The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(30)
The work her father gave Carlota was parceled carefully. She might tend to the hybrids, see to their aches and wounds, even mix certain compounds for him, clean flasks and receptacles, yet many things remained hidden. She didn’t understand all the secrets of his scientific achievements. But then, neither did Montgomery, even if he also helped around the laboratory, fetching wood or animal specimens.
She hoped one day her father would allow her to do more, would let her pore over all his notes and books. She must be patient. Dr. Moreau did not rush himself.
“Work in the laboratory is not the same as being around people.”
“I have you. I have Lupe.”
“But to be able to spend time with gentlemen, it would be a welcome change.”
“Montgomery is a gentleman.”
“Mr. Laughton is many things, but not a gentleman. An outcast and a drunk, perhaps.”
“Aren’t you in a way an outcast?” Carlota asked, because even though she was still angry at Montgomery, her sense of fairness compelled Carlota to defend him, and she thought him gentle enough.
Her father raised his eyebrows at that. “What sort of rude chatter is this? Me? An outcast?”
“You said so once, papa. You were talking about your brother and you—”
“You misinterpreted me, surely,” he said, although Carlota remembered him saying so—it had been during one of those episodes of his when he was terribly sad and wanted to see little of her, preferring to gaze at the oval portrait of his dead wife. “Outcast! Me! Besides, you couldn’t possibly find Laughton’s company more pleasant than that of the Lizalde boys.”
His voice had hardened, and not wishing to displease him, she shook her head. “Of course not,” she said quickly. “But I don’t know them.”
“That is easily remedied. You mustn’t be shy. Be friendly and pleasant if they come to stay with us. We must please the Lizaldes at all times. You have nice dresses, it would be a good occasion to wear them, and your hair…perhaps you might do it in the style of the newer fashion plates.”
Carlota’s hair often fell in a single, thick braid down to her waist or else she wore it loose. But the magazines and newspapers Montgomery fetched for her from the city showed women with elaborate hairdos, strands twisted and looped and piled carefully with ornaments and hairpieces.
“You are a fine young woman, and these are fine young men. If we were in the city, you would have already been presented to society. But we are here and there’s been no chance to properly show you to the world. A lady at your age might be courted, you know? You should practice your piano playing and we shall see what they think of you.”
“Yes, papa,” she said, although she wondered whether they’d find a fault in her demeanor or dress, no matter how many fashion plates she looked at.
“I don’t want you to be anxious. When you are anxious it can trigger a relapse.”
“No, papa. I’ll be fine,” she said, though her voice was small.
“What psalm shall we read today?” her father asked, motioning to the drawer where he kept his Bible, for weekday mornings he liked her to read to him from scientific texts, but on the mornings when they had a service he liked the Bible best. “Dominus illuminatio mea.”
“Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident,” she said, and now her voice rose clear and sweet. The psalm was easy enough that she need not read it to recite it.
Her father smiled. He was pleased.
Once her father finished his tea and dressed himself, they walked together to the chapel. He held services each Saturday, reading from the leather-bound Bible with the red cover.
The chapel was modest and could hardly accommodate even this small congregation. It had been meant for the mayordomo of the ranch and the family that had lived there before them, and not for the workers who might have made their abode behind the stone walls. Thus they were packed together tightly and it was too warm, even in the morning before the sun set the land ablaze.
But Carlota liked the chapel, for all its smallness and simplicity. There was a pretty mural on one of the walls showing Eve in the Garden of Eden, which she gazed at with interest because Eve, rather than being rendered pale and golden-haired as in her father’s Bible, rather than looking like the woman in the oval portrait, had instead been painted with a duskier hue that recalled Carlota’s skin. The Christ on the cross, however, was pale as snow, and she didn’t like the sight of him because his face was contorted in agony.
Her father’s sermons often discussed the pain of the Christ, exhorting the hybrids to understand that God gifted the world with pain so that everything might be made perfect. Original sin must be erased, but this task could not be accomplished without suffering. God had entrusted her father with the labor of perfecting creation and delivering us all from sin, and thus the doctor had created the hybrids. Dr. Moreau was therefore a prophet, a holy man.
But Carlota knew the hybrids were confused by this notion. She’d heard them say that Dr. Moreau was the owner of the deep salt sea, the lord of stars in the sky and of the lightning bolt. And her father didn’t always correct them.
She worried this was blasphemy. She worried about the tapestry of the world he wove for them and the purpose of Yaxaktun. Without her father’s experiments and medical research she would have died, this was true. And he had told her often how many other wonders might be found by piercing the veil of nature. Cures that could provide hope to those who had none.