Lucy looked exasperated. “But I am not nervous. I do not have a condition! I merely wish to be left alone. Tell them that I am well, Mina!”
I remembered what Mrs. Westenra had said about Seward’s infatuation with Lucy. It did not seem appropriate to have such a man as one’s doctor. “I think Lucy is mending,” I said. “She was very calm yesterday and she slept well last night.”
“Mina, are you trained in the medical arts?” Mrs. Westenra asked, barking her words at me. She looked quite hostile. “If you are not a doctor, then you must leave the medical decisions to Dr. Seward.” She turned to Seward. “Perhaps you should have a look at Mina as well, John. These incidents of noctambulism can be very dangerous. One such incident was the death of my dear late husband.”
My body went cold thinking of submitting to an examination by John Seward. But seeing how Lucy’s defiance was not helping her situation, I remained calm.
“I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Westenra, but I have had only two episodes. When I return to London, I will see Dr. Farmer, Miss Hadley’s physician, who has cared for me since I was a child.” I was not sure that Dr. Farmer was still alive, but hoped that the mention of another physician would divert the attention from me.
“Both you and Miss Lucy have the constitution of a lady, Miss Mina, and therefore are more susceptible to nervous conditions,” Dr. Seward said. “A strapping girl from the working classes may survive the sort of attack made on Miss Lucy, or may wander about in the night air half asleep and remain unscathed. But ladies like the two of you with refined sensibilities must but be looked after carefully,” he said.
“Lucinda, I am your mother and guardian, and I am morally and legally responsible for you. If you are as well as you claim to be, I suggest you do what the doctor says and allow him to confirm it,” said Mrs. Westenra.
“You must do it for your mother, Miss Lucy,” Seward said. “You don’t want her worries over you to provoke another attack of angina.”
“Well, then, I will cooperate, if only so that you may discover for all your troubles that I am in perfect health!” Lucy said. She picked up the glass containing the concoction Seward had mixed and swallowed it down theatrically, arching her back and raising the glass high into the air so that her neck was long and her curls dipped down the length of her backbone. She reminded me of a poster I had once seen of an actress playing Lady Macbeth. Then she turned to me and spoke in a perfectly controlled voice. “Mina, will you help me undress and get into a dressing gown?”
I followed her into the bedroom, whereupon she closed the door and sprang on the bed like a panther. “You must go to Morris and tell him what is happening,” she said, hushed and hissing. “Tell him that I will meet him at some arranged place tonight, and we will go off together where no one will find us.”
“Lucy, be rational.” I sat with her on the bed and stroked her arm. “Do you really want to give Morris Quince control over your life? You will be at the mercy of his feelings, and men’s feelings are not to be trusted.”
“This is no time to remind me of your old-fashioned doctrine of love, Mina.”
Before I could put reply, we heard men’s voices outside. Lucy jumped up and looked out the window, and I followed, looking over her shoulder. Standing on the pavement below, Seward was conversing with the red-haired man, whom we had seen on the night of the shipwreck. He was holding a copy of the
“It’s that theater manager from London,” I said.
“Why does he want to see me?” Lucy asked.
I put my finger up to silence her so that we could hear their conversation.
“No, you may not see her. I am a doctor, she is my patient, and she has suffered a trauma. She is in no condition to answer your questions.” Seward spoke not harshly but in no uncertain terms.
From our vantage point above, the man’s hair was like a thicket of ginger-colored hen’s feathers. He spoke softly, and his back was to us so that we could not hear what he was saying. But we could hear Seward’s reply. “Yes, I am familiar with the good reputation of your theater, but that does not alter my patient’s condition. She is sedated, and I will not allow her to receive company.”
“How dare John Seward decide who I can and cannot speak with!” Lucy was indignant. “I shall give him a piece of my mind,” she said, turning toward the door. But I grabbed her arm.
“Do you really want to tell your tale to a stranger, Lucy? The man is a writer looking for ghoulish stories to put on the stage. He might make any use of whatever you tell him.”
The red-haired man spoke again, but his words were carried away from us on the wind, whereas Seward’s rose into the window.
“The lady is in a state of hysteria, sir. Do you actually believe that a corpse broke through its coffin and attacked her? I might add that there is no reason to believe that her attacker should be identified with Jack the Ripper. That is a newspaper’s way of selling copies. I am sure you are aware of their tactics.”
The red-haired man shrugged his broad shoulders and said something else, and Dr. Seward took a card from his pocket. “I would be delighted to help you in your research,” he said, extending his hand to the other fellow, who shook it firmly. “Send me a note with an appointed time, and I will see you at the asylum in Purfleet.”
Distraught, Lucy turned away from the window. “That man outside-I do not trust him. What if he is a reporter? What if he starts investigating and finds out that I am a liar?”
Lucy leaned against the bedpost, taking little bird breaths through her mouth. It seemed that the medication was taking effect.
“I know someone who is acquainted with him. I will get more information about him to put your mind at ease. Now you must rest, Lucy. Let me help you out of your clothes. After John Seward takes a look at you, you can go to sleep.”
“Please, Mina, go to Morris. Tell him that we must leave tonight. Tell him what they are saying about me. I am not hysterical! I am a woman in love, and I cannot have my love, and that is what makes me act this way.”
I helped Lucy into a satin gown the color of pink champagne, with a wide collar of white lace and tiny pearl buttons. She had worn it a year ago when I visited her, and I remembered how the pink blush reflected the color of her cheeks and made her skin, already radiant, rich with rosy hues. Now it had the opposite effect and seemed to drain what vestige of color was left in her pallor and highlighted the marks on her neck. Her eyes were heavy with the medication. She placed one hand upon her chest as if she wanted evidence of her continuing heartbeat. I did not want to leave her looking so helpless, but she would be under the care of her mother and a doctor. Who was I to interfere with their authority?
“Rest well, my darling Lucy. Things will look better when you wake up.”
He lived in precisely the sort of dwelling one would have expected, a weatherworn stone cottage by the sea built for a fisherman and repaired haphazardly by his own hand through the many decades of his occupancy. It was protected from the inhospitable rock-strewn beach by a roughly built low wall that looked as if the stones had leapt from the shore and tossed themselves one atop the other. I rapped on the door and, receiving no response, knocked on a window, noticing the few flecks of paint that remained on the otherwise worm-eaten wood of the windowsill.
An old woman came to the door. More stooped than her father, her spine bent sharply like the tip of a crochet hook. She stuck her head out and up like a tortoise stretching from its shell. I told her that I was an acquaintance of her father’s and that I had missed him today at the churchyard.
“Oh, he is there,” she said. I saw by the little random pickets that stuck out of her mouth that she had retained the same amount of teeth in the same pattern of loss as her father. “He won’t be leaving the churchyard again. There is no stone up as yet, but we put him in the ground yesterday.”
“I am so sorry,” I said while she looked me up and down “How did he die?”
“Don’t be joking with me, young lady. How did he die? He was a few years shy of the century mark. The good Lord got tired of turning him away. He left us on the night of the shipwreck, as was fitting, him being an old man of the sea.”
She beckoned me inside, and it took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dark room from the stark light of the afternoon. She bade me sit on a rickety chair pulled up to a solid pine table.
“That was his chair,” she said. She poured me a cup of lukewarm tea and gave me a piece of cold toast slathered with honey. “He would be pleased to see you sitting in it. He talked of you, miss, of your green eyes and hair like jet. He said that had you known him as a young man you would have fancied him.”
I smiled at the thought.
