Hannah Read online

  A shadow suddenly sliced across the puddle of sunlight by the door of the music room.

  Hannah found that she could not resist the urge to watch the progress of the painting despite her vows to avoid Lila, Jade, and the painter as much as possible. So she took up her previous post in the narrow corridor by the door at the back of the drawing room. Through the slot she could see the girls arranging themselves. Once again Lila stood by the vase with the cat, which she now insisted on bringing, curled in her arms. Hannah wished that she had a better view of Mr. Wheeler’s canvas. She wanted to see what he was seeing. How was he painting Lila? The vase? Jade? If he had seen music in her, what was he seeing in Lila? She had not been standing there long when for no reason at all Lila turned her head. The cat did as well. Hannah felt the glittering light of four hard gemstones drill into her. She slipped away from the door and pressed herself against the wall of the corridor.

  Lunch for the servants was always an hour before the Hawleys’. When Hannah rushed in, Susie looked up. “Good gracious, Hannah! Looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Whatever is the matter?”

  “It’s Lila, Susie. I think…I think…she’s after me.”

  “After you?” Susie’s freckled face studied her for a few seconds. She put her hands on her broad hips. “Now, don’t worry. She ain’t after no one. She ain’t got the wits.”

  “No!” Hannah said with such ferocity that Susie took a step back. “That’s just where you’re wrong. She does have the wits.”

  “Really, Hannah. She’s got a very bad case of nerves. She’s peculiar in the head and it makes…”

  “No, Susie, listen to me. Lila is not simply peculiar in her head. She’s got a weirdness of the heart, of the soul. She and that cat together.” Together—the word had an odd ring for Hannah. “Together,” did Lila and the cat recognize something in Hannah? Did they sense that Hannah herself felt incomplete? Or did they together want something that Hannah had? But I have nothing, nothing at all. Then she touched the cloth of her dress that covered the pouch. Or is it this? she wondered, and thought of the teardrop crystals enclosed in the grosgrain pouch.

  Susie’s lower lip started to tremble. “You scare me when you talk like this, Hannah.”

  “I am scared, Susie.”

  At the servants’ lunch, Mr. Marston announced that preparations would begin for the family’s transfer to Maine. “By the end of the week, Mr. Wheeler will have painted in enough that he can part with the vases. So they shall go in the first load.”

  Apparently it took two trips to transport the household of number 18 Louisburg Square to Maine. Gladrock was on the island of Mount Desert, which as Florrie had explained was not a “proper island” but connected by a causeway to the mainland. Hannah blessedly would go with the first contingent, which would travel there by steamer with the trunks and, of course, the vases. The thought of going to this not-proper island and living in a sprawling mansion, a mere five hundred feet from the sea, was the only thing that kept Hannah from quitting her job. But within the next two days she would be as severely tested as she had been during her month in Salina, Kansas.

  Although Jade had not trespassed in Hannah’s room again, Hannah always approached her with great caution. Hannah did not have a lock, since locks were forbidden by the Hawleys, but she had taken to latching her door firmly so it could not be pushed open by a stray breeze or a stray cat. However, the evening after the announcement of their upcoming departure for Maine, she experienced a sense of violation as soon as she walked into her room. Someone had been in the space. She looked about thoroughly, but none of her scant belongings had been disturbed.

  She set the oil lamp by the bed and began to undress. She then went to her washstand, lit a second lamp, and poured water into the metal bowl to wash her face. Something swirled in the water, giving it a reddish tinge. When she bent over and looked closer, she saw small bits, like threads. Red threads. She turned around slowly and walked toward her bed with the lamp. On the pillow were other small filaments of red. She turned back the covers. More were scattered over the sheets. “My God,” she whispered.

  “Oh, dear, here’s poor Dotty. Well, I guess that’s you now. You don’t mind, do you?” The conversation with Daze came back to Hannah from that day they had arranged the dollhouse. What Hannah was looking at was the hair that she and Daze had dyed with India ink.

  Her breath locked in her throat. A fury rose in her. “Why me? What have I ever done to this hell hag and her hell cat?” She felt something harden in her. She would not be frightened. She might be a servant. She might have nothing. But she would not be cowed, bullied, intimidated by Lila Hawley. She gathered up as much as she could of the cut hair from the doll and folded it in a piece of writing paper. This was her evidence. Surely if Susie did not believe her, Daze would. But first she wanted to go to the nursery and see the doll. As she turned to leave, she noticed something she hadn’t before. There was a small satin box with a pink ribbon tied around it by the baseboard next to the door frame. Crouching down, she picked it up and untied it. Inside was the upstairs maid costume in which she and Daze had dressed Hannah’s doll. A tiny piece of paper lay on top of the miniature lilac dress with the ruffled apron and frilled mobcap. “Know your place, scullery girl.”

  Hannah stared at the box’s contents for several minutes. Then, taking the box to the table by the washstand, she shook about half of the red threads into it. Very neatly she refolded the note and retied the bow. “We’ll see who breaks first,” Hannah muttered. And slipping the box into her pocket, she headed for the nursery.

  15 “THAT DAMN CAT”

  THE NEXT MORNING Hannah found Ettie in the nursery, kneeling in front of the dollhouse.

  “Oh, no!” Ettie moaned.

  “What is it, Ettie?” She thought for a moment that Ettie was about to discover what she had the night before—the Dotty figure with her hair shorn, her uniform changed, and hideous splotches painted on her face. But she had not found this at all.

  “Look!” said Ettie, pointing toward the dollhouse room that was Lila’s.

  “What about it?” Hannah asked.

  “See the bowl?”

  “Jade’s bowl?”

  “Yes. She filled it with real milk.” Ettie lifted her face toward Hannah. Fear flickered in her clear gray eyes. “Always a bad sign.”

  Hannah swallowed. “A bad sign?”

  Ettie’s brow furrowed as if she were thinking about the hardest thing imaginable. “I mean it seems that sometimes Lila loses her way”—she stopped—“or maybe it’s Jade that loses her way. They go off together into this little world of their own and I think…I think, well, it’s not so much who is pet and who is mistress, it’s more like what is human and what is…is…”

  “Animal?” Hannah whispered.

  “Oh, no!” Ettie said defiantly. “It’s an insult to all animals to consider Jade an animal, let alone a cat.”

  Hannah felt the color drain from her face. There was something so profoundly shocking about this small child’s observations.

  Ettie shook her head mournfully. “You’ll see, you’ll see,” she said wearily as if it were beyond words to explain. “Better tell Mummy…no…no. Miss Ardmore, because if Mummy hears…” She never finished the sentence, and left the nursery to find Miss Ardmore. Hannah watched her. Her little shoulders were rolled forward and hunched.

  With the discovery of the milk in Jade’s dollhouse bowl, things seemed to happen rapidly. Lila refused to come downstairs and the painting session was canceled for that morning. Hannah had been sent on some morning errands, but by the time she returned, it was like entering a house in a state of siege. Mr. Marston was holding forth in the kitchen. The dinner had been canceled for that evening. “But not the ladies’ luncheon for tomorrow. No, Dr. Edwards is upstairs now administering a sedative. If the ladies’ luncheon is canceled, Mrs. Hawley feels that talk will start and how right she is. Ladies do talk. We are to explain her absence this noon by saying that Lila
has gone for a sail on the river with her cousin Harry and some of his young friends.”

  “More lying,” Mrs. Bletchley muttered.

  “All in a good cause, Mrs. Bletchley,” Mr. Marston replied.

  Good cause! thought Hannah. Lila was hardly a good cause. It must be the family’s reputation they feared for. Even Hannah knew what the taint of madness did to a young woman’s marriage prospects.

  “What about going to Gladrock, Mr. Marston?” Miss Horton asked. “How does this affect our schedule?”

  “If anything, I think it might accelerate it.”

  Hannah felt a stir of excitement. If she could just get to this not-quite-proper island by the sea, she felt she could endure anything. “Is there anything I can do, Mr. Marston,” Hannah asked, “to help…?” She paused. “Accelerate things for going to Gladrock?”

  “How very kind of you, Hannah.” He looked up at her brightly. A smile creased his face. It was the first time anybody had smiled all morning. “Let me say, Hannah, that Mr. and Mrs. Hawley have been most impressed with the few times you have served at their more formal dinner parties, and I feel that, God willing, if Lila improves, there will be more occasions at Gladrock for you to serve. But, yes, back to the subject. I suppose it might be helpful if you could begin packing up the dollhouse in the nursery. That always takes a bit of time, doesn’t it?”

  Something wilted in Hannah at the mention of the dollhouse. Of all the tasks to be given! But she pushed such thoughts out of her mind. She wanted to get to Maine as fast as possible. “Yes, Mr. Marston. I’ll be pleased. Of course.”

  Somehow Hannah felt that if she were near the sea, really close to it, she could endure Lila. Once again she touched the pouch beneath her dress and thought of the teardrop crystals so like those scales of the painted creature on the vase.

  “What in the world happened to you?” Daze asked as she started to slip the dollhouse figure of the scullery girl into the servants’ shoe box. “Have you seen this, Hannah?” She held up the figure.

  “Yes, unfortunately. The hair that was cut was left in my bedroom.”

  “What?” Daze gasped. Hannah nodded. “Do you think it was Lila?”

  “I doubt it was Ettie or Clarice,” Hannah replied in an expressionless voice.

  Daze’s eyes hardened. Her lips pressed into a grim little line. “I really hate her. She might be crazy but she’s mean. Crazy mean. Look how we’re all tiptoeing around. Poor Ettie was in tears this morning.”

  “So what are we supposed to do now about Lila’s dollhouse room? She’s hardly in shape to get up and put the stuff in its box herself. How do we pack it up if we’re not allowed to touch it?” Hannah asked.

  Daze cocked her chin defiantly. “It’s a dollhouse, for the love of God. She might be the tail that wags the dog in number Eighteen, but Mr. Marston told us to pack it up and that is exactly what we are going to do.” She began removing the tiny furnishings from Lila’s dollhouse room, wrapping them in tissue, and putting them in the box labeled LILA’S BEDROOM. Hannah had never realized what a feisty spirit Daze was. She had always thought of her as a rather pliant girl, quiet and rarely showing anger even when Miss Horton reprimanded her for not dusting properly. Miss Horton seemed to criticize Daze quite a bit for no good reason at all. But it was apparent that when truly provoked, Daze could be roused.

  “Here’s Jade,” Hannah said, picking up the white porcelain cat, and began rolling it in cotton and then in the tissue paper.

  “Now I know which cat they were talking about when they first said ‘mean as cat’s piss,’” Daze said and flung the creature into the box after Hannah handed it to her.

  The next morning Hannah was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes with Susie, when a terrible screeching was heard, followed by thumps. Mr. Marston immediately set down the paper he had been reading and raced upstairs. He returned in a few minutes, pale, his eyes darting with near terror. “Jade has gone missing! She must have slipped out. Miss Lila is in a state. She hit Ettie, who is bleeding. What are you all standing there for?” he roared.

  “But what are we to do?” Mrs. Bletchley said in a shrill voice.

  “Start looking for the damn cat!” Susie, Hannah, and Mrs. Bletchley looked at one another in stunned amazement. Never had they heard Mr. Marston use an oath. Then, caught up by his own profanity, he coughed slightly and adjusted his tie. “Pardon me, Mrs. Bletchley.”

  “Don’t worry, sir.”

  “You did wrap up the fish trimmings and the bones from last night’s dinner, didn’t you, good and tight?” Mr. Marston asked.

  “Oh, of course, sir. I always do. But I can’t count on the neighbors. If the Bennetts’ cook didn’t…Well…you know how that cat goes crazy over fish.”

  Susie sidled up to Hannah and whispered, “Last year she ate every fish in the Waltons’ garden pond down the block. Every last one, except the one Willy found her playing with. It was still alive! He said it was disgusting. She was sporting with it, before she bit its head off.”

  Mrs. Bletchley made a tsking sound and calmly went back to carving a radish with a paring knife into the shape of a tulip. Daze came rushing into the kitchen. “I’ve already looked all over the upstairs. We’ll have to get Willy to crawl out on the roof.”

  Mrs. Bletchley kept her eyes on the radish and said in a dark, menacing voice, “If that sweet boy falls off the roof for that damn cat, I’ll skin the creature alive and cook her up for Lila.” This time no looks were exchanged and no one waited for Mrs. Bletchley to apologize for her profanity.

  “She’s what?” Susie and Hannah both wheeled around as Florrie came running into the kitchen.

  “Lila has accused Mr. Wheeler of murdering the cat.”

  “Have they found the cat?”

  “No. She just said he did it. He didn’t like the cat in the picture. Therefore he killed Jade.” Mr. Marston then came in a minute later. “This talk will go no further than the kitchen.”

  “It’s not true, is it, Mr. Marston?” Susie asked.

  “Of course it’s not true, Susie. Lila Hawley is a deeply disturbed young woman. The specialist who visited this afternoon has made a diagnosis of acute neurasthenia. She will be leaving within three hours for Foxcroft to take a rest cure. Daze, Susie, and Hannah, you should prepare to leave within two days for Gladrock. Reservations have been made on the coastal steamer Elizabeth M. Prouty. She’s of the Kennebec Steamboat Company. So that means she will be departing from Lincoln Wharf at ten o’clock sharp.”

  Hannah could hardly believe her ears. I am going to sea! Going to sea. To an island—proper or not—in the sea! Hannah remembered that Daze had once said that the vases looked better at Gladrock than anywhere else. She had a sudden urge to go see them. There was no one in the drawing room at the moment. Why not? she thought.

  The windows were wide open in the drawing room, for the weather was fine and Miss Horton had an obsession about “airing” rooms on fine days. The sun slid through the tall French windows and laid a bright rectangular plank of light on the polished floor. There was a whiter-than-white flash against the rectangle of sunlight. Hannah’s eyes flinched. It was as if something unconscious had been torn from her mind, from her imagination, and become real. No, it can’t be. At the very center of her denial was dread, for despite the airing, a distinct, rank odor slid through the air like a thin ribbon. A cat has been here. Hannah walked as if in a trance toward the vase on the right, closest to the window. The scent became stronger. There was a wet patch on the surface of the vase just where the fish creature’s tail broke through the waves.

  “Mr. Marston!” Hannah cried out. “Mr. Marston!”

  Mr. Marston arrived with Florrie. It didn’t take long to search the room and establish that Jade was nowhere about, but there was absolutely no doubt that she had been minutes before. Miss Horton was called. When she entered, her thin face flinched and the tip of that long pointy nose appeared to take on a life of its own. She walked straight to the vase. ”Unbeli
evable!” she exclaimed.

  “I am afraid it is quite believable, Miss Horton,” Mr. Marston said, touching his nose lightly.

  “Yes,” she said, turning to the butler. “Figures of speech no longer suffice.”

  “It’s a defilement,” Mr. Marston said.

  “Filth is what it is!” she snapped. “Have you checked inside?”

  Hannah saw Mr. Marston’s lips move but no sound came. He tried again. “Inside, Miss Horton. Inside what?”

  “Inside the vase.”

  “For…for…” Mr. Marston hesitated. “Droppings?” Mr. Marston turned deathly pale, his skin more bleached than Miss Horton’s scrubbed countenance. “Surely, Miss Horton, I can’t imagine…”

  “You can’t imagine, but I can,” she replied. Mr. Marston seemed to waver slightly as he stood there. For a moment Hannah thought he might actually faint.

  “Fetch a stepladder, Hannah,” Miss Horton ordered. “And, Florrie, I believe a small torch lamp and also a solution: one part carbolic acid to eight parts water, one quarter cup Javelle cleanser, one quarter cup chloride of lime. You have that?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Five minutes later Hannah was peering into the vase. She had lowered on a rope a small kerosene lantern that illuminated the interior of the vase. She felt a wave of relief flow through her when she saw nothing in the bottom of the vase. Hannah realized that the shape of the vase was as lovely on the inside as on the out. She felt a warm surge within her. She whispered into the contoured half-light of the vase, “We are going home—home,” and she touched the pouch with its teardrop crystals.

  “Hannah, what do you see? Anything?” The authoritative timbre of Mr. Marston’s voice had been restored.

  “Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.”

  “No stench?” Miss Horton called up.

  “Oh, no…not a whiff of anything.”

  “Well,” Mr. Marston began, “the Japanese ceramics were fired at very high temperatures, making them impervious to fluids…” But as Mr. Marston gave a lecture on the porcelains from Kyoto, Hannah did catch a scent—the clear tang of a salt breeze coming off the sea. This vase contains a world—another world! Hannah was suddenly aware of a cool glow radiating from the pouch and an odd stirring in her feet.