Perdita (33 page)

Then he asked me if I would marry
him.

I felt my heart grow very still. And then a peaceful sort of joy came over me as if I stood in a wave of it. I looked up at him, and I think my whole face must have expressed my love for him—for with my whole soul I said yes to him! And then George kissed me—and oh, it was such bliss! In all the heavens and all the earth, this first true kiss of ours was
bliss!

And how am I to sleep? As if I could ever sleep this night! Somehow my Tad has done this—I don't know how, but I just know
it.

September 28

There has been a terrible argument, and George is furious at his stepfather for keeping my letter from him. Mr. Stewart is dismayed at our engagement and has said the family will leave immediately, though Mrs. Stewart, I am told, has refused such a hasty proposal. George says that I am not to take any heed of what Mr. Stewart says—though I know that he is very, very angry with his stepfather and I heard him apologizing to Tad while I ran to fetch my
shawl.

Tonight we walked down to the Basin together, and he made me promise that I would always love him. I do not know how many kisses he made me give him on this account, but he teased me, insisting that it would be a promise I must daily
renew.

We watched the sky growing dark together, and I felt as if we—George and I together—I felt as if we were taking up a place in all the wild beauty around us. As if our love were now part of
all
creation and belonged as much to the sky and forest, to the wind and the Bay, as it did to
ourselves.

I feel it so when I am in his arms! All the world seems to be there with us. There is no other place that draws me away, and I can only tremble in the ardor of his kisses, like a field of grass stirred by the
wind…

September 30

Uncle Gil's storm has finally come—and now we fear for some of the fishermen, for its appearance was sudden and now it is almost pitch-black, though it is only late afternoon, and the sky is a menacing dark gray. There are two large vessels on the horizon, though I think most of the smaller boats have come in. Tad says that the two schooners will have to make much haste to reach the safety of the
Basin.

***

The little girl is gone—it is inexplicable! I cannot find her anywhere! Auntie says that there were no children among the survivors, but she must be mistaken, for I brought the child in with me. Most assuredly I placed her with Mother for a short time while I ran to find some article of clothing to cover her, for the poor thing's garments had been torn away by the storm. Then I left her sleeping in my bed, but now I cannot find her
anywhere.

I must search again. She must have awakened and felt frightened without her mother, and so has gone and hidden herself in some small space. If only I knew her name that I might call
her.

***

Now she is back again. I awoke and there she was beside me! She has taken off the chemise I gave her and is quite naked. She opened her eyes sleepily as I tucked her under my blanket—such a sweet and darling little creature. I shall just doze in my chair and so will be alert when she
awakens.

I cannot imagine where she hid herself. To be sure the poor thing must be
hungry…

October 1

Gone again! This morning George and I looked everywhere, but we were forced to give up. He is still almost dead with exhaustion after the storm, and I urged him to go back to the Lodge and get some rest. I even made Auntie A. look everywhere with me, but to no avail. I appealed to Mother, but, alas, she can offer no words to confirm that the girl was here; now Auntie looks at me strangely, and she made me take a cup of tea and watched me drink it down. If only Mother could speak! For she saw her—the little girl that George and I rescued from the storm. I do not know where she goes. Surely there is some hiding place that she has found. Now Auntie is talking to Tad in low tones, and I am growing vexed. Was it all a dream? But then, George saw her, too.

October 2

I did not see the girl last night at all, but late this evening, she came back and was sleeping in my bed, just as she did upon the first night. I went immediately to get Auntie A. to come and see her, but as soon as I returned, she was
gone!

Am I dreaming again? But it cannot be so, for George saw her, too, though he is very ill and I shall say nothing to disturb his rest. Dr. McTavish says that he shall be fine in a day or two, but still I did not like to see him so feverish. I have been with him all day and much of the night, for he seems to be calmer when I am by his
side.

I must get some sleep so that I can arise early and go to him; I shall just have to set this mystery aside until George is well
again.

October 4

George was so much better today. He was sitting up in bed, and he seemed pleasantly amused with all my fussing over him. Perhaps I shouldn't have done so, but I crawled in next to him and put my arms around him, nestling up against his chest and kissing his cheeks. There was no one about to disturb us…George said such sweet things to me, but after a few minutes he bade me to return to my chair, saying that though he was ill, he was still a man and I the woman he
loved.

I have been so very, very worried about George. I know that I could never bear to lose
him!

I told him of my strange experiences with the little girl, and he listened, holding my hand and covering it with kisses so often that I soon became distracted. He said that he has had strange dreams in which the child comes to him and awakens him by placing her hand lightly upon his face, and then she runs away
laughing.

George does not know what to make of this, but he thinks that we must hold our tongues—though I can see that he, too, is shaken and has no ready
explanation.

Who is she? And why has no one else but Mother seen
her?

October 5

Again, I awaken to find the child sleeping next to me. If she is a ghost, I seem to feel no fear of her. I can feel the warmth of her body next to my own, and my hand strokes the softest of tresses as I write this. Her hair is of so unusual a color, turning a dark auburn at the ends—and if I listen carefully I can hear her breathing. I have placed the candle above us so that I can look upon her. I fear that she may be ill, for she looks to have a bit of the
jaundice.

She stirs—yes, she must be
real!

Was it all a dream—that night upon the shore and the men rushing to the boats to save the passengers? Perhaps I did imagine it; perhaps both George and I experienced some strange hallucination. And yet my memory of it is so
clear.

I remember that I followed Tad down to the boathouse—and George was there, too, and I experienced the fear I always feel when there is a storm and those I love must brave
it.

The Bay was in an awful rage, and our men could not get their boats out beyond a few yards before the waves pushed them back against the rocks. Above the surge, we could hear the distant cries of men in the lifeboats, and Tad said that all we could do was to try to seize the boats as they came closer and attempt to guide them to the dock. So the men waited with their hooks and ropes readied, but it seemed so futile a plan, for the waves were savage and
unrelenting.

We had some success with one of the smaller boats, but it was dreadful for me to think that there might be terrible death occurring all around us, out in the darkness. The rain became even more intense and—I cannot explain why—I grew angry at it, and I felt a wild defiance take hold of me. I seemed to scorn the shrieking wind and the fierce sheets of rain that made the rocks so treacherous. It was a perversity in me, I am sure, to feel thus—for it was madness for anyone to be out in a storm like that, seeking to steal its fire and risk its awful
fury.

What a tumult the Bay was in that night! I had never seen it so furious before. Here was no Dionysian cry of savage power but something deeper—more of a mother's fury, as if its rage were drawn from Demeter's anguish at having the darling of her heart stolen from
her.

I remember moving away from the men and stepping deeper into the darkness. Again I do not know what rebelliousness drove me forward, but I walked to an outcropping of rocks near the Point, just where the wind seemed wildest. There I was on the shore, the sharp face of the cliff close behind me and pressing into my back, and I seemed to taunt the waves, for I was but a hair's breath away from where they were crashing and I defied them to touch
me.

I felt my own fury mounting—and then we were facing each other in a furious storm of anger. I felt its terrible frustration and then its overwhelming
anguish.

“Marged!”

“Who is calling me?” I cried
out.

I looked up, suddenly afraid at my own terrible yearning to go out into it—to step into the Bay's wild embrace! It was then that I thought I saw it. No—I am sure that I did! There rising before me from the water and gasping for air…was a woman! Her face was a ghastly white, and her hair was strewn about her features, and through the darkness I could discern her strange, liquid eyes, staring at me with an intensity that seemed to pierce right through me. I tried to step back, petrified, but the cliff prevented me. And then, to my horror, she raised the limp form of a small child in her arms and extended it toward me. My heart cried out—for I felt myself back among all the babies at the clinic, and almost of an instinct, I reached forward to grasp it and prevent its fall. So, too, the drowning woman leaned toward me, stretching her arms out with the child, and I knew that I must step into the waves to catch it, knowing that my peril would be
great.

I felt the water catch greedily at my skirts and pull me forward—and then I felt George's rough face against my cheek. I did not know how he had come to be there, except that perhaps he had seen me, or that someone had noted my absence and he had come after me. He seemed almost to be sobbing as he held me—or perhaps I was holding him. I do not know! Still, I could not give him my full attention, though my whole heart cleaved to him, so preoccupied was I with the chilling vision of the woman I had just seen and the tiny child that she held slipping from her
arms.

The wind rose in an angry pitch around us and seemed to try to drag us back out into the Bay. George put his arms around me and pressed my face close to his chest and pulled us both back against the cliff. We stood thus for several seconds waiting for the wind to subside: George sheltering me with his body against the furious onslaught of rain and surf. It was then I felt it—a stiffening of my dress and then an urgent tugging as if some weight had attached itself to the hem of my skirt. I looked down and saw the child's head and her wet locks pasted to her
skull.

“George,” I cried, “she is on my skirt! Can you reach
her?”

He looked down, and we both saw the form of a naked child, twisted into the folds of my dress and gripping the wet fabric with an almost superhuman strength. George bent down, taking me with him, and we both lifted her up as she transferred her tiny arms to my neck with a ferocity equal to the wind's howling
madness.

I cried out in pain, so violent was her grip, and I recalled Tad's stories of rescuing drowning men and his caution to never get into the water with one of them without a rope—for, so terrified of drowning, they will cling to their rescuer and drag both to their
deaths.

“Marged!” I could not tell who was calling
me.

George must have seen how precarious our position was upon the shore. He shouted out to move toward a broken ledge of cliff face that had fallen out onto the rocks and which had a cavity behind it. This was all that offered us any chance of refuge from the wild
wind.

Little by little we edged back from the crashing water, and then George, still pressing me close to him and the child clinging to me, lifted us all up until we were behind the wall of rock. We both were panting heavily from our exertions, and the child's lips were blue with cold. It had burrowed its head against my heart, and I felt as if all of us, George, myself, the ghostly pale child—the great cliff of rock—we had all merged together as part of the shore, flesh and blood, rock and stone, wave and
water…

October 7

I must keep reminding myself that George and Mother have seen her, though Auntie thinks that I have hit my head and imagined it
all.

“Why don't you tell
me about what happened to the little girl mentioned in the diary,” I asked, breaking the silence. “The child rescued from the storm. Did she
survive?”

Marged stared at
me.

“But, Garth!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Of course she survived.
That
is
Perdita!”

“The little girl in that—account—of the storm? That's
Perdita?”

“Of course! That's the whole reason why I've had you read my diaries. Now you know. You know all the circumstances that brought her to me—my engagement to George, and the storm, and—” She stopped suddenly, eyeing me
anxiously.

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “I've read about all of that. But I couldn't help noticing there were some pages torn out at the end of the last
diary.”

Marged said
nothing.

“Did you tear them
out?”

“Yes.”

“Was it because you didn't want me to read
them?”

“No—not
exactly.”

“I'm pretty curious to know what happened between Marged and George
Stewart.”

“I'm sorry, Garth, but I don't wish to discuss George with you. Not today anyway.” She pursed her lips and turned her face away
abruptly.

I got up restlessly, a little surprised at my reaction. The story about the little girl and the storm had been intriguing, but it was far less interesting to me than the outcome of Marged Brice's relationship with one of Canada's most famous
painters.

“Please come back and sit down.” Her expression softened as I returned to the chair across from her. “I'll tell you what,” she said in a more conciliatory tone. “First we'll focus on Perdita; then we can—we can discuss those other things. Does that sound
fair?”

“All right, Marged.”

“Now, first of all, you must be absolutely frank with me,” she continued briskly. “There's to be no beating around the bush. You think Perdita is a hallucination, or something like that, don't
you?”

“I don't think she's a hallucination. Are you sure you want to hear what I
think?”

“Yes!
Please
tell
me.”

I hesitated. “I don't want to upset you, Marged, so you've got to promise that you'll let me know if you want me to
stop.”

She swallowed and then
nodded.

“In longevity research, there's something called psycho-intertextuality—PIT,” I
began.

“Please!” she interrupted. “Just tell me in plain
English.”

“Straight
out?”

“Yes!”

“Well—I think there's a strong possibility that you might be Marged Brice's
daughter.”

I waited, but she showed no signs of unease or
irritation.

“You may continue, Garth. I'm
listening.”

“Let's just think about it calmly for a moment. What do we know from the diaries so far?” I was extra careful to keep my voice calm. “It's clear that Marged Brice had a romantic relationship with the painter George Stewart. It's also clear they were going to be
married.”

“Oh, yes. It was very difficult for us at first. But I don't understand. What does all this have to do with Perdita—and the woman giving her to
me?”

“My sense is that the Marged Brice of the diaries must have—probably—imagined that story about the
storm.”

“You mean I made her
up?”

“No, not exactly. But there's a theme that runs through those diaries—a sort of thread that connects several
events.”

“A thread?” She smiled
wryly.

“What you might call an
imaginative
thread. Think about it: first, there's the grave of the child in the cemetery that Marged calls Perdita. Then there's a discovery of a corpse with a dead baby. Later on during a séance, she sees a ghostly woman mourning the loss of yet another child—and then, after all these events, comes the storm and the rescue of still another child. Do you see what I
mean?”

“I saw that awful corpse on Lonely Island before the incident with Flore in the graveyard,” she
muttered.

“At any rate, you can see where I'm going, can't
you?”

“No, I cannot,” she answered coldly. “Once I did see a drowned woman with her infant, and once I did take a fancy to a child's grave in the old cemetery. But those children—they aren't the Perdita I'm talking
about!”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe we should think of it this way. Suppose Marged Brice and George Stewart couldn't be married for some reason. And…” I hesitated; she had fixed her blue eyes on me intently. “Suppose a child was born,” I said
gently.

Her eyes widened—and then quickly
narrowed.

“Needless to say,” I added hastily, “none of that business about being born out of wedlock would have any relevance today. There would be no need for that child to feel shame or to hide her original
identity.”

Marged let my words sink
in.

“Ah,” she whispered. “I understand! You think Perdita is an assumed identity. You think my mother gave me this identity because I was an illegitimate child. Then Perdita became…an alter ego—a part of myself that I couldn't let go of, except by actually
becoming
my mother. Do you mean something along those
lines?”

I looked at her surprised. She had guessed the gist of my thoughts with extraordinary swiftness. “Yes, something like
that.”

She was silent for a few minutes. “That's very original, Garth,” she said gently, and then more firmly, “I don't wish to offend you, but I'm afraid you're
mistaken.”

“Marged,” I replied, also becoming firmer in my tone. “Why can't we just agree that you're probably among the world's oldest living persons. But my explanation would put your age more in the range of one hundred and ten years, not off the charts at one hundred and thirty-four. I'm sure that if I went to your family, I could find someone who would help clear up this whole
business.”

“No! You mustn't do that!” A wild look came into her eyes. “They'll come and take everything from me. My diaries—everything! And then I shall be as one erased from the walls of the pyramids. You don't understand. Ava doesn't want anyone to know who I am. Promise me you won't go to
them!”

I assured her that I would do nothing without her
permission.

Marged took several deep breaths. “I suppose what you suggest is possible, and I don't blame you for…thinking it.” Her lips quivered. “But please let me clarify that Perdita is not the result of an unsanctioned union. I did not invent her. She was not created to cover up something I was ashamed
of.”

She swallowed, calming herself, and then she motioned for me to pull my chair closer. “But all that is irrelevant. You seem to think that I might be Perdita, but I couldn't possibly be
her.”

“Why
not?”

She looked straight at me, her manner becoming almost businesslike. “I could not possibly be Perdita, simply because she has been with me all these
years.”

“With you? She's here in the home with you then? One of the residents
maybe?”

Marged began to chuckle. “Now you really are humoring me. But no—you don't understand. She's still the same little girl—a sweet, dear little girl. Perdita hasn't aged at all. She's the same as when she came to me, quite a scamp at times. Very playful. She loves to slide down that banister, and I've had a terrible time trying to stop
her.”

She looked at me searchingly and then sighed. “Ah, now you're changing your mind. Now you think I've made her up, that Perdita is some sort of imaginary
person.”

“I've told you what I think. But even so—maybe she has become an imaginary friend. Sometimes people do things like that, especially if they live in isolated
settings.”

She frowned and shook her head. “Yes, children do that sometimes, but I wasn't a child when Perdita came to me.” She smiled sadly. “It was my classics professor, Victor Latham, who gave me the idea for her name. I used to meet with him after our classes. Some of the other instructors thought that it was improper, but there was nothing like that involved. Dr. Latham was the one who introduced me to
Perdita.”

“Yes, I almost forgot,” I said slowly. “Latham also knew about the missing Hesiod
fragment.”

Marged started. “But how do you know about it? Dr. Latham said I must never tell anyone about the
fragment.”

I explained that my father had been a classicist and that he had had a friend—a colleague—who had discovered it, too.

“So you know all about Hephaestus and Pandora's illicit creation,” she said softly. “About Perdita as she came to be called in the beautiful poems of Lumenius. The Greeks called her Emmenona, but I much prefer
Perdita.”

“Yes, I know about the extra fifty-one
lines.”

“Fifty-one lines?” she said sharply. “It was much longer than
that.”

“My father's colleague mentioned that the fragment might be longer, but she's only pieced together fifty-one
lines.”

“Only fifty-one?” Marged eyed me thoughtfully. “George painted Perdita, you know. He did several portraits of her. I gave one to Professor Latham, but I loved George's sketches the most. I made him keep those.” Then she sat quietly, again looking out the window for a few
moments.

After several minutes, she turned back to face me, the blue of her eyes growing more intense. “I'm finding that I grow tired very quickly these days,” she murmured. “And there's been a great horned owl in the garden. It's been hooting at night, and sometimes it keeps me
awake.”

I immediately got up, saying that I would come back when she was feeling more
energetic.

“Wait.” She held up her hand. “I want you to take charge of something.” She pointed to a large, flat package, wrapped in brown paper and sitting on her trunk. “I want you to take that parcel with you. It's made me very anxious to have it here. I keep thinking that Ava or her lawyers are going to show up and claim it as part of Gregory's estate. I know it will be safer with
you.”

I walked over to her trunk and picked it
up.

“Please be very careful!” she said urgently. “It's very, very precious to me! I want you to open it, but not now. Not here. When you open it, you'll see what I
mean.

“Garth,” she called out faintly as I moved away. “Wait. Here are the pages I tore out. They're rather private, you see—but I said I would trust you, didn't
I?”

I came back, and she slowly reached into her drawer. “You must also read these letters,” she said quietly, handing me a small packet. “Otherwise you won't understand those—those other
pages.”

She looked up at me searchingly as I took the letters. “But Garth, I want you to open that package. Then if you
still
don't believe I am the Marged Brice of those
diaries…”

She
hesitated.

“Can you come back tomorrow?” she whispered hoarsely. “No, come back in a few days. Make sure you get a good rest. I want you to be well
rested.”

“Yes, I'll come back in a few
days.”

I stopped in the doorway to look back at
her.

She no longer seemed aware of my presence. The sun was streaming in through the window, throwing her face into shadow and giving her an ethereal aspect. All of a sudden, it looked as if the bones of her body were barely able to support the weight of her flesh. She raised her hands up in front of her—as if she were caressing something on her lap—and then sank back down into her
chair.