Among the Lilies

by Daniel Mills

  Miles Patrick of Hinesburgh testified: I own the next farm from Barton’s; was on neighborly terms with Mrs. Barton; did not like her late-husband. My daughter came upon him once behind our house. He was drunk; claimed he was cursed; said a ghost was watching him.

  Will Barton boards with me; works without pay for Mrs. Barton; came into the house at eight o’clock on October 12. I was having breakfast; could see he was upset. He had been to Barton’s; told me what happened; said he had to get back to Elsie; asked me to go for help.

  I readied the buggy; drove to Pell’s. Pell said the Sheriff would need to be told; sent me to [Deputy Sheriff] Jonah Degree’s with a message to meet at Barton’s. I reached Degree’s at nine o’clock; rode with him to Barton’s; drew up at the barn and he got down.

  I did not stay; did not enter the barn; did not see the body.

  Dr. Horatius Pell testified: I attended the scene of Mrs. Barton’s death on October 12; had no prior relationship with the deceased; met her once at Irish’s when she was bonded there.

  Miles Patrick pulled up at my house on Tuesday morning; informed me of Mrs. Barton’s death; said it was likely suicide. I told him to fetch Jonah Degree; drove to Barton’s. Will Barton met me outside; showed me to the barn.

  Mrs. Barton lay on her back with face covered by a man’s coat. I removed the coat; observed discoloration of the face and distortion of her features; loosened the noose; noted abrasions caused by the apron-strings. She had no other injuries. The neck was intact; skin cold; rigor pronounced.

  I am of the opinion that the death occurred at around nine o’clock on the evening of October 11; that Mrs Barton died of strangulation; that she was a suicide.

  Deputy Sheriff J.S. Degree testified: I have known the deceased for five years; arrested her husband on at least two occasions; was present at his drowning near Middlesex; could not save him.

  Tuesday I drove with Miles [Patrick] to Barton’s; arrived at half-past-nine; sent Miles home. Will Barton came out of the barn. I questioned him concerning the morning’s events; examined the body in his presence; asked where he had found her. The beam in question was perhaps fifteen feet up. I climbed to the hayloft and over the railing; dropped down to the beam; found it easily done.

  Will accompanied me to the house; stayed as I questioned Miss Livermore; held the baby while we talked. Miss Livermore stated she last saw Mrs. Barton at eight o’clock the night before; locked up at ten; confirmed both doors were locked when she awoke; claimed she heard her employer coughing in the night.

  I proceeded to Mrs. Barton’s bedroom; observed the bedclothes were disordered; identified a small depression near the center consistent with an infant and the outline of a second body to one side; called to Miss Livermore, who came in; inquired if she had made the bed on October 11. She replied she had; took offense when I suggested she was mistaken; insisted she had heard Mrs. Barton in her room as recently as five o’clock in the morning; that she herself was awake at the time; that she was not dreaming.

  I dismissed Miss Livermore; examined the bedroom at length; discovered a letter underneath the bed surmising it had been fallen from the table. The note is in a woman’s hand; unsigned; addressed to Miss Livermore.

  Letter from Lucilla Barton to Elsie Livermore: Please don’t think badly of me. I had no choice, no other means of escaping her jealousy. My father loved me and she killed him for it. Your mother too, and Mrs. Irish, and she drove my husband to his death in the river. Then Helen was born and I could not stop the child from loving me. I tried, God knows, but it made no difference. Tell Helen I’m sorry. Tell her I had to do it. This way she’ll be free of her, and you, too, Elsie. I hope.

  Miss Elsie Livermore recalled: The letter is in Mrs. Barton’s hand. I have not seen it before; do not understand its meaning; do not know why it was left for me.

  J.S. Degree’s testimony, cont’d: I propose that Mrs. Barton put her daughter to bed at eight o’clock on October 11; that she wrote this letter to Miss Livermore which she placed on the table; that the letter fell beneath the bed delaying its discovery. She slipped outside unnoticed by Miss Livermore; proceeded to the barn and climbed to the hayloft; stepped onto to the beam; fastened noose to beam and jumped. The time was nine o’clock. At ten Miss Livermore locked up the house and retired to bed; heard the baby cry out in the night; dreamt or imagined she heard a voice from the bedroom.

  The hearing concluded shortly after three o’clock. Justice Smith’s final pronouncement echoed the opinions of Dr. Pell and Deputy Degree, and Mrs. Barton was found to have died by her own hand on the evening of October 11.

  Lucilla Barton was laid to rest Saturday in the Village Cemetery. Will Barton attended the burial with Elsie Livermore, who held the orphaned child against the cold wind. Once the baby cried out and Miss Livermore was heard to sing to the infant until she quieted.

  Miss Livermore is evidently a capable young woman. It is to be hoped young Helen Barton may yet avoid the orphanage.

  From Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954:

  DEATH - FEMALE

  From Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954:

  MARRIAGE - BRIDE

  From The Burlington Free Press, Dec 18, 1881:

  Physician Horatius Pell reports four new cases of consumption in Hinesburgh. Mrs. W.C. Barton is not expected to survive.

  From Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954:

  DEATH - FEMALE

  From Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954:

  DEATH - MALE

  From The Burlington Free Press, Jan 27 1888:

  Insanity of a Young Girl

  The New England Journal of Medicine describes an unusual case of inherited insanity at Burlington’s Home for Destitute Children. The child in question came to the Home in 1882, aged about 1, following the deaths of her adoptive mother and father. She speaks only rarely and was at one time believed to be mute. Her birth-parents suffered from mental disease and her mother was a suicide. The girl does not smile or laugh and is only content on her own. She sits on her bed and talks to the walls in a language that might be French. “I am not alone,” she says when questioned. “I am with Mother.” A sad case.

  Lilies

  I.

  I lost my parents when I was young. My sister raised me in their place but died in childbirth and the baby too. Her husband returned to Canada, and I was alone at twenty-one. I found work as a scrivener and took up lodgings outside Boston where I was staying when I received a letter from Edward Feathering, my last living relation.

  I had met my uncle ten years before, at my father’s funeral, where he had told me stories of Hannibal and the Punic Wars. He meant to comfort me, I think, but years later, I recalled little of our conversation save his ponderous manner and his voice like dry leaves rustling.

  My uncle was a classicist and a recluse, a widower of more than four decades. In ten years, I had not received a single letter from him. Now he wrote to offer his condolences on my sister’s passing and to invite me to visit him at his country house in Maine.

  Come to Bittersweet Lodge, he wrote, and I accepted, though it would be half-a-year before I was able to make the journey.

  In late August I embarked in Boston for the village of Westerly in Maine, changing trains in Portsmouth, where I purchased a newspaper on the platform. I expected a lonesome journey to Westerly and was surprised when a man and woman of my own age entered the parlor car and seated themselves near to me. The man was tall and handsome and carried with him the stale odor of pipe-smoke. His companion was plain by comparison with a narrow face reminiscent of a bird’s. The train lurched into motion and the young man addressed me.

  “You don’t mind us sitting here, do you? We can take ourselves off if you’d rather be alone.”

  I lowered the paper. “No,” I said. “Please don’t.”

  “Excellent! A train journey can be such a bore.”

  I agreed this was so.

  “You are traveling alone?”

  I nodded. “From Boston
. And you?”

  “Concord. My sister and I travel together, though, so we have each other for company.” He offered me his hand. “Justice St. James.”

  “Henry Feathering.”

  He introduced his companion. “And this is my sister Clemency.”

  The names puzzled me. “Your father was a lawyer?”

  “A judge, actually,” Justice said, “and something of an eccentric. A few years ago, Clem found a list of names he had scribbled in the family bible. ‘Clemency’ was there and ‘Justice,’ but there were others too.”

  “Amicus was one,” Clemency said. “A boy’s name.”

  “Prudence, too,” her brother said. “And Pardon.”

  “You’re forgetting Temperance. Father has always been a great one for legal virtue. I should be thankful, I suppose, I wasn’t christened Impartiality.”

  “Why ever not?” Justice teased. “It has a certain ring.”

  “And you must concede,” I said, “it is an improvement on, say, Actus Reus.”

  She laughed. “But that would be a boy’s name, surely.”

  “Subpoena, then.”

  “Or Absentia!”

  “As your mother would have to be,” I jested, “to consent to such a name.”

  She didn’t laugh. She winced, looked away.

  “Our mother died,” Justice said, then held up his hand before I could respond. “You needn’t apologize. You couldn’t have known, and besides, it was years ago. She was ill for some time. The end, when it came, was something of a blessing.”

  I nodded. I recalled the stories I had heard of Jane Feathering, Edward’s wife, and of the wasting disease that had killed her at age twenty.

  “And your father?” I asked.

  “The same as ever,” Justice said. “Or so I imagine. Really, we rarely see him. He shuts himself inside his study where he spends the days and nights reviewing his old judgements.”

  “My uncle is much the same,” I said. “He isn’t a judge, though. Actually, I’m afraid it’s rather worse than that.”

  “Oh?” Clemency asked.

  “He’s an historian.”

  I told them what little I remembered of my uncle, imitating his rasping voice to describe the Roman defeat at Cannae. I made a fool of myself, I’m sure. My only excuse is they put me at my ease. We talked of music and literature and I admitted even to my love of Poe and Hawthorne and to the escape I had found in romances of the darkest character.

  Clemency leaned forward. Her eyes glittered, black and lustrous.

  “I understand,” she said, placing her hand over mine where they rested together in my lap. “Many nights I have longed to be at Prospero’s Ball, and not in spite of my fear but because of it, as if in the extremes of terror I might leave this world behind and pass into a story and disappear forever—or at least an afternoon.”

  The train shuddered, slowing, and Clemency slipped her hand away even as the conductor called down the car for Westerly. I stood. Justice did too, then Clemency, and I realized we were disembarking at the same station.

  “We’re staying with our cousins,” Justice said. “Edith and Phyllis Evans.”

  “Edward Feathering is my uncle, the historian. He’s at Bittersweet Lodge.”

  Clemency asked, “Has he lived there long?”

  “Forty years, I’m told. Do you know it, then?”

  “Not really,” she said, “but the house is visible from the road. I have often wondered about it. I thought it was abandoned.”

  “The place is a ruin,” Justice said.

  “Perhaps,” Clemency said. “But I have always found it beautiful.”

  “Come for a visit,” I said. “I’ll speak with my uncle. I’m sure it would be alright.”

  Clemency glanced at Justice. An intimacy passed between them, a confidence between brother and sister into which I could not enter.

  “Very well,” Justice said, if somewhat stiffly.

  Clemency said, “And you must come for dinner tomorrow.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  We descended from the platform. An open buggy waited in the street, a dusty figure slouched on the bench. My uncle’s hired man, I assumed, sent down to fetch me from the station.

  I made my farewells. I offered Justice my hand then bowed to Clemency.

  “Until tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  I climbed into the buggy. The old man whistled to the horse and we were away at a walk, cartwheels rattling. We neared the corner and I looked back to the station where Justice and Clemency lingered in the blinding sunlight, waiting for their cousins to collect them.

  Justice appeared excited. He addressed his sister forcefully, gesticulating, but Clemency didn’t respond. She shimmered, veiled in sunlight, her shadow sweeping the pavement as she turned from her brother toward the buggy, toward me, and lifted her hand.

  II.

  The sun passed behind the hills. Three miles from Westerly, the house loomed into view on a wooded hilltop, its windows bronzed with the last of the light.

  The old cart-driver turned from the highway and whistled the horse uphill between two rows of ornamental cedars. Their branches twined together, forming a tunnel to Bittersweet Lodge. The house appeared as a study in slow decay with its roof-slates missing, brickwork half-collapsed, and the bittersweet vines over everything like a spreading cancer.

  The buggy drew up at a side entrance. The air hummed with insect-life, crickets in the undergrowth. They sang to shake the bittersweet, which dropped its blooms like shedding skin.

  “The door’s unlocked,” the old man said. “Mister Edward’s in the study.”

  I went inside. The outer door opened to a narrow passage, unlit, awash in blue twilight. An open doorway led to a disused parlor with its rugs and furniture covered. I unlatched the shutters, let fall a flood of moonlight. The room swam in motes of silver dust.

  Footsteps in the hall. I turned as my uncle appeared in the doorway, more haggard even than I remembered. His clothes were stained and moth-eaten and his gray beard hung down to his waist. He smelled of old books and mildew, creeping damp.

  “Uncle Edward,” I said.

  I offered my hand, but he would not take it. “Henry, my boy,” he said and stepped forward to draw me to his chest. “It is good to see you.”

  He released me. “You’ve had a long journey,” he said. “You must be hungry. Shall we dine together?”

  He showed me down the corridor to the kitchen, where a crude table was laid. The old buggy driver was there as well. Asaph, I learned, was his Christian name, and he was the only other resident of Bittersweet Lodge. He joined us at the table, sitting himself beside me and starting on the claret. My uncle didn’t speak. He watched me from across the table with his eyes like fireflies dancing with the movement of our breath on the candle. Asaph finished his supper and licked his plate. He stood to go, and we were alone.

  “How long has it been?” my uncle asked. “Since last we saw one another.”

  “Ten years,” I said. “My father’s funeral.”

  “You were just a boy. Now childish things are far behind you.” He closed his eyes. “And what of me, Henry? Have I changed?”

  “Not at all.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I suppose not. To children even the youngest of men can seem ancient. And it is many years since I might be called young.”

  His eyes opened. “How long do you intend to stay?”

  “I have made arrangements for the week.”

  He nodded. “I fear you may need to make your own amusement. The situation, sadly, cannot be avoided. You may know I am currently engaged on a study of the Teutoborg disaster and the fate of the lost legions, but the time is short, and there is much to do. However, I think you will find my library is not inconsiderable, while the property, too, is yours to wander.”

  I thanked him, cleared my throat. “I wonder, Uncle, if you are acquainted with the Evans sisters? Phyllis and Edith.
They live in the village.”

  “The village,” he repeated, then chuckled. “They may as well be in Carthage.”

  “I met their cousins on the train,” I said. “Justice and Clemency St. James. I intend to call on them tomorrow, but thought, perhaps, they might visit here the day after?”

  “Justice and Clemency,” my uncle said. “A man and his wife?”

  “Brother and sister.”

  “And there is nothing between the young lady and yourself?”

  The question startled me. “No—of course not.”

  “Then please tell your friends they are most welcome.” He withdrew his pocket watch. “As for me I must say goodnight. Quinctilius Varus has waited two millennia to see his reputation restored: I mustn’t keep him waiting any longer. Asaph will show you to your room.” He consulted his watch again. “You will find him in the pantry, I think.”

  The old manservant slumped against the racks of pickles, an empty bottle between his legs and a cheesecloth draped over his face. I said his name and he hauled himself up, cursing, to lead me down another narrow corridor to a bedroom at the rear of the house.

  The atmosphere was stifling, feverish. I opened the windows, but I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even read. Everything had changed. Until today the world had been to me a trackless wild, but now I saw the path before me, unwinding from my earliest memories of Edward to encompass Westerly and the Lodge and Clemency St. James.

  I drifted off, then started awake at the sound of a woman’s laughter from above. Clemency, I thought. My nightshirt dripped with sweat. I lay awake for some time but heard only frogs and crickets and rustling bittersweet. The laughter did not come again.