They were passing hotels now, long pillared verandas two stories high running the entire length of the facades, fronted by tall trees. She recognized the cupolas and balconies of the Henry Hudson Hotel on her left. A flagpole thrust up from the roof of the hotel on her right. Here and there in the twilight she made out the figures of people sitting on the verandas or ascending the wide stairs.
Then David turned off the boulevard into a narrower street; they passed a barber shop, a pawn shop, then a warehouse with a ramp leading up to a platform running along one side. The buggy came to a halt in front of a two-story clapboard building with huge double doors standing open. Three horseshoes were nailed upside down above the doors, through which she could see the reflected glow of the forge fire inside.
David dismounted from the buggy and wrapped the reins around the hitching post.
“I won’t be long.”
She was left alone in the buggy. Behind her, she heard the mare snort and stamp, swishing at flies. She could hardly believe this was real. The huge open doors of the smithy glowed with the light inside. Two small boys, wearing kneepants and caps with narrow little brims, leaned timidly against the doorjamb, as if uncertain they would be allowed in. From inside came the tap-whang-tap-whang of hammers on iron, and once there was the swsshshsh of hot iron thrust into cold water, and the tap-whang-tap-whang of the hammers again. The front of the shop was a confusion of iron rods leaning against the wall, broken wagon wheels, a ploughshare, something that looked like a discarded butter churn. Two or three horses were tethered to the hitching post, and at one corner of the building a pile of discarded horseshoes rose almost to the height of the buggy.
After a while the sound of the hammers ceased and David came out, followed by an older, burly man wearing a cap and a great, bushy moustache. A heavy leather apron flopped against his legs.
“All right, Mr. Reynolds,” he said, “let’s take a look at her.”
As he passed the buggy, she saw him cast a sidelong glance at her, curious, inquisitive.
Behind her, she heard him sweet-talking the mare, and she turned to see him bending to examine its hooves, one hand gently stroking its flank. “Ayuh,” he said. “Seems all right. No hoof cracks this time. Shoes pretty worn, though. Can’t reset ’em—need new ones.”
“That’s all right,” David said.
The blacksmith untied the mare and led it around beside the buggy. “You, boy,” he called to one of the boys in the doorway. “Lead her around a mite, so I can take a look at her gait.”
“Her gait’s fine,” David said. “You set those shoes yourself.”
“Can’t hurt to look,” the smith said.
Several other men had come to the door of the shop now, watching the boy lead the mare around. She felt the force of their stares and when she looked at them saw their eyes dart furtively away. She caught again that sidelong, measuring look of the blacksmith; and then she understood, remembering what Mrs. Bates had said—caused quite a little scandal, him taking up with the other woman so soon after his wife’s death—and with a dawning of fearful wonder she realized she was seeing the word made flesh, was actually watching the beginning of that scandal. She was “the other woman” he had taken up with, not Elizabeth; she was the woman seen leaving the scene of the crime; she was the woman suspected of murdering him.
The boy had led the horse into the smithy; the crowd had gone back inside. She tried to conquer her fright. She couldn’t have done it; she would never kill him. She would die herself before killing him. She must have been present, must have seen it happen and then was seen herself, grief-stricken and afraid, running away afterward. That had to be what the story meant. But did it? Could a situation develop where she might kill him, somehow, accidentally? She felt a sudden need to see him, touch him, assure herself that he would never die because of her. She got down from the buggy and hurried across the smithy yard to the doorway.
David was nowhere to be seen. In the center of the big cavernous room stood a huge brick forge, its open hearth casting a hot glow on the faces of the men standing about, shadowing the distant walls. At the near end of the forge a boy was pumping at the long wooden lever above his head, activating the bellows. The smith had just finished paring the horse’s left rear hoof; he set it down now, watching as the horse tested it cautiously against the floor. With a pair of tongs he seized a red-hot horseshoe from the fire and knocked it against a nearby anvil, a shower of tiny sparks scattering to the floor. Holding the tongs in one hand, talking softly, he ran his other hand down the mare’s hind leg, lifted the hoof to his cradled knees and set the cherry-red shoe against it. Jennie flinched, but the horse didn’t move. Thick white smoke spiraled up, then the smith lifted the shoe away, plunged it with a swsshshsh of steam into an iron-bound wooden tub, and lifted it out gone gray and cold. As he reached for hammer and nails to set the shoe, his eyes met hers and held there, his curiosity taken by surprise. Then she saw David at the rear of the room, talking to some of the men. He did not see her, and she could not go in there, past the smith, to where David stood among that crowd of men. She crossed the smithy yard again and climbed back up into the buggy.
She couldn’t have been the one who killed him. But the story said he died and she was seen leaving the scene of the crime. But now that she knew that, she could make sure it didn’t come true. The story was fixed, handed down by word of mouth through three-quarters of a century, but surely her life had never existed before, she had never existed before. It had to be possible for her to alter the past, to influence events so that he would not die. She was being sent here to save his life—anything else was unthinkable.
It was almost dark now. The clop-clop of hooves against cobbles approached from out of the darkness behind her—a buggy drawn by a dun-colored mare and carrying one man dressed all in black so that he was almost indistinguishable in the darkness. As the buggy drew even with her, the clopping of the horse slowed, and she saw the white of the man’s face turned toward her under the black of his hat. The buggy passed on into the dark, and she stirred in the seat, anxious for David to return.
The light from the forge fire swelled through the open doors of the smithy like a giant lantern in the night, casting eerie shadows against the inner walls. She could see the iron rods racked against the walls now and a buggy body suspended from the ceiling. From out of the darkness where the buggy had disappeared a few minutes before came the slow ticking of iron against the cobblestones and the vague shape of a buggy coming at a walk along the near side of the street; it eased off onto the roadside and came to a halt under a tree at the opposite corner of the blacksmith shop, and she saw that it was drawn by the same dun-colored mare which had passed before. Suddenly she was frightened. In the darkness beneath the tree, she could see only the immobile horse, the dark bulk of the buggy, the fixed and motionless outline of the man, staring at her.
She was relieved to see David come out of the smithy, a shadowy figure leading the mare behind him.
“I’m sorry you had to wait,” he said. “It was longer than I expected.”
He tied the mare’s lead to the back of the buggy and came around the other side. She heard movement from across the smithy yard and turned to see that the other buggy had emerged into the light and stood facing them across the width of the yard.
“Mr. Reynolds?” It was the man in the buggy, his voice ringing out in the silence like iron struck against iron.
David slowly turned, one hand still on the buggy. “Mr. Hubbard. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“You will not see me here much longer,” the man said. “I stopped for one purpose only. And if it were not my duty as a father, I would as leave let this conversation pass. But it is my duty, and I will see it done, distasteful as it is to me. I see you have quickly forgotten what little grief might have been expected from a man such as yourself. I am not surprised. But what’s done is done—I will answer to my Maker for that mistake. But there is this that I can do. I
understand young Stickney is in town. That he has tried to renew his acquaintanceship with my Rachel. It is well known that he is your friend. You might remind him that I do business with the army and that I happen to know his commanding officer. Tell him, Mr. Reynolds, that it would be well for him to keep away from my family.”
Hubbard’s horse snorted and tossed its head, setting the harness chains to jingling. In the light from the smithy doors, the old man seemed gaunt and haggard, as if eaten by some inner pain.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Hubbard,” David said. “But if it will give you any comfort, I can tell you that Lieutenant Stickney left town yesterday evening. I don’t believe you need worry about him any longer.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps he has the foresight not to intrude where he is not wanted. And then again it may be that he has found another to try where he has failed. You came to my house on Saturday, Mr. Reynolds. In my absence. You harassed my housekeeper for doing what she is paid to do. Do not try that again. These are the last words I wish to speak to you—stay away from me and mine.” And with a flick of his whip, the old man turned the horse, and the buggy wheeled in a tight circle out into the street and spun away into the darkness out of which it had come.
David remained standing beside the buggy as the sound of Hubbard’s horse receded away down the street. Then, expressionless, he swung up into the seat.
She touched his arm. “David, I’m frightened. He sounds dangerous.”
He flicked the reins and started the buggy out along the street. “I don’t believe he’s as dangerous as he sounds. And at any rate there will be no way he can discover anything until Rachel is safely away. Don’t worry.”
They made a turn at an intersection and clopped along between the streetlamps of a narrow street, past the lighted windows of houses set back among the trees. Then the streetlamps fell away and they were in open country, moving through darkness alleviated only by a faint starlight, the roadside hedges vague moving shapes on either side. The night air was cool and carried the sweet smell of the fields. She clung to David’s arm, listening to the chirping of crickets, occasionally seeing a bat wheel across the night sky.
“David,” she murmured, “isn’t there some way Rachel can elope without . . . without involving you?”
With gentle fingers he lifted her chin, and she looked up to see his smiling eyes, a length of dark hair falling across his brow, and—above and beyond that—the vast night sky, displaying its scattering of stars.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Once Rachel is gone, once he’s presented with a fait accompli, he will give in. He has already proved that.”
She felt a surge of emotion tighten her throat. “Please be careful.”
He bent his head and kissed her. In the darkness of the kiss, she was aware of the rhythmic gait of the horse, the rocking of the buggy. There was no way she could tell him that this was different, that Hubbard might react differently this time, that he was in danger and was going to be killed. There was no way she could tell him that Hubbard was the least of her fears; she had almost welcomed Hubbard’s appearance, his pointed threats, because it allowed her to believe that David was in danger from some source other than herself, allowed her for a moment to escape the fear that in some way she could not as yet predict she herself was destined to kill him.
17
* * *
“I’m just worried,” Michael said. “That’s why I asked to see you. She’s withdrawing more all the time. Some days go by she hardly talks to me.”
There was a creak as Dr. Salzman leaned back in his chair, shadowy behind the single lamp on his desk. “You say she’s withdrawing. I take it you mean that in a clinical sense. Could you describe it?”
“Well, we haven’t made love in weeks. I have the feeling she doesn’t want me to touch her anymore. And she broods a lot, wanders around looking off into space. And I don’t know. She’s just in a different world all the time.”
“What you’re describing sounds less like Jennie’s withdrawing from reality than that she’s withdrawing from you. You mustn’t persuade yourself that she’s sicker than she is.”
“Well, damn it, she is withdrawing from me. And I don’t like it. What do you expect? When I get this feeling she’s thinking about some other man, that she prefers some other man—”
“A fantasy man.”
“I know she’s sick, for God’s sake, but that doesn’t help. The way she acts, I feel like she really is being unfaithful to me.”
“You feel frustrated and jealous.”
“Of course I feel frustrated and jealous.”
The chair creaked again: Salzman leaning forward into the circle of light. “Let me point out to you, Mr. Logan, that you’re reacting to Jennie as if her hallucinations were real. You’re reinforcing her sickness. And that’s harmful not only to her but to you as well. And to the marriage itself, I might add. I know this is all very difficult for you, but you can’t allow yourself to be drawn into her delusion. You can’t allow yourself to feel you’re competing with another man.”
“Well, I just wish I could see some progress out of all this therapy. Isn’t there some way to speed up the process?”
“Therapy is unavoidably a slow and gradual process. In this instance, I wouldn’t recommend any of the more drastic measures like hospitalization—not unless Jennie were to show marked deterioration. Which I do not at all anticipate. I think it much better if she continues to lead as normal a life as possible. And that depends to a large extent on you. I can understand your impatience and your frustration, but you have to remember that the way you relate to Jennie has a great effect on her emotional health. You have to make her feel that she can trust you and lean on you.”
• • •
That night, trying to follow Salzman’s advice, he took Jennie out to dinner in an old wood-paneled restaurant left over from Chesapequa’s resort days. He tried to pretend that nothing was wrong between them, but though she seemed grateful he could tell her mind was really elsewhere. At home, he made a point of lighting only candles in the living room and brought out the present he had bought her that afternoon: a pendant shaped like a butterfly, in a filigree of gold, with multi-colored enameled wings.
“It’s handmade,” he said. “I thought maybe you could wear it with your white dress.”
She seemed genuinely touched, fondling the pendant in her lap. “It’s lovely, Michael. I’ll wear it always, whenever I wear the dress.” But when she leaned over to kiss him she still wore that sad, preoccupied look she had had all during dinner.
He poured them each a glass of brandy and took the chair across from her, wondering how to bring her out of herself. He tried giving her an account of his day, funny things that had happened in the office; she used to like that when they lived in the city, before she had discovered he was having an affair, but the little response she showed him now was strange, as if she felt sorry for him and was humoring him. It made him feel awkward, as if he were courting her all over again and she had decided he wasn’t good enough for her.
“It’s nice like this,” he said. “Candlelight. Just the two of us.” He took a sip of the brandy. “All I need now is a pipe. Would you like me with a pipe?”
She blushed, then went pale and looked away.
“Did I say something wrong?” he said.
When she didn’t respond, the old anger welled up in him again. “You actually blushed. In all the years we’ve been married, you never blushed until we moved here and this thing started. Does he smoke a pipe? Is that it?”
Now she did look at him. “Please don’t start this, Michael.”
“Start this? I’ve tried all night to be nice. All you can do is sit there and think about some other man, and you say don’t start this? What do you think I am?”
“You’re jealous.” She put her brandy glass down. “How can you be jealous of a man you don’t even believe exists?”
“I’ll tell you how I can be jealous. Bec
ause I know you’ve invented him to make me jealous, that’s how. How do you think it makes me feel, sitting here watching you dream about some other man?”
“I’m not inventing anything, Michael. Something terribly real is happening to me, and you’re not helping by doing this.”
“Helping? How about you helping for a change? You can start by believing what Salzman tells you. You’ve invented this man to punish me, and I can’t take it anymore. If you’re bent on punishing me, do it out in the open where I can deal with it.”
She ran from the room and fled headlong up the stairs. He put his glass down and raced after her, but by the time he reached the bedroom, she had slammed and locked the door.
“Jennie?” He rattled the knob. “Jennie, open this door.”
After a moment, the door clicked open. Jennie stood just inside, her arms full of bedding. She was crying. “I’m sorry you don’t believe me, Michael. I’m sorry for everything, but I guess it has to be this way. I’m going to sleep in the attic from now on.”
Her tears made it real; his anger faded away before the thought that he was doing precisely what Salzman had warned him against. Feeling drained, he watched her retreat down the hall and mount the stairs to the attic.
18
* * *
JENNIE WALKED along a shady side street, one hand holding up her lacy white skirts, the other clutching the handbag she had brought with her from her own time. It was a street of small shops, lined with heavily foliaged trees; the sidewalk was splattered with shadows. A hansom cab clip-clopped past, in the passenger seat a young man who glanced with interest at her. Three blocks ahead of her, the street sloped slightly downward to end at the very edge of the lake: a patch of grass, glittering water, the terraced edge of a lakeside restaurant. A large lakeboat was pulling away from the dock below the restaurant’s terrace. She was dazzled, alone for the first time in the Chesapequa of 1899.
Second Sight Page 14