A-Splendid-Ruin(54)

“You see? She’s so mad she thinks she must have someone to do her hair.” Goldie reached for Ellis’s hand, grasping it hard—his hand—a bewildering intimacy; as far as I knew, they’d never even met. “She made me a laughingstock. The very first day, she insisted on going round the Horn like a . . . a loose woman! Thanks to her, I’ve been gossiped about, written about in the paper”—she choked as if the words were too distressing to say—“and she nearly made Mr. Farge insane, the way she followed him around. Didn’t she, Ellis?”

Ellis. Ellis nodded. “I tried to dissuade her. I could not.”

“She knew of our attachment, and still she tried to come between us.” Goldie patted her eyes delicately with her handkerchief.

“What attachment? I did no such thing.” I realized then the true extent of my danger. I saw my aunt again, reaching for me. “You must go, May.” My poor aunt. Her headaches had started a few months before I’d arrived, Goldie said. With the arrival of my mother’s letter. They’d doped her with laudanum. They’d made her insane. I wondered if Aunt Florence had even written the letter that had summoned me to San Francisco. Perhaps Goldie had done so, or my uncle. I would not know the difference; I’d never seen my aunt’s handwriting. And now she was dead. I knew I could say nothing more of Shin. Not now. Not here. She would be in danger if I did. I needed a lawyer. “I think I would like to speak to Stephen Oelrichs.”

As if this were a fair game. As if I had any chance at all against them.

“Stephen?” Goldie blinked. “Whatever for?”

Uncle Jonny sighed. “Enough of this. It’s all in the order signed by Judge Gerard. The papers are all correct.”

“Order?” I asked. “What order?”

No one answered.

“No,” I said, and then more loudly. “No! I’m not going anywhere.”

“Please, May.” My uncle truly looked pained.

“I’m not the least bit mad!” I appealed to the man and the woman. “They plan to steal from me. My fortune—I have a great deal of money. My father left me . . . My father is . . . Charles . . . I don’t know his name, but they do . . .” I trailed off at their sorrowful expressions, at their frank disbelief and impatience, at Dr. Browne sadly shaking his head, and though I knew I was only making it worse, I could not stop. “I have proof. My mother wrote a letter. I have it right here, on the dressing table—” I started toward it.

The dark-coated man held out his hand to me. “Now, now, miss. Do as your uncle says. We don’t want to have to confine you.”

“That imaginary letter again.” Goldie sighed. “It’s become a—what does one call it?”

“An idée fixe,” Dr. Browne provided.

“Please don’t distress yourself so, May,” Uncle Jonny said.

The nameless couple each took one of my arms, tightly, pinching. I fought them, but they clung as if they’d hooked into my skin. Goldie gave Dr. Browne my coat, and he followed me as the couple dragged me from the room. I set my heels, but they pulled me, flailing and half falling, down the stairs. At the bottom, Dr. Browne held out my coat, and they released me to put it on. I ran for the door.

My custodian was on me before I’d gone three steps. She shoved me against the hall table, sending the salvers scattering and the telephone skidding. Glass shattered on the floor.

“That’s enough, miss.”

She slapped me across the face. I gasped in pain and shock, and she jerked me again to my feet and thrust me into my coat. “Let’s go.”

Goldie, Ellis, and my uncle stood at the top of the stairs. Each of them wore the same expression. Polite interest, now not even the pretense of sorrow. I could have been anyone, no one, as I was dragged away.





PART TWO:

LESSONS

BLESSINGTON HOME FOR THE INCURABLY INSANE

SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 1904





We did not go far, that was all I knew. The leather curtains on the carriage windows were drawn so I could not see out, the thin lines of daylight peeking from the edges lent a coppery gloom. My captors sat, silent and stone-faced, on either side of me.

The carriage stopped, and the light escaping the curtains dimmed. Before the driver opened the door, my custodians had grabbed my arms again, but when I stumbled from the carriage into a dank and dim porte cochere, there was no place to run. They were closing the wooden gate that had been opened to admit us. Brick walls enclosed the other three sides. Before me was a rounded stoop of shallow stairs, also brick, and a heavy wooden door scarcely illuminated by a gas lamp turned very low.

The door opened; a tall and well-proportioned woman with flawlessly upswept chestnut hair stood waiting. She smiled reassuringly and said, “Hello, miss. Don’t be frightened, but hurry now, before you let the heat out. It’s chilly today.”

I was too stunned to be frightened or anything else. A none-too-gentle push up those stairs, and we followed the woman into a narrow hall redolent with the long-trapped odors of stewed mutton and fish and acrid soap. Steam billowed from an open door—a laundry room bustling with the hazy shapes of women. On the other side, a kitchen with great stoves and blackened kettles. The door slammed shut behind us, the bolt jammed home with a solid click.