7
![A series of Visible Speech signs.
[She is a perfect treasure]](image/She_is_a_perfect_treasure.png)
[She is a perfect treasure]
One evening at Little St. Clouds, Mr. Dupont strutted through the parlor. When he spotted me he came over and dropped himself lightly on the sofa. I was looking through my notebook and its assortment of jotted-down phrases. Mr. Dupont looked at my book, and leaned forward as if to take it, then hesitated, unsure of the correct form. I smiled, turned to a clean page and handed it to him. Thank you, he said, and grasped my pencil too.
I expected some remark on the day but instead he wrote, “I had the good fortune to meet Professor Bell at the University today. He spoke most highly of you.”
I was more pleased than I allowed myself to show. I wrote, “He is a generous teacher.”
“Yes, he told me all about his fascinating Visible Speech system. His knowledge of the Human Voice is impressive, but did you know that he was awarded the professorship although he does not have an academic degree?”
Mr. Dupont’s eyes betrayed a close keenness for me to fully digest this fact about my teacher, although I didn’t care one whit whether Mr. Bell held a degree or not. I tried to remember what field Mr. Dupont specialized in but only remembered it was to do with French Literature.
“The School of Oratory has an excellent faculty,” he continued. “There is Professor Raymond who is the Delineator of Shakespearean Character, Mr. MacKaye who lectures on Aesthetics and the Dramatic Art and Mr. Bashford who is most knowledgeable on Rhetoric. And of course, Professor Bell who specializes in the Instruction of Deaf-Mutes. A noble cause, everyone is agreed, but a curious addition to the faculty.”
He showed me these words rather than let me have the notebook. I felt irritation rip through me. Mr. Bell was certainly a curious person but I didn’t like the way Mr. Dupont had conveyed it. When my eyes reached the bottom of the page, he shifted the book back onto his knee and continued: “His father, Professor Melville Bell, is a truly great scholar. Did you know he was the one who invented Visible Speech? But he had different ideas for its uses such as diplomats acquainting themselves with foreign languages or imperial states diffusing their mother-tongues to the most remote of dependencies. He is such an estimable philologist! It gives cause to wonder what he has made of his son’s work with deaf-mutes.”
He gave me the notebook with a faultless smile and waited while I read as if each faculty member’s name ought to stun me while the grand schemes for Visible Speech would pinpoint the lowly use Mr. Bell had put it to: namely, myself. I skipped over the words quickly and wrote, “Are you one of the esteemed faculty members yourself?”
He glanced at me, hesitating. Then he wrote “I am making a course of study with Professor Raymond.”
I wrote, “Well, I am sure you can hope for a similar greatness in time.”
His face puckered, and he penned his next words almost as if he meant to assault the page. “Miss Lance,” he continued, “says she has nicknamed him the Night Owl because he does all his work in the small hours and sleeps until midday as a result! He spends half his time in a mechanic shop so that he comes to the School with oil on his sleeves. It is a most irregular way to conduct a daily schedule.”
I was about to reply, but Eva and Rhoda Day came over before I had the chance. I supposed they were amazed that I’d stirred this moody boarder from his silence and had the audacity to make our conversation out of their reach. Eva said, What are you talking about?
Rhoda peered down at my Progressive Indicator. Russian, she said. That’s Russian.
I shook my head but she said Uncle. Something about her uncle knowing Russian. Then she pointed at the book and said, Read us some.
I was still feeling hot all over from Mr. Dupont’s onslaught in my notebook, but I read out a line: She is a leering little charmer.
Then I looked at Rhoda and said as tidily as I could, Is it Russian?
Rhoda burst out laughing and clapped her hands. Again! she said.
A leering little charmer, I repeated. Then I read:
A writer of pretty lyrics.
A person of discretion.
The man is a drunken wretch.
My gaunt old aunt told us all.
Mr. Dupont stared as if he didn’t know whether to be astounded or appalled that he’d even considered a tête-à-tête with me. Who was I calling a drunken wretch so immaculately? Could, I wanted to ask him, the esteemed professors of the Oratory School pull off a feat as impressive as that?
The next day I arrived for my class to find Miss Lance on the doorstep talking to a young woman about my own age. I had seen her once or twice before, chatting away to Miss Lance, and assumed she was one of Mr. Bell’s student teachers who belonged on the upper floors of the building and studied alongside Miss Lance. Neither of them had spotted me so I waited on the sidewalk. The girl had a mirthful face with large, clever eyes. Her hair was so long that its ends swirled on the bustle of her dress. Watching her I realized she was far too well dressed to be one of the teacher-students. But she couldn’t be Mr. Bell’s pupil either since she spoke and understood Miss Lance so easily.
I hung back, not wishing to interrupt, but Miss Lance spotted me. She turned to her companion and said, Mr. Bell’s next pupil is here.
The woman glanced at me. Good afternoon, I said. Her gaze flickered, her smile was uncertain. Good afternoon, she answered, cutting the words quite crisply.
Miss Lance must have heard a noise because she looked into the hallway. The young woman didn’t react. She only turned when Miss Lance said, Excuse me, and set off down the hall. I considered her again. I said, Are you Mr. Bell’s pupil?
She frowned and a word that looked like Pardon folded her lips.
Pupil, I signed, then rang my hand at my ear. Bell. I pointed at her with my fist, keeping my finger tucked politely inside, so I wasn’t pointing directly at her.
She gazed at my hands then looked at me. There was a red tinge in her cheeks. She smiled and shifted uncomfortably. I felt heat rise in my own cheeks. If I’d forgotten Mr. Bell’s rule about the sign language, she clearly hadn’t. Shame squeezed me. It was simply what I’d done with the pupils at Miss Roscoe’s school as soon as Miss Roscoe was out of sight. Was this fine young woman going to tell Mr. Bell?
I’m sorry, I said, using English again. Her smile twitched with bewilderment. She said something in reply. I smiled and nodded, but of course she knew that trick of pretending. We both glanced down the corridor for Miss Lance, but couldn’t see her and had to turn back to each other. The moment seemed to swell like a bee sting. I started searching for pen and paper. I managed to find my pencil but my notebook had slipped to the bottom of my bag. My hapless search seemed to stir my companion and shortly she was offering her own notebook.
Here, she said. She wrinkled her smile almost apologetically. The notebook was of a very ordinary kind and she flipped straight to the back pages. She paused as if she didn’t know what to write. Then she scribbled something while supporting the book against her palm. I couldn’t help wondering: which conversants did she relegate to the back page? The last page was finite. It suggested your expectations of a conversation’s length. Or was her notebook so full of words in spite of her easy speech that the back page was the quickest blank page to find?
“I’m Mabel Hubbard,” I read, when she turned the book. The words sprang off the page, knocking aside our awkwardness. I had an urge to sink closer toward this possibility of comradeship that seemed to be extended along with her name. “I’m studying Visible Speech with Professor Bell. I traveled here from Cambridge on the stagecoach. My mother frets, but I like the journey.”
I looked up and she handed me her pencil with a half-shrugging smile that seemed to say, Well, go on, take it, you might as well.
I wrote my name and added, “I’m staying with my grandmother in the South End.”
I hesitated before putting down the South End. It was hardly Cambridge or even the Back Bay, and wouldn’t Adeline want me to give a more prepossessing account of myself? I could imagine Adeline’s reaction if I described Miss Hubbard and her place of residence. And I’d never held another deaf person’s notebook before. At Miss Roscoe’s school we were supposed to speak, and anything we did write was on a slate. I desperately wanted to know what conversations of Miss Hubbard’s the notebook contained. Was Mr. Bell in there? Had he penned his ranging and roaming conversations in her notebooks, too? Did she know about his brothers, his life in Canada, his lonely moonlit walks across the hay fields? Before I could stop myself, I wrote, “You are very talented with your eyes. I saw you talking so easily to Miss Lance.”
She laughed. “I lost my hearing when I was four,” she wrote back, “so I learned English like other children.”
I lifted my eyebrows to show my enlightenment. Well, that explains it, I meant to convey. I wasn’t going to say that I also lost my hearing when I was four, but never talked to Miss Lance so easily as that. Perhaps she had known Miss Lance a long time. I smiled, hoping to win her over. After all, wasn’t the back page a place for jokes and banter? And she had turned to it because there might be informality between us. Perhaps my earlier mistake of attempting signs was rectified.
“Cambridge is a pleasant place,” I wrote back, although I’d never been.
“Do you know it?”
But Miss Lance returned with apologies on her lips and ushered me inside. Goodbye, I saw Miss Hubbard say, although I thought I spotted the slide of relief in her face. It was only in the corridor that my prickles of panic returned. Would she mention to Mr. Bell that I had used the hand-talk? I’d forgotten how my tendency to gesture was a habit buried deep inside me. I’d humiliated Miss Hubbard with it, suggesting that she was akin to myself. As I followed Miss Lance upstairs, I wondered if I could write her a note asking that she didn’t mention it to Mr. Bell.
Miss Lance must have noticed something about my mood, for at the top of the stairs she wrote down Mabel’s name and showed me, saying: That was Miss Hubbard. Then she wrote, “Her father has campaigned widely to establish articulation schools for deaf-mute children. I believed he visited your little school several times.”
I thought back to the gentlemen who’d visited us at the Oral School but they blurred together, a mass of whiskered faces, and I couldn’t recall anyone who’d borne a resemblance to Miss Hubbard. Did she go there? I asked. I don’t remember her.
Oh no, came the reply.
Of course not, I thought. Probably she had private tutors. Still, I wished that Miss Lance hadn’t interrupted us and hurried me inside.
As I followed her up the stairs, I wondered about Miss Hubbard’s speech and speech-reading. Did those words from her mouth sound as much like a hearing person’s as they looked? I knew I couldn’t be as good as Miss Hubbard. Mr. Bell never reacted to a misspoken or smudged word when we wandered into conversation, but Adeline was still prone to wincing, and Eva Day frowned openly at me. Doubt rocked through me as we waited at Mr. Bell’s door. I had no way of knowing the truth, other than by the constant mirrors of other people. Mr. Bell’s praise was the greatest mirror of all, as he measured this part of myself of which I had no idea, and never would: my voice.
Inside the classroom, he was bustling with his own private thoughts. It was plain that he was in a good mood. He crossed over to his desk and said, Ah! for no clear reason. Then he came back and circled his chair before sitting in it, which he did with a little flick of his wrists, placing his palms with extravagant smoothness on his knees. He appeared filled with equal amounts of merriness and distraction for which the only outlet was these detours and flourishes. I calculated I must be his fourth pupil that afternoon. There was no doubt about it: he was feeling revived after his last one, and that was Miss Hubbard.
Good afternoon, he said, and I answered: It has been a long afternoon for you, I think?
Long, yes, he said, as if he had just remembered. Yes, four hours. But for me the afternoon is like the morning.
Your landlady does not trim your candles anymore?
He smiled. I have bought some new ones, he said. She doesn’t know where they are. He tapped his nose and winked, so I couldn’t help the smile that broke in me. Now then, he said, and fetched our notebook.
My heart sank and I felt the burn of my impatience as Mr. Bell marked out the day’s Visible Speech lesson. He drew three cuts of the human head on a clean page in my notebook and wrote under them the consonant r.
I didn’t like r. It was hard to see on the lips, its movement depending on its placement in the word. In Arm or Barb, the lips didn’t pucker and the r was invisible. But in other words, like Fear and Moor, you could detect it slightly in the wrinkling corners of the mouth.
“There are three symbols for r,” Mr. Bell wrote. “You are familiar with the first two which gives us words like Reef and Shirt. Today I wish to pay attention to the third symbol which is a wide variety of the a sound, heard before r, as in Air, Care and Bear.”
He showed me the symbol which looked like a skinny, elongated c. “The cavity between the tongue and gum is slightly smaller, while that behind the tongue is larger.”
He wrote a list of words with Visible Speech next to them. Then he covered up the words and bade me read the symbols. I did so, trying to keep in mind the words I knew I must be reading: Air, Fair, Rare.
He watched me. I read them for a second time while thinking how Miss Hubbard had sat in this same chair not more than fifteen minutes before me. Would I talk with her again? Now that I knew she was Mr. Bell’s pupil, I realized how Miss Lance had made no effort to introduce us. I started to wonder about his other pupils too. Usually there was such a throng of university students in the corridors that you couldn’t identify Mr. Bell’s deaf pupils. Or, had I been passing them by all the time?
Mr. Bell showed me his next word, which was Azure. He had written, “This word similarly begins with our widened ‘a’ sound, and it ends with ‘glide’ symbol.”
I strained my concentration but it was like trying to swerve a fast-rolling cart. When did anyone have occasion to say Azure? It was a word I’d scarcely seen in books. Did people use it in common daily talk?
Azure, I said, feeling the long slide of breath from my teeth.
No, he said. Try again.
Azure, I said for a second time. Could Miss Hubbard say Azure? Four years old, same as I. Was it the scarlet fever that stole her hearing too?
“Too far forward,” Mr. Bell wrote. “The tongue is lifted so that the sound passes easily into the consonant.”
I took the notebook and wrote, “Mr. Bell, forgive me, but what use is the word Azure in ordinary conversation? Is it something people say very often?”
Mr. Bell looked at me and blinked. Then he laughed. Azure, he said, with a musing nod. He pointed to his eyes: Azure eyes? Out the window: Azure sky? He spread his hands; You’re right. What does one call Azure?
“Lapis Lazuli,” I wrote. “That is Azure. Some birds I have seen in books. A kind of jay and a magpie. But wouldn’t it take a poet to talk of the sky and oceans in that way? I have never seen Azure in a conversation but maybe I do not know what to look for and people are saying Azure all the time. Is that true? Mr. Bell, can I tell you that I would be very afraid to say Azure if I didn’t know whether it was commonly said. We have had many conversations now and I do not think I have seen Azure in one of them.”
Mr. Bell was laughing. I stand corrected, he said. As you know, I am a great believer in usefulness.
I watched his lips. Believer. Useful. What did Mr. Bell believe? That one day Visible Speech would have me talking amongst my peers and taking ready sight of their speech like a hearing person? Or would I be just good enough, and how good was that? Every lesson he pushed me toward this goal, but he never said how near I was or how much further I had to go. One day, he’d promised, I’d move more than a feather, but when would that day come?
I remembered Mary, and how our home-signs were our first response, the quick burst of instinct lifting our hands. She talked to my eyes and didn’t bother with my ears. She was my first teacher, I realized, not my mother. Most of the ideas I had of the other children in Pawtucket, the goings-on in our lane, the whole world in fact, were because of what she told me with her hands. Suddenly her absence appeared like a huge hole that I felt I would stumble into, if I wasn’t careful.
But I wasn’t careful. In a rush, I said, Mr. Bell, do you think signs can be useful? More useful than knowing how to say Azure, perhaps?
He looked at me. I saw the flicking L and press of the P that Miss Roscoe’s lips had made that day she struck a line through the French word on the board. The de l’épée signs? he asked.
It was too late to take back the question. I nodded. He paused before picking up the notebook. “It depends what you mean by useful,” he wrote. “Deaf people may like signs because they are easy for them, but that ease is dangerous. Signing isolates them from society. It isolates them from their own family. Therefore, signs are only useful in a very limited way. Deaf children especially should be kept apart to avoid the temptation.”
It took me a while to read his words. Temptation. Was that the name for the instinct that had made my hands jump when I’d met Miss Hubbard?
Miss Lark, he said, when finally I looked up. Do you disagree? Then he took his notebook. “We have worked so hard,” he wrote. “Your mother the same. Think of your sponsorship. This is because we believe you can belong in the hearing world. You question it now?”
His sternness wasn’t unfriendly, but there was an obvious puzzlement in his face that loosened a coil of guilt in me. He was right. What was all our work for? I knew from Miss Roscoe’s school that signs had such a hold on your mind that it made you want to give up on spoken English, however hard you tried otherwise. That was why she put us in the cupboard, or tied our hands down. Perhaps that was why Mabel Hubbard was so good at speech-reading. She’d never had the chance to be tempted. I thought of her on the doorstep, and all the times I’d mistaken her for a teacher-student. She didn’t exude loneliness: far from it.
I question Azure, I said eventually.
He smiled. You are right on that point. Everything will be ordinary blue from now on!
Blue eyes, I said. Blue skies.
Exactly, he answered. Plain blue is good enough for me.
I smiled but I couldn’t help the thought: plain blue, just so long as it is uttered perfectly.
Soon afterward my lessons were moved to the evenings. Mr. Bell said he was teaching more pupils and his timetable was becoming full. I didn’t see Miss Hubbard again, although I kept a lookout for her. But the building was nearly empty at that hour, even Miss Lance had gone home. If I regretted not seeing Miss Hubbard, I liked that Mr. Bell opened the door himself. He was at his most cheerful in the evenings. And sometimes it was as if we were alone in the School of Oratory, our classroom soaked in the twilight that pinked the sky outside the windowpane. I imagined our conversations rising through the stillness of the deserted teaching rooms, as if we were the life of the place.
One evening, on the last lesson before the summer vacation, Mr. Bell turned and looked out of the window. He said Gardens. You will be walking in the gardens.
Gardens? I asked. You mean the Public Gardens?
Gardens? Mr. Bell repeated, surprised.
I thought furiously. What looked like Gardens? He had been looking at the window, and it was dark beyond the panes. When he said Gardens again his lips flashed with another word: Darkness. He meant that I would be walking in the darkness. I laughed.
What is it? he asked.
“I thought you were musing on whether I’d have to walk in the gardens,” I wrote. “I couldn’t understand why you were so worried. But you meant darkness, the dark.”
Mr. Bell picked up the mirror. He said the two words although I did not know which was which on his lips. Gardens, Darkness, Gardens.
Putting down the mirror, he said, I would never have spotted that.
The admiration in his gaze sharpened into interest, and I felt a buoyant lift in my chest that had me sitting taller in my chair as I said, My mother and I used to play a game with words that look the same.
A game?
Yes. I reached for the notebook, because I was uncertain of how to say the next word clearly. “Eye-puzzles,” I wrote. “We called them eye-puzzles. So, for instance, one person makes up a sentence with a word which looks like another word and tries to trick the other person into thinking it’s the other word. So here I could say, Do you like walking in the darkness after dinner? And you must reply, and if your reply is incorrect—perhaps you say, Yes, I love to take an evening stroll in the garden—then I have won. I will make my voice silent when I say the key word so you must try your best to speech-read me. Of course it doesn’t matter what you do with your voice upon my turn.”
I see, he said. Let us try. You go first.
I told Mr. Bell that I had a really bad ache at breakfast time, making sure I couldn’t feel anything of my voice when I said Ache. I had to repeat the sentence slowly several times, and then he said, Ah! I see. Had it gone off?
I laughed and wrote “Ache” on the page. I win, I told him. Ache not Egg.
He laughed, shaking his head. Ache, Egg, he said a few times. My turn, he said, and thought for a moment. I know. Ready? The maid left a smudge in the bathroom.
I replied, Perhaps you should hire a better maid. Did you hope I’d see sponge?
Yes, he said, laughing. How did you know I said smudge and not sponge? Are they not identical?
You must question the easy answer, I replied.
He looked at me, still smiling. I remember, he said. When I first met you. You thought I was talking about lemonade.
The word glittered on his mouth. Lemonade. Illuminate. Panic jumped through me at the memory of my mother’s brooch, and the mistake I’d made in front of all those gentlemen.
No, he said. Don’t be embarrassed. You are extremely good with your eyes.
Ex-treme-ly was a lovely word, with the lips pushed forward in their desire to be emphatic.
Thank you, I said, feeling a rush of pleasure.
Then he said, You have eyes like a hawk. You miss nothing.
I looked at him, remembering what Miss Roscoe had told the pupils at the Oral School, and how later they had changed my sign name, to a larking hawk-eyed bird. But we all knew that we missed so much on people’s lips, and surely our eyes had better uses.
Then my name was on Mr. Bell’s mouth again, requiring my attention.
Miss Lark, he said. Let me tell you something. He took up his notebook, so I knew the matter was a serious one. “It is my greatest regret,” he wrote, “that my mother never learned to lip-read. Nobody thought it worthwhile. When I meet people like you it astonishes me. I wish she had learned when she was younger. Her struggles would have been much less.”
I read his words. He was astonished. He was aggrieved. Did he blame himself, or even his father, for his mother’s suffering? All the solitude that cloaked her throughout her life could have been dispelled.
He sat back, his shoulders spent of sighs. I didn’t want to tell him that lip-reading was exhausting, and I made all kinds of embarrassing errors, because he’d just told me that I astonished him.
Wait, he continued. I have an idea. He sat forward, energized again, and started rummaging through the papers on his desk. He took a thin stack, turned over the last leaf, and wrote on the back: “This is a paper I’m writing on the subject for my journal, The Pioneer. Did I tell you about it? I don’t know what to title it. Perhaps you have some suggestions? The truth is, I hardly have time to write at the moment with all my work.”
He gave me the journal papers and I flipped through them. It was filled with articles on Visible Speech, education conventions, textbooks for instructing deaf pupils, new teachers enlisted in the cause.
He took the paper back and continued writing. “I would like to compile a list of words that look the same to the eye. These are known as homophenous words, just like Ache and Egg. There are surely thousands. The list of homophenes will accompany an instrument I am creating to help the deaf.”
Mr. Dupont’s words came back to me: the oil on his sleeves, the mechanic shop. Was this instrument the reason for his late nights?
He continued, “I should like to include an account of the art of speech-reading. I shall publish it in The Pioneer and then no one shall doubt what can be achieved with speech-reading. You shall be its author. What do you think?”
Well, I said, with a little laugh. A paper! But the hesitation was a false modesty, for already my thoughts had galloped on toward that prize: my name in a scientific journal, a place where my words would have equal weight with Mr. Bell and his peers. I could scarcely hold the idea in my head. Hadn’t it been a long struggle to get to where I was now? All the cures poured into my ears and the blistering behind them. The endless months and years at the Oral School, watching Miss Roscoe’s lips and our own in our pocket mirrors, day in and day out. From the woman who had called me a Little Savage and the children who had chucked my pen to the bottom of a well, to Mr. Dupont monopolizing my notebook. But now I, Ellen Lark, would be published in a scientific journal. Perhaps Mr. Bell was right to compliment my lip-reading? After all, I could mostly understand him, aided by our notebooks, and had no trouble with my mother, or even Adeline on most days, at least now that I was familiar with the variety of her grievances. And a little bit of lip-reading could take you further than none at all. A paper would lay down all my ideas, and other people like me would take heart—and even lessons—from it.
I said, Of course I will help. Then remembering Mr. Dupont’s words, I asked, Is the instrument at the mechanic shop? I should like to see it.
He laughed. I don’t think your grandmother would approve of you going to a mechanic shop. No, he said, and took up the pen to jot his next words. “It is in the Institute of Technology.”
He wrote the name of the Institute in the Back Bay with such a flourish that I couldn’t help wrinkling my mouth with admiration.
Well, you could come, he said and peered at me. Then he wrote, “Do you assure me you are of sound scientific mind?”
I picked up the pen. “Mr. Bell, do you tease me as we sit in the first university to admit women?”
He smiled and shrugged. “I warn you that you may be one of the first women in the Institute’s workrooms,” he wrote.
I smiled back and wrote, “I don’t care a jot. What are you making in the mechanic shop?” I didn’t see why Mr. Bell needed to get oil on his sleeves in such a place if he had the Institute to work in.
To my surprise, he leapt up. I’ll show you, he said, laughing at my alarm. No, not the mechanic shop. We shall see about your scientific mind.
He tapped his temple, and I watched Scientific appear on his lips. It didn’t have much shape, but I knew to guess it from our earlier conversation. He crossed to the door and beckoned for me to follow. In the room next door there was a piano. Mr. Bell lifted the lid on the keys and the soundboard to reveal the strings. Come here, he said, and rest your hands here, on the strings.
The piano’s darkness was striped with silver wires, each one soft with dust like an animal’s coat. It hadn’t been played for some time. I wanted to clean the wires, but instead placed my fingers lightly on them.
Mr. Bell played a few notes. You can feel them? he asked.
I nodded and closed my eyes. It was just possible to feel the difference between each note he played.
But when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was no longer feeling the notes of the keys, but Mr. Bell singing. I laughed to feel the song thrumming in my fingertips, the jangle in my skin that seeped into my bones and reached as far as my wrist. Mr. Bell’s face was a comic sight as the oval of his mouth lengthened; surely he was making his notes sink and rise.
Let me guess, I said to him. You wish to put a voice in a wire?
He was still bent into the casing. He pulled himself up, but his head hit the propped-up soundboard. His mouth parted only briefly, but my hands still resting on the strings felt his cry. He stood with his eyes scrunched shut, rubbing his head with two fingers. He opened one eye, then the other, as if to check I was still there.
A voice, he said, in a wire. I—
For a moment he looked astonished, his mouth hanging open on his I. I didn’t know what I’d said to cause it. He made a circling gesture with his hand, but even that seemed to stall midair.
I have been thinking about that, he began. Then he started patting his pockets, but he’d left the notebooks next door. Wait, he said, and dashed from the room. When he returned, he closed the lid over the keys and bent over it as he wrote: “I am working on a Multiple Telegraph. The problem with today’s communication is that you can only send one telegram down a wire at a time. It is slow and cumbersome. That is the great challenge of our time. How can you send multiple messages? My idea is based on Acoustics. When you sing to a piano wire it will repeat the note, whatever the pitch. You can do the same thing with a telegraphic instrument. If you send many signals at different pitches, then you can send many messages at one time. Since there is only one air, therefore there only needs be one wire. I call it a Harmonic Multiple Telegraph.”
Before he showed me his words, he winked at me. You mustn’t tell a soul, he said. Do you promise?
I made a mock-grimace and held out my hand for the book. I promise, I said, then read his words about the telegraph. But it wasn’t his idea that quickened my pulse at first. Instead, I was remembering my father. After the war, he had worked in telegraph stations all over the East Coast before winding up in Pittsburgh. I knew little about his work, or what had driven him into the woods that day, with wire in his pocket. It was out of respect for Mama that I never asked. I wished to step away from the piano, and its funereal wires laid out so straight and obligingly. Of all the things I was expecting Mr. Bell to reveal to me, it wasn’t the telegraph race. I tried to think of something to show my enthusiasm.
What about the voice? I said. Isn’t it voices that you know about? Our voices, I added.
Mr. Bell looked at me. Had I misunderstood him? He hesitated, so I thought he was going to answer my question, but instead he tore out the notebook’s page, crumpled it and put it in his pocket. He lowered his chin, so his eyes shone out at me, and said, Tell no one!
I laughed, although I felt startled. Of course, I said.
But who was there for me to tell? Mr. Bell rubbed his head, and said, The doctor says I must stop all this work. It brings on the worst headaches. Crashing into pianos doesn’t help. He smiled at me. Well, Miss Lark, he said, then wrote: “When I am back from the summer vacation, we shall go to the Institute to see my new device for the deaf. Never mind all this telegraph nonsense. I will write to you over the summer.”
I shall gladly come, I said. But as we turned to leave, I was sure he was repeating something to himself. A voice, he seemed to be saying. A voice.
Downstairs Miss Lance was in the hallway looking through Mr. Bell’s class timetables. I forgot these, she said, when she saw myself and Mr. Bell. I came back for them.
Excellent, Mr. Bell said, and started talking about gardens and darkness again. His words to Miss Lance were quick on his lips, and I couldn’t catch them. I started to feel a prodding finger of panic that this was how Mr. Bell normally spoke to people. This was his natural pace and speed, and I couldn’t follow any of it. But shortly he turned to me and said, Miss Lance can take you to the stagecoach.
Oh, there’s no need, I said. It’s not very dark yet.
I looked at Miss Lance but there was a stiff expression on her face. It startled me. Had I wronged her somehow? Thank you, I said, although I wanted to say goodbye to Mr. Bell properly and wish him well for the summer vacation in Brantford. Watchfulness was burning in Miss Lance’s eyes, but Mr. Bell didn’t seem to notice. He said, I shall see you after the summer, Miss Lark.
Outside it was already too dark for lip-reading, although the sun hadn’t fully set. Neither of us felt compelled to pause under the gas lamps, but when we reached the stagecoach stop, Miss Lance took out her notebook, and used her upturned satchel to rest it on. When she finished writing, she gave me the book with a smile that was conciliatory before I’d even read her words.
“When you return from the vacation,” she’d written, “can I suggest that you ask Mr. Bell to keep to teaching Visible Speech in your lessons?”
I stared at her but she took the notebook again and carried on. “He likes to talk. Indeed, he likes to sing! I hear him from outside the classroom but then most people can hear Mr. Bell from a mile away. I don’t think your grandmother would be pleased to learn his attention has wandered. I recommend that you stick with Visible Speech lessons. Visible Speech can only be learned through intensive rote practice.”
I’m improving my speech-reading, I told her, although I knew she must have heard some of our conversation around the piano, or even Mr. Bell’s singing to the wires, my delighted laughter.
Miss Lance’s smile twitched. My dear, she said with her voice, then continued with the pen, “Let me tell you something. Mr. Bell’s interest is in humanity not people. He’s fascinated by mankind, but doesn’t really see men or women—individual people—if you take my meaning.”
I didn’t know what she meant at all. How could you care for all people and not for any one of them in particular? I remembered Mr. Dupont again, and how Miss Lance had told him about Mr. Bell’s odd working habits. Clearly, she wasn’t of sound judgment to reveal such things to a person like Mr. Dupont, who could scarcely mask his disdain of Mr. Bell. I asked her, Did you advise Miss Hubbard of the same?
She gazed at me. Well, no—she began.
It was clear to me, then, that it was Miss Lance who had favorites, not Mr. Bell. She had been plainly joyful when chatting with Miss Hubbard. And why not, with her distinguished family? But she saw nothing fruitful that might come from my conversations with Mr. Bell. I burned to tell her that I’d been invited to write a paper for his journal, but decided against it. I’d not have Miss Lance meddle with things.
Her eyes went past my shoulder, so I guessed the stagecoach was pulling up. I thank you for your advice, I said, but I do not need it. I wish you a good vacation.
I turned and called out my stop to the driver. Usually, I used my notebook, but now I wished to make an assertive departure. But the driver frowned at my words, shook his head and cupped a hand about his ear. I could feel Miss Lance waiting in case she was needed. I hated, then, this dependency that others saw in me, and how I couldn’t loosen myself from it. I tried again but the driver shook his head a second time, so I was forced to flip open my travel notebook which had the words Tremont Street inked large. He nodded and waved me inside. Miss Lance was still stood on the sidewalk, watching me go. I climbed the steps and sat myself facing away from her, keeping my shoulders tall as if the confusion hadn’t happened.