We Five

by Mark Dunn

  Lyle found Tom Katz sitting on the toilet taking a shit in one of the bathrooms.

  Tom barely had a chance to look up from his Sports Illustrated when Lyle pulled the trigger, aiming for his head. Lyle’s sister’s rapist fell sideways against the wall, the broken streak of blood left on the drywall forming something like a red exclamation point above his head.

  Lyle flushed the toilet with his gloved hand and walked out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tulleford, England, September 1859

  Maggie Barton had stopped talking. She lay in the bed which Miss Mobry had prepared for her. She lay quiet and still as Miss Mobry and her mother took turns placing wet compresses upon her head and speaking to her in soft, dulcet tones. “There’s a good girl,” said Lucile Mobry. “You sleep, my dear.” Then, turning to Maggie’s mother, who stood next to her, rubbing her hands one against the other with maternal unease, Miss Mobry said with whispered concern: “Not a wink? All through the night?”

  Mrs. Barton nodded. Then she confided, “Each time I entered her room, I found her lying on her back and staring at the ceiling with open-eyed insensibility. A most frightening picture. And each time I spoke, I could extract not a single word from her in response.”

  “Her eyes are closed now. Mayhap the cordial I administered will put her into a restful sleep from which she’ll awaken feeling more herself. Will you stop here, Clara, or go off to reunite with your Mr. Osborne?”

  “I wish I could bring him hither. He would know just what to do to help Maggie.”

  “Clara, I doubt very much that Mr. Osborne’s offices would be of benefit to our present purposes. I should think you’d prefer he stay away and not risk exposure to the police.”

  Clara cast a fearful glance out the window. “They will catch him—most assuredly they will. I begged him to go to London, to Glasgow—anywhere he might lose himself in the throng and create a new name and a new life for himself. But he said he couldn’t bear it were he never to see me again.”

  “And is there anyone else he should miss?”

  Clara resumed with a hint of irritation, “Well, of course it should be naturally assumed that he wouldn’t wish to part with his daughter—to lose the chance to make amends for what he’s done. Next to ruing the violent act itself, that should be his greatest regret.”

  “My dear Clara, the time has come for me to withdraw endorsement of your blind allegiance to Mr. Osborne. A crime has been committed, and if the man is guilty of that crime—as we know he is—then he should be made to pay the price for it. You have clearly failed to learn the lesson I learnt long, long ago.”

  Clara placed herself wearily into the chair next to the bed. “You are bent upon telling me your lesson. Be quick about it. I’m so very tired.”

  “That there are few men upon this earth who do not bear the mark of Cain. And here I do not mean that unfortunate Mr. Pardlow who inexplicably killed himself, but Cain of the Bible who slew his brother. And here I do not mean all men are murderers—not in a literal sense—although most men do own a tendency to murder in the abstract that which is good, that which is beautiful, that which is noble, that which is innocent and should be held dear. It is man’s nature—this dereliction. You have now loved two men, each of whom has borne the mark. I dare say if another comes your way, he will be similarly stained.”

  “Upon my very soul, Lucile! All men are evil save your blessed brother who has been inoculated by God himself?” Clara shook her head with undisguised rancour. “And I thought the scriptures taught you always to seek good in others.”

  “The scriptures, dear Clara, have taught me to beware the iniquity of men…a lesson those five girls did not learn from us as they were growing up. And as a result, take note of all the misfortune that has befallen them.” Lucile cast a tender glance at Maggie. “Poor, poor Maggie, falling in love with her very own brother. And Molly, giving her heart to a young man with only one purpose to his pursuit. And what has happened to Jane is all but unspeakable!”

  Clara laughed ruefully. “Yet Ruth, who follows in the footsteps of her aunt, who will have truck with no man, succeeds owing to admirable forbearance. Pooh and pho, Lucile! How tidy is your view of that cursed gender and how wise it be to avoid all intercourse with its constituents!”

  “Clara, I sought long ago a man who would love me and uplift me. Finding no such creature over the long course of time, I abandoned the search. Ruth has done better for herself by never having looked.”

  In the next moment that very referent came into the little room where Maggie slept and where Maggie’s mother and Ruth’s aunt believed they had been speaking without audit. Yet Ruth had been standing just outside the chamber door and had heard all.

  Her appearance drew startled gasps from the two older women. One side of Ruth’s face was chafed to a state of rubicund rawness, beads of bright blood bubbling up in spots where the upper layer of skin had been fully abraded away. “Oh my dear!” cried Lucile, going to her adopted niece. “Pray tell us what has happened!”

  Ruth spoke without emotion: “You say I have never sought a man to whom to affix my heart for reason of mistrusting and denigrating the whole species. That has never been true, my aunt. I did once meet a man who could be upheld as exemplar of his sex, but he is now dead and gone, perished by his own hand. And there are other men, I am certain, of whom much good can be said. It is merely the absence of propitious circumstance that has kept them from society with my sisters.”

  “Speak to me, dear girl,” said Miss Mobry. “Was it one of those three who did this?”

  “I must correct you, Auntie. ‘Those three’ are now become ‘those two,’ for I have just learnt from Holborne that Tom Catts is dead.”

  “Dead?” Clara Barton had sprung up from her chair upon hearing the word.

  “Someone has put a fatal bullet into him. I must go and find Jane to tell her. She should know that the man who has hurt her will never do so again. Would that it did not grieve her so to learn the identity of the one suspected of having done the deed.”

  Now came a voice that had previously been silent. It derived from the bed. It recited a rhyme, paraphrased for a purpose:

  “Five little kittens, standing in a row.

  See them bow to the little girls so.

  They run to the left. They run to the right.

  They stand and stretch in the bright sunlight.

  Along comes a dog, looking for some fun.

  Tom Cat is dead and can no longer run.”

  Maggie opened her eyes. “I don’t fancy the dog was looking for fun, though. I think he was seeking revenge.” Maggie rose up. The damp cloth fell away from her brow. Her eyes were sharp and there was the gleam of strong purpose in her gaze. “I wish to come with you, Ruth. I have an idea I wish to put to all of you: I’d like us to take Higgins to my uncle’s cottage on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales and hide him there.”

  Ruth went to the bed and took both of Maggie’s hands into her own. “It has yet to be decided just what we shall do with Lyle, but I would like to say this withal: that your willingness to help her brother will be a great boon and comfort to our sister Jane.”

  Miss Mobry shook her head. “Maggie Barton, I can scarcely believe it. That you should be willing to put your future liberty, perhaps even your very life, in jeopardy to assist a man who has had no match in all of Lancashire for ignominy of reputation! Lyle Higgins, who now enters himself into the chronicles of male moral malignancy through this culminant act of degeneracy: the premeditated, gelid-blooded slaughter of another human being—this is the man you wish to help? I must sit down. My legs are weak.”

  Lucile Mobry dropped herself to the bed, where she sate in awkward repose, her head moving slowly back and forth like something mechanical that was retarding itself to a state of total motionlessness.

  Clara Barton was shaking her head as well. “Maggie, you have made especial effort not to forgive Michael Osborne for defects of character, which you were al
ways eager to catalogue with the most complacent glee. You refused to absolve him of his own act of violence, to pardon him for any of those failings which led him to it, refused to help me balm the pain that put him in such a bad way. And now you wake from your trance and are ready and willing to aid and abet and secrete this other man who has killed for no reason but the pure lust to kill!”

  Maggie rose up in anger. “That is a foul and filthy falsehood! What Higgins did he did from love for his sister!”

  Maggie’s sudden outburst drew an equally sharp rejoinder from Clara, who could not hide the pain which brittled her words: “And Michael Osborne did what he did from love for his daughter!”

  The room rang with the echo of Clara Barton’s eruption. Maggie, her hands now free of Ruth’s clasp, sought her mother’s fingers to intertwine.

  “Don’t you see?” wept Clara. “How can you not see?”

  And Maggie responded, her eyes brimming with fresh tears, “Yet I do, Mamma. Now I do.”

  She bowed her head. When a moment later it uprose, Maggie fastened her filmy gaze upon the broken lineaments of her mother’s anguish-darkened countenance. “Mamma, take Michael Osborne to Anglesey—to Uncle Whitman’s cottage by the sea. Jane and I will do likewise with Lyle. We cannot go together, for it isn’t safe that way, but we will all be there in three days’ time. I know not what the future holds for any of us, but at least we shall face it with a commonality of strength and resolve.”

  “And what of Molly?” asked Clara.

  “It remains to be seen,” said Ruth, “if Molly Osborne can find it within her heart to forgive her father.”

  Now Maggie looked at Lucile Mobry, who seemed a fading shadow in the room of staunch women. She said to her, “Every man is drowning, Miss Mobry—slowly, quickly, in one way or another; you are right. But it is our charge as women to throw out the lifeline. Some men will refuse our help. Others will try to pull us down with them. Still others will blame us for their foundering. But still we must take up the burden of their recovery and ultimate redemption. It is one of the reasons God has put us upon this spinning coil. This I now believe.” And then, as she betook herself from the bed, she said, “Mamma, my only regret in rising from this bed is losing the chance to have you attend me for a change. But I do fancy that from now on we will make it our business to take care of one another in equal measure. Come, Ruth. We haven’t much time, and we must first see to your face.”

  The two sisters started from the room. Miss Mobry called after her niece, “You never told me why this terrible thing was done to your lovely cheek.”

  Ruth stopped and turned. “No, I never did. Nor will I describe what I did to his face in return. I will say only this: he looks far worse than I do.”

  Herbert Mobry found the girl where he was told she would be, standing where the High Road communicated with the Factory Road, which led to the Tulleford Cotton Mill. On any given day this corner was traversed by well nigh every resident of the town for one purpose or another.

  It was Jemma Spalding’s purpose to stand upon a wooden poultry crate and broadcast in a raised and highly spirited voice that which she was convinced would in a very short time befall the planet: its sudden demise.

  Or, to put it in more dramatic terms: The Veritable End of the World.

  Jemma’s voice rang loud and clear to Mobry’s ears as he approached. She sang out, “The end is nigh! Make right! Make right with the Lord!”

  As Jemma came into view, someone else came into view as well. It was Molly Osborne, who stood next to her cousin, tugging at her sleeve and saying in quietly frantic tones, “You must desist, Jemma. What you are saying is absolute madness. And it is frightening the children.”

  Herbert Mobry touched Molly’s arm. She drew back with a start but then half-smiled to see that reinforcements—of a sort—had arrived. “Mr. Mobry,” she said, relaxing a bit in his presence, “I cannot do this alone. Look at her. She will not suspend. She will be arrested for disturbing the peace and inciting fear amongst the townspeople.”

  Mobry swept his hand to take in the growing number who were gathering, as men and women frequently gather to lend eyes and ears to entertaining street-corner purveyors of spurious elixirs. “But who amongst our halfway intelligent fellow citizens should ever purchase such nonsense as this?”

  Mr. Mobry’s question was answered by Jemma herself: “It isn’t nonsense, Mr. Mobry. Every word the gipsy said to me will come true. I know that now. For Madame Louisa has come to me in a dream.”

  “And what did she say in this dream?”

  Replied Jemma, her words delivered with adamant certitude, “That she now knows the very thing the cards have been predicting for over a fortnight. They tell of the end of the world—perhaps within a matter of days, perhaps within a matter of hours. This is what Madame Louisa says.”

  Though Molly’s eyes were narrowed upon her cousin, her own words were directed to the former minister, their character cold and biting. “By all evidence, Madame Louisa no longer speaks to Jemma in person because she no longer resides in the town of Tulleford. Perhaps that venerable gipsy has hitched herself to a shooting star so as to remove herself from this doomed planet entirely. Pardon me for interrupting, Jemma. Please go on.”

  “I will do it, even though your tone, Molly, is cheeky and irreverent. In the dream, Mr. Mobry, Madame Louisa comes to me and says she has read the cards one last time and they have revealed that the instrument of our planet’s finish will be a great explosion—the explosion of our very sun.”

  “I see.” Mobry shook his head gravely, not from subscription to the young woman’s unsettling prognostication, but from the sad verity of her crazed and wild-eyed state. Mobry had other questions he was assembling in his head to ask, and to ask quickly, before a policeman should arrive to take Jemma away—among them, one that struck at the very heart of his religious faith: How is one to believe a woman who says she knows when the world will end, when it was none other than Jesus Christ himself who said in the holy scriptures, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only”?

  But Mobry could not get out his question before Mrs. Colthurst, pushing herself through the congregating crowd in the company of a man roughly her own age, drew Jemma’s eye and her immediate attention. “I have…returned,” Mrs. Colthurst expelled, and then took a moment to catch her breath.

  “I’d wondered what had happened to you,” said Molly through a sigh of relief.

  “I couldn’t find our friend Mr. Prowse for the longest time. He’d stepped away from the telegraph office to take a morning stroll with his new bride. But here he is. And there she is! Hallo! Hallo!” Mrs. Colthurst waved her handkerchief. “We thought we’d lost you, my dear,” she called.

  The “new bride,” Mirabella Prowse, waved her hand in acknowledgment of the hail as she squeezed and wormed her way to join her childhood friend Molly and the others standing in a ring round Miss Spalding upon her crate, as children will do when reciting the “Ring-a-ring o’ roses” rhyme of old.

  Mrs. Colthurst resumed: “Mr. Prowse, do tell Miss Spalding exactly what you told me. Jemma, dear, you must listen to Mr. Prowse. He operates the telegraph but is also a very learned man—an astronomer. He knows quite a bit about the sun.”

  Reginald Prowse stepped forward and put himself directly in front of Jemma Spalding, who studied him curiously as if he had more eyes than two, or perhaps horns sprouting from his head. “My dear girl, you should know that a star—and our sun is a star—doesn’t simply get the notion one day to blow itself up without warning.”

  “Oh, there is to be a warning,” countered Jemma with a brisk bobbing of the head. “There will be beautiful lights in the sky. They will brighten the world to give us all time to say good-bye to one another without our having to ignite a single candle.”

  “Those lights you describe are called auroras. They are quite lovely to look at, but in my long acquired knowledge of helionomy, they have
never presaged any sort of destructive solar activity—let alone that auroras would ever prefigure the fiery death of the sun itself. It makes no scientific sense.” (Mr. Prowse wished to characterise such thinking as “sheer lunacy,’’ but in spite of the cleverness of the subtle celestial comparison, he did not wish to imply that Jemma Spalding was a lunatic.)

  “And yet it is what I have been told,” replied Jemma, unpersuaded. “The beautiful lights: red and green and violet. And then the great explosion that will come in a blink of an eye and put to quick flame every planet in its orbit. A blaze of igneous glory.”

  “Glory?”asked Mirabella.

  “Glory in that those who are in God’s good grace will be transported in that moment into His supernal arms.”

  Mirabella nodded (to be polite). Prowse sighed and shrugged his shoulders, then conferred a look of utter helplessness to Mobry and to Molly and to Mrs. Colthurst, and even to his new wife, for whose especial benefit he appended a wink and a little smile which said, “We shall resume our lover’s ramble shortly, my love, once my duty here is done.”

  Mrs. Colthurst placed a hand upon Jemma’s. “Let us go, you and Molly and I, and have a soothing cup of violet tea at my dress shop. Our nerves are all so frayed, my bonny child, and yours must be worn to a frazzle with this heavy burden you’ve taken up.”

  “I shall be rewarded in Heaven for every soul I save,” Jemma nobly replied, “but I will take tea for now. I’m very thirsty, and my throat is parched.”

  Mrs. Colthurst handed Jemma down from the wooden crate whilst mouthing “Thank you” to Mr. and Mrs. Prowse. Then she whispered, “All will be well” to Mr. Mobry, and the crowd parted to let the three women pass, with Molly shaking her head and saying, “Oh Jemma, Jemma, Jemma” in a weary underbreath whilst wondering if there was even an ounce of truth to what her cousin had said. Because, after all, Molly herself had wondered at times how the world should end. Would it come with angels singing in beautiful Heavenly chorus and clouds opening to reveal gates of opal and pearl? Or would it terminate in some great orgy of destruction and then be succeeded in its aftermath by nothing but darkness and infinite quietude?