In the interim, I was busy caring for Jonathan, who suffered a relapse upon our arrival when he discovered that Mr. Hawkins was ill. After years of enduring painful ailments brought on by severe ulcers, the old man had been diagnosed with chronic gastric catarrh. He complained of a sour mouth and stomach that made eating most undesirable, turning away his meals and losing much of his body weight. His doctor advised me that the condition often caused neurasthenia in the patient, which only worsened the disease.
I found myself nursing both men, aided by Sadie, Mr. Hawkins’s longtime housekeeper, but she too was getting up in age and relied upon my stamina. Sadie prepared the main meals, but I visited the markets to purchase our supplies. Both Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins called for me constantly, and I rushed from sickroom to sickroom with medicines, teas, elixirs, and compresses. Mr. Hawkins required ten to fifteen drops of arsenic every two hours, accompanied by soothing conversation and a specially prepared poultice to put on his stomach. Jonathan was always hungry and asking for food, and at the same time, apologizing to me for putting me through the trouble of caring for him.
I encouraged each man to take a midday meal in the dining room, mostly so that I could sit in that lovely room and eat, rather than perch at the kitchen table with Sadie, gobbling down food between my errands. I also thought that the men might provide each other with some cheer. But Mr. Hawkins had given Jonathan the assignment in Styria with the highest intentions to advance his career and supplement his income; Jonathan’s resulting illness depressed the old man’s health and humor more than his own ailment. Jonathan too was downhearted over his uncle’s failing health, so that I was living with two melancholy people. I slept alone on a small daybed in the library. I had tried to lie next to Jonathan, but he cried out all night in his sleep, tossing and turning like some tortured thing.
I took refuge in my daily walks in the town. As soon as I walked out of the door, the crisp autumnal air, so fresh and clean, hit my face, cleansing away the heaviness that lurked inside. I strolled down the street, looking over at the red brick houses on the hills and the rolling green of the surrounding countryside. I liked to walk past the old mill with screeching seagulls circling the water below, then on to the high street, where Mr. Hawkins kept an office, in addition to the one in London. I stopped to purchase whatever goods we needed from the markets and shops, and then turned around and repeated my steps, heading for home before the patients woke from their naps, which usually coincided with the ringing of the city’s old curfew bell at five o’clock.
It was a pleasant enough daily diversion, though I could not control my sadness when passing the cathedral in which I had dreamt of marrying, reminding me of lost dreams and dashed plans. With the coming of autumn, I missed the school and the rooms full of giggling girls and the structure of the daily lessons. I had wanted relief from all that. Now I wondered if I had failed to appreciate the small and uncomplicated happiness that it had provided me for so many years.
After weeks of wretched pain, Mr. Hawkins passed away one Monday morning at dawn. Though I was very fond of him, I was not sorry to see the end of his terrible suffering. He had left his home and his business to Jonathan, dividing his money between Jonathan and his aunt, so that we found ourselves in a sudden position of affluence. At the funeral, Mr. Hawkins’s friends and clients offered condolences to us and assured Jonathan that they would continue to be represented by the firm-meaning Jonathan-in all legal matters. After the services, when we were drinking tea in the garden, he looked up at the sky. “Mina, our lives should be beginning, but there are moments when I fear that mine has already ended.”
“Darling, we have everything to look forward to,” I answered. “You are free of the fever, and with the resources that Mr. Hawkins left, we can make every dream we spoke of in Miss Hadley’s parlor come to fruition.”
“I will try to be that man for you, Mina. I owe you that. You are truly an angel of mercy and forgiveness. But sometimes I fear that the man who envisioned that life with you is no longer here. Some monster with whom I am not yet well acquainted, some rogue with a propensity for doing the unthinkable, has taken his place. Can you be patient with me? It is more than I deserve, but I am asking it anyway. I would not blame you if you refused.”
I promised Jonathan that I would stand by him. True, he had betrayed me, but he also suffered terribly for it. I wondered if he had not already been ill and beside himself with fever when he committed those acts, so unlike a man with his character. I should have asked his doctor, but I was too ashamed of the infidelity to speak of it. Besides, I loved him, and I saw enough glimpses of the uncorrupted Jonathan of the past to believe that with time and with love, he would return.
The weather turned colder. By day, Jonathan went into his office to tend to business matters, but at home, though he was affectionate, I often caught him staring into the dancing flames in the fireplace looking forlorn. One evening, about a week after we buried Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan mixed some drops of a sedative into his brandy and retired early. I stayed up late staring into that same fire, wondering if it might give me some answers, until it burned to embers. I fell asleep on the divan in the parlor, and woke early covered by a blanket that Sadie must have placed over me sometime during the night. Then news arrived that morning in two hastily written letters-one from Kate Reed and another from Headmistress-that would distract me from Jonathan’s angst and forever change the course our lives were to take.
Lucy was neither at Waverley Manor nor on her honeymoon. Both she and her mother were dead.
A light rain fell from the low ceiling of omnipresent gray outside the entrance to Highgate Cemetery, drizzling upon the parade of black umbrellas in the funeral cortege. We descended from the mourning coaches that Arthur Holmwood had hired to follow the garland-draped hearse, drawn by six onyx-coated ponies. A canopy of ostrich feathers covered the hearse, decorated with gold and brass emblems. Little page boys wearing formal livery attended the coachman. Through the glass panes, I could see Lucy’s coffin covered in rich, dark velvet. The pallbearers-John Seward and others whom I did not know-slid the casket out of the back of the hearse with careful black-gloved hands. It was completely unreal to me that my friend was inside.
“It looks like it’s carrying a princess,” said one lady who reached beneath her veil to dab her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Madam, I assure you that it is,” said Holmwood as he took his place at the head of the procession to walk Lucy to her crypt.
I opened my umbrella, though I was self-conscious that the spray of purple foxglove on the underside might peek through and interrupt the ubiquitous black, but I knew that Lucy would have loved to see that burst of color. I tripped over my hem, upsetting the somber promenade of people in front of me. My dress of coal black parramatta silk trimmed in stiff crape was borrowed from Mr. Hawkins’s sister from the wardrobe of mourning clothes she had ordered for us. The dress had arrived in that larger lady’s size, so that I had to alter it as best I could, but it was still too big and too long for me.
We followed Lucy’s coffin through a leafy, overgrown path toward her final resting place. The rest of the cortege-the procession leader with his baton and attendants, the servants from Lucy’s household, and the professional mourners and mutes who had walked in the parade from the church-fell in line behind us. Kate, leaning on Jacob’s arm, walked in front of me, wearing the intricate ebony gown she had purchased for her ruse with the Gummlers.
How nice it would be to have a man at my side today, when I felt limp with shock and grief. Jonathan had offered to come with me, but he was very busy with the work neglected by Mr. Hawkins during his illness, and, besides, I was afraid that exposure to travel and tragedy would bring about another relapse.
I had traveled in mourning clothes to London. Kate and Jacob met me at the train station, and we hired a cab to take us to the church where the service was being held. On the way, I had asked about the deaths of both Lucy and her mother.
“Mrs. Westenra died of heart failure just a few days after Lucy’s wedding. The poor girl had no chance to celebrate her marriage.”
Kate had not been in touch with Lucy but had gathered this information from people she had talked to at Lucy’s wake. “I tried to contact Lucy after I saw her mother’s obituary in the newspaper, but she did not answer my notes. The service for Mrs. Westenra was private. I thought that Lucy might even be away on her honeymoon.”
“I cannot imagine that Lucy is dead! I saw her just six weeks ago.”
“Her husband said that the cause of death was acute anemia brought on by refusal to eat and melancholia. She died in a private asylum, Mina. Apparently, her condition was advanced enough for her to be committed.”
“But she wrote me a letter dated a little over a month ago that she was about to be married. She sounded so happy. What could have happened?”
“I don’t know. The young Lord Godalming is beside himself with grief,” said Kate. By this time, we had arrived
