cloths.”
“No,” Rachael rasped. “Listen to me first—”
“You’re very ill. You need a doctor at once.”
“You don’t understand. You have to be careful. There’ll be a scandal.”
A scandal? Anine had no idea what she meant. Before she could continue Rachael’s body was wracked with some terrible pain. She winced and doubled up, reaching under the covers. The spasm passed but Anine suddenly noticed something. On the blanket covering Rachael there was a small dark wet spot, looking in the dim orange gaslight like a dollop of brown molasses. It was slowly spreading. With a quivering hand Anine reached over and pulled back the covers.
Her throat suddenly clenched in horror. Rachael’s nightgown, the sheets, the blanket and the mattress beneath her were completely saturated with blood. With her right hand, slick with carmine, she clutched a rag between her legs. The cloth was so saturated with blood that it literally oozed out of the fabric from between Rachael’s grasping fingers.
“My God!” she gasped.
“It started just after dinner,” said Rachael. “I thought it was just…my time…”
A miscarriage. Anine bolted toward the door and called after Gertie. “Tell the surgeon to hurry!” she shouted.
The pain came again. Rachael winced and kneaded the bloody cloth in her groin. “God is punishing me,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Anine had never heard her say anything of this nature before.
Anine ran to her own room, pounding on the door for Miss Wicks. “Clea! Clea! Come quickly! Bring cloths, towels, bandages, anything!” The scandal was secondary. She was sure Rachael would rather be marked with a scarlet letter than a tombstone.
For three days Rachael Norton’s life hung in the balance. Dr. Whipple, a venerated old gentleman who had evidently headed the Confederate hospital in Savannah during the war, tended her bedside, but there was little he could do against the unpredictable waves of bleeding that came and went without pattern or warning. He gave her laudanum for the pain. Every few hours the crimson gush would stop, Rachael would rally and the worst seemed to be over, but shortly thereafter the horror would begin all over again. Gertie and Clea removed bowl after bowl of blood-soaked rags from the bedroom until it became difficult to find clean ones anywhere in the hotel. Outside the rain started again, first pattering and then lashing the window-panes with angry gray torrents. Anine kept vigil on an overstuffed chair in the corner a few feet from Rachael’s bedside. Everyone—Whipple, the maids, the serva
nts from the hotel—looked to her for decisions. It was a curious and dreadful position to be in.
On the evening of the second day Whipple took Anine aside into the sitting room of her suite. He was exhausted, having caught only a few feeble catnaps since the ordeal began. “In thirty years of practicing medicine I’ve never seen anything like this,” the doctor told her. “I’ve seen soldiers with severed arteries bleed to death in far less time. At the rate she’s hemorrhaging she should have been dead in an hour. I can’t explain it.”
“Will she survive?” Anine asked him.
“She shouldn’t even be alive now. There’s no telling how long she’ll last. This is very far from a simple miscarriage. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t imagine she’ll live much longer.” His eyes drilled into Anine’s with a sad earnestness. “I think you’d better begin contacting relatives.”
Her stomach sank. What do I tell them? As the doctor began to push past her toward the door to Rachael’s room Anine called after him. “Wait, doctor! Can I…may I count on your discretion?”
“I really don’t think it’s going to matter,” he said, and returned to his patient’s bedside.
For nearly the whole night Anine sat in the overstuffed chair, listening to Rachel moan and sigh, and she wondered what to do. I can’t let her memory be ruined by this. And her family will suffer enough from her death without having to deal with the scandal as well. Toward dawn Anine finally returned to her own room, dark and quiet except for the lashing of the rain, and slept for two fitful hours.
In the morning—Rachael was stable and had ceased to bleed, at least for a little while—Miss Wicks accompanied Anine to the Western Union office. She wrote out a series of terse and urgent telegrams. She sent one to Mrs. Belgravia Norton and another to Rachael’s fiancé Daniel Wythe: Rachael taken sick in Savannah. Illness unknown. Doctors doing all they can. The end may not be long delayed. Am doing my best to make her comfortable. She paused before sending this same message to Oakley Minthorn, not merely wondering whether she should give some indication to him of the cause of Rachael’s condition, but also worrying how he’d take it given the fact that he had lost his father and his aunt just days ago. Ultimately she sent him the same text she’d wired to the others. As she handed the message sheet under the cage bars to the telegraph operator she only then decided that she would never tell anyone, including and especially Oakley Minthorn, that Rachael had been pregnant. Rachael herself probably didn’t know until the bleeding began. There were so many savage maladies that could carry off a woman of child-bearing age; why would anyone have cause to question that this wasn’t one of them?