Gilbert tapped the eggshell with his spoon and fumbled for words, finding nothing to say. A maid pulled the blinds down one by one and cut the morning out of the house. Mr. Phillips threw dustcovers over Gilbert’s chair in the library and shrouded the family portraits. Richard’s portrait disappeared under linen as it had never done before; in almost nineteen years, Gilbert had never gone even as far as Nahant overnight; and living Richard, whose work all this was, sat taciturn on the other side of the breakfast table, with his coffee cold in front of him. Gilbert reached for a piece of the morning newspaper and gathered it about him. Richard stared over the edge of the world and accepted a second cup of black coffee, but did not drink it either. Harry wasn’t down yet.
“We’ll miss the train,” Gilbert said. He did not want to go to Matatonic; but he didn’t want to keep the train waiting. That was another misery. The Knight family owned two railroad cars, in storage since Heaven knew when, and they were taking one of them up to Matatonic. Traveling nowhere, Gilbert had not been so conspicuous since Father died. He wondered if Richard remembered his grandfather’s parlor car. Even the upholstery had made Gilbert uncomfortable, hairy plush green cushions round and stiff as limes.
“I wish we didn’t have to go,” Gilbert said.
Richard seemed about to say something with an edge to it; but instead he made it a quotation. “ ‘If ’twere done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’” Gilbert smiled and Richard gave him a half smile in return. If it were done quickly, Gilbert thought. The only consolation he had was that Father’s portrait was under linen too. But they were going to Father’s house.
Gilbert rang the bell. “Could you please tell Master Harry how late it’s getting?”
Richard snapped his watch shut and lit a cigaret.
“Richard, I can’t get used to your smoking. Don’t you think cigarets and all that coffee, and nothing to eat, will make you sick on the train?”
Richard only looked at him, all distance, as if he hadn’t even heard him. Gilbert hoped against hope. “Just a little bit of toast?”
In the hall on a tarpaulin were piled a trunk, suitcases, Harry’s tennis rackets. Gilbert had not known there was such a thing as a tarpaulin in the house. What were they used for? Tarpaulins were for bicycle trips, tents, a cloth on the ground. When the athletic Famums down the street left for Cold River, their cab was piled high with tarpaulins.
“Richard,” he said desperately, “I wonder when was the last time I left this house.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I wonder why we have got a tarpaulin.”
“Pardon, sir,” said Lucy, bringing in some of Mrs. Stelling’s shirred eggs, “it’s to protect the carpets.” From what? Gilbert thought, startled. Mr. Phillips went through the breakfast room with a china clock cradled in his hands.
The Sèvres clock was going into storage. It had stood on its mantel since after Father’s funeral, when Gilbert had quietly put away the black marble tomb that had told Father’s time. The shepherds and all the china figures of fancy threw out their arms on their way to banishment.
“I feel as if I were dead and all the house breaking up.”
He said it very quietly and Richard did not hear him. Gilbert desperately drank a second cup of coffee himself. Muffled in newspapers and excelsior, the Sèvres clock chimed eight. The smell of oilskins and tarpaulins and dust hung over the breakfast table.
🙚🙚🙚
On the same day, with much less fanfare, Charlie Adair’s children went to the country. As they gathered on the station platform to leave for Matatonic, Charlie watched them. And down the platform, on the same long train, he saw the huge, gaunt private car that William Knight had used. The blinds were drawn, which meant that Gilbert was already there. With him, no doubt, would be young Dr. Reisden.
The children milled on the platform. They looked like so many to go down to the country; but, ah, so many more were left behind. When Charlie had been given the hotel, he was like a man with a big pot of soup in a soup kitchen. He had ladled it out freely to anyone who asked. Yes, this child could come, and that one; they could stay all summer; yes, and their brothers and their sisters too. The first summer had been disastrous. Too many children; they had to sleep two and three to a bed, fighting all night, no bathrooms to speak of at all. Now he knew how soon his ladle scraped the bottom of the pot. Only one child from a family, and that child could stay two weeks only. Only from families guaranteed to be destitute. This morning in the train station, the children who were going laughed and shouted on the platform, but Charlie’s thoughts were with their brothers and sisters who stood silently aside to see them off. Only one, only, only.
Just down the country road from his hotel was the Knights’ huge estate. Island Hill would have suited the children better than it ever had the Knights.
Father, I confess to the sin of avarice. I want Island Hill for the children. I want my dear Perdita and Harry to have Gilbert’s money. I want Gilbert to love Harry as he should.
You want nothing for yourself?
I want my will for myself. God, I don’t depend on Your mercy.
What do you want for yourself?
I want to die in peace, Charlie thought.
But he knew he meant something different.
I want Dr. Reisden to find Richard’s body, wherever it may be. And to find out nothing else. Nothing at all.
🙚🙚🙚
Harry and his Perdita, Perdita’s aunt Violet and her cousin Efnie stood together on the platform, by the porter’s truck with the lunchboxes. Perdita was in charge of the sandwiches, which she and Efnie had packed last night. Aunt Violet Pelham was chaperoning Perdita, which Violet considered put her in charge of the sandwiches too. “You, boy!” her stentorian voice carried down the platform. She poked an enormous lacy parasol at a child who scrambled down off the truck. “If you touch that food I shall have you arrested.” She was a small, stout woman with slightly protruding eyes. Her large hat trembled on top of her head as if it were enraged and about to spring.
Daugherty and Reisden watched them from the cool, moldy inside of William Knight’s private car. Daugherty was going up at the same time as Gilbert and Reisden, to lead the process of looking for Richard Knight.
“Ayuh, that’s Bucky’s wife Violet,” Daugherty said to Reisden. “And her daughter Efnie. Both of ’em goin’ up to Matatonic to keep an eye on Perdita. Perdita’s been up to the lake before, helpin’ out Charlie, but this time Harry’s cornin’. And it ain’t fittin’ an engaged girl should be in the same town as her fiancy, without someone like Violet to come between ‘em.”
Efnie Pelham turned dewy eyes toward Harry. She was tall, willowy, and athletic, a blond Gibson girl, lusciously pretty; only the wary would see any resemblance to her mother. Harry’s eyes were following Perdita restlessly as she supervised getting the sandwiches loaded into the car. Efnie tilted up her little straw boater and began bantering with Harry. Perdita knelt down to have a conversation with a little boy. Harry stepped forward to order the child back in line. Left alone, Efnie compressed her lips into a sudden tight line, then tossed her head.
“Efnie’s got a dozen boyfriends,” Daugherty went on, oblivious. “We got an office pool goin’ which one she’ll take.”
🙚🙚🙚
Down in the noise and jostle of the platform, Harry pulled Perdita aside. He was hot and cross. He didn’t want even to ride in the private car; it was out of date and conspicuous. Perdita laughed and threw her arms around him.
“Sit with me in the public cars,” he said. “I’ll show you off.”
“Of course, Harry, if you want.”
No, he didn’t want; he brooded. She must know he didn’t want to sit with an army of children. She wasn’t paying attention to him. Just being mealy-mouthed and saying anything to make him “feel better.” What he wanted was to sit in the private car with her and to have Reisden nowhere. “Never mind,” he grumbled. “We’ll sit in that stupid car with Gilbert, if it makes you happy.” Immediately he knew he was being unfair to her, but he didn’t know what to do about it but grumble. “Then maybe you won’t pay so much attention to those kids.”
The private car was already crowded with too many people. Reisden was at one end talking with Daugherty, Gilbert talking with Charlie Adair. Violet Pelham had invited herself in. Efnie was waiting for her on the stairs. “Oh, you come in too,” Harry told her, “everybody else’s already here.”
“Pew,” Efnie said, “it smells!” Harry felt a little better.
Underneath the dust and the mildew Harry scented a dark, burnt smokiness, a smell of char and old fires.
“Father’s cigars,” Gilbert said. “It smells like Father.”
Efnie shrugged. “I’m going outside to the observation deck.” It was a good idea. Harry looked around for Perdita, but she was talking with Reisden. Spending too much time with that man.
“Come along with me, Harry?” Efnie asked casually.
He’d just as soon have gone, although he knew Efnie was flirting with him. It made him feel pretty good right now to have an attractive girl like Efnie flirting with him. But he was engaged to Perdita and he didn’t want to string any other girl along, even though there was no harm in it. So he stood by the door while Perdita did just about anything she pleased, sat down next to Reisden and talked with him for minutes on end.
The dark station roof slid away from them at last. Boston gave way to Lawrence and Lowell, smudges on the Massachusetts farmland. As they crossed into New Hampshire, the farms grew sparser and the forest began. Their train steamed through Nashua and into Manchester’s morning grime. The cars jerked and shuddered as they switched onto the Short Line, and the train followed the river, the hard-rock bed and the clear race of the Merrimack. Mills gave way to pines and they climbed toward lakes and mountains.
🙚🙚🙚
The black auto was going up with them as luggage. Reisden made his way forward in the train, through a baggage car where trunks were piled high behind wire mesh. There were two automobiles on that train, his and an enormous CMG tourer destined for farther up the line. Reisden checked the blocks and the tying-down on his, then talked with the CMG’s chauffeur. From the next baggage car they heard thumps and neighs, horses quarreling with each other. “For me, I’d rather work with horses,” the chauffeur said, “much less trouble they are, but the future’s in the autos. Can’t escape the future, eh?”
Reisden thought about a hard-mouthed black horse he’d ridden as a boy in Graz. No control at all, but the beast went fast. “They’re not so different.” Black horses, and Africa, and back beyond that, a thing eyes could not focus on, like darkness or absence. If Richard Knight were alive again in Matatonic, might something make him remember?
General amnesia cures itself within weeks or not at all. There are a few exceptions, but not many; and, Reisden thought, he would not be one of them, because he was not Richard Knight.
The chauffeur had said something to him.
“Excuse me?”
“You going to drive her yourself?”
They talked about autos.