Chapter Three
Many hours later, when we reached York, I transferred to a coach that would take me over miles and miles of moors and into Whitby. The flat landscape now gave way to rolling hills, the coursing over which began to make me feel queasy. The sun, my constant companion on the train, suddenly disappeared behind dark clouds. Flocks of white birds scattered as we rode along, flying away to take cover against whatever the dim skies would spit down upon them. We stopped briefly at Malton to pick up new passengers, and I asked the coachman whether the time on the clock tower was correct. It was not possible that it was just twelve o’clock noon.
“The old clock stopped at midnight years and years ago, but no clock-maker in England has been able to repair it,” he replied, shaking his head.
I refreshed myself with an egg sandwich and a cup of tea purchased at the station, and soon we were back in the coach and climbing into the moors. The gloom became more intense as increasingly dark clouds gathered, bringing with them the sensation of twilight, though it was just four o’clock in the afternoon. I looked out the dusty window to see that the skies behind us remained bright blue, as if the clouds were following the coach into the moors. A silly thought, of course, but I suddenly felt as if the harrowing experiences of the recent past would not be left behind at all but would follow me even on my holiday. I tried to focus on the heather, its lovely deep violet color muted by the gray daylight. But it bloomed only in places; instead of lush blankets of purple, lonely expanses of low vegetation and coarse, dull grass, dominated the scene.
The coach passed a big stone cross at the side of the road upon which hung a dried wreath of ivy, undoubtedly a memorial to a roadside death. A woman sitting opposite me made the sign of the cross and waited for me to follow her example, but I looked away and out the window at the bleak landscape and the ominous horizon. A brewing tempest was hardly unusual for an English summer, but I could not escape the portentous feeling that something was following me from London-something I would prefer to have left behind. The first sight of the sea should have heartened me, but as I watched the tide roll out, it seemed that the receding breakers threatened to suck me with them into the roiling water.
Because of my evening arrival, Lucy’s mother had hired a man to meet me at the station. He had been given a thorough description of me and took my bag from my hand as soon as I stepped out of the carriage. In my fearful state, I wrongly assumed that he was a thief preying upon visitors until he identified himself. Embarrassed, I apologized several times, which he received with a good laugh.
Lucy greeted me in the parlor of the rooms they had taken on the second floor of a huge guesthouse in East Cliff, sitting high above the sea and overlooking the red roofs of the town, the beach, and the double lighthouses that welcomed vessels coming into the harbor. She was thinner than the last time I had seen her, but her golden hair floated like waves around her shoulders. She had tied part of it back with a silky pink ribbon that matched her day dress. Her skin, always pale, had more color, and the light sprinkle of freckles that had covered her nose and upper cheeks since I had met her thirteen years ago were more prominent.
“I have been riding a bicycle,” she said by way of explaining her heightened color. “Mother is furious that I’ve let my skin get dark, but I don’t care a fig.”
“You, riding a bicycle? Like a common woman? Lucy, I am surprised at you!”
But I was not surprised.
At school, Lucy, with her pretty blond hair and innocent blue eyes, looked like the perfect angel but was secretly an unruly child who stole sweets from Miss Hadley’s personal trove of goodies and enacted elaborate schemes for which she never got caught. One morning, however, as Miss Hadley marched us to the park in a weekly outing, Lucy diverted the two of us from the pack of girls and revealed her latest plan. We would approach perfect strangers, explaining that we were collecting money for the blind, but we would use the money to buy candies.
I was petrified, but I went along with her, walking up to ladies in bonnets and men with whiskers freshly groomed by their barbers, allowing Lucy to tell her story and nodding my head in agreement. When we had collected two handfuls of pence, we caught up with Miss Hadley and slipped back into the group. But later, one of the older ladies who had given us money came up to Miss Hadley, congratulating her on the philanthropic nature that she had instilled in young girls. Miss Hadley listened attentively, then with one hand yanking Lucy by the ear and the other pulling my braid, she made us confess our story.
“But we were going to give the money to the blind!” Lucy insisted. She told the story that her mother had taken to doing good deeds for the needy, which so inspired Lucy that she wanted to impress her mother with her own charity.
“Henceforth I suggest you help your mother with her work, rather than do these things on your own.”
Miss Hadley demanded the return of the coins, gave the money to a one-eyed beggar sitting by a park bench, and let the matter drop. Another girl would have been spanked and sent to bed without dinner.
Such was Lucy’s talent for escaping her crimes unscathed.
“Mina, you are the most old-fashioned person I know,” Lucy said, in answer to my qualms over ladies riding bicycles. I supposed that she still got away with doing anything she wanted to do. “My mother would be so very pleased if you were her daughter instead of me.”
“I do not care what you say. I cannot imagine mounting such a thing and still comporting myself with any dignity whatsoever.”
“Perhaps you have not seen the new safety bicycles, but they are very popular in resort towns. A little stand keeps them in place while one mounts and dismounts, with hardly an upset to one’s skirts at all. A little fresh air and exercise is beneficial for females too!” Lucy’s big blue eyes were almost wild with excitement as she expressed this idea.
“Has Mr. Holmwood been taking you on these bicycling adventures?” I asked.
“No, no, not Arthur. Someone else, a friend of his from their Oxford days, an American named Morris Quince. He is occupying my time while Arthur is away on family business,” she said, turning from me. She called for tea and sandwiches, which were served by their locally acquired maid, Hilda, who informed us that Mrs. Westenra had already gone to bed with a headache.
“She is always ill nowadays,” Lucy said. “Her health has never been good, but since Father died, she has deteriorated. The doctor thought that the sea air would invigorate her heart, but I’m afraid the opposite has happened.”
Lucy looked forlorn. She had been close to her father, who had died the year before.
“Nonsense. One more month of sea air and you’ll see improvement,” I said, patting her hand. “Your letter sounded as if you had news to share.” I wanted to distract her from her woes, but Lucy shook her head. “No, dear one, you first. I want to hear all about your Jonathan.”
I took my sketchbook out of my satchel and opened it to the page where I’d sketched a white wedding gown. “It’s taken from designs I saw in
“Why, Mina, it’s a variation on the gown you sketched when you were a girl of thirteen and secretly designing your wedding dress in the evenings before bedtime,” Lucy said. “You even said that you would wear white too like the queen.”
