“But you’re not fine, darling,” he said. “You threw out your medication, you’re having delusions, you’re forgetting your station in life—please don’t misunderstand, I’m not blaming you. I know it’s not your fault. These are all symptoms of your condition. But these people will take advantage of you, if they haven’t already, and as your husband, it’s my duty to protect you. There’s a hospital in Fort Augustus, quite well known, actually…I thought maybe you could check in for a while, just until you’re back on an even keel.”
With a bone-deep sense of dread, I realized he was planning to have me locked up. He hadn’t just come up with a solution that would provide him with endless pills, he’d also come up with a solution that would dismiss anything I might say about his color blindness—his behavior in general—as a figment of my diseased imagination. As an added bonus, he would appear to be a loyal, martyred husband, deserving of pity and respect.
Poor, poor Ellis, saddled with mad, mad Maddie. The things he must have borne, and he never once let on. Such a shame—it was a love match, you know, against his parents’ wishes, and then to have her turn out like her mother…
Everyone would shake their heads, demonstrating the appropriate level of sadness, while simultaneously feeling the thrill of vindication, because they’d all known it was inevitable. And then, one by one, the matrons of Philadelphia high society would make pilgrimages to the mansion on Market Street to snivel condolences at Edith Stone Hyde, who would hold up admirably, while secretly reveling in having been proved right.
I wondered if Ellis pictured me locked safely in the attic during all of this, like the crazy first wife of Mr. Rochester, except drugged into submission.
The icing on the cake, the sheer beauty of his plan, was that I’d still be alive, so he wouldn’t even have to marry again. It would be Hank’s turn to put on a show. Poor Violet. I wondered if she’d slip as naïvely into the role as I had, and if she’d ever recognize it for what it was.
But Ellis’s otherwise masterfully crafted solution had one enormous flaw: unless the Colonel forgave him, he would not be present at his mother’s side to lap up sympathy. Without the Colonel’s absolution, he still had nothing. Ellis had more at stake than ever in finding the monster.
There was an Aroogah! from the street.
“That’s George. We should go,” said Hank, getting up.
“Please come with us,” Ellis said, looking me right in the eyes. “I’m begging you.”
Aroogah!
“Ellis, we have to go,” said Hank.
“Darling, please change your mind,” Ellis entreated.
I shook my head.
After a pause, he climbed to his feet.
“I hate leaving you like this, even if it’s only for a few days. But if you won’t come, I have no choice. One way or another, we have to wrap this thing up so we can go home and get a fresh start.”
“Your plan won’t work,” I said quietly. “They won’t lock me up, because I’m not insane. I never have been.”
He smiled sadly. “I’ll see you in a few days, darling. Take care of yourself.”
A few days. I had only a few days to come up with some way of extricating myself from this tangled mess, because despite my bravado, I wasn’t at all sure he couldn’t have me committed. And he certainly wouldn’t let me divorce him—the proceedings would reveal all kinds of things he’d do anything to keep under wraps.
—
In the late afternoon, during one of Meg’s waking moments, she asked for a mirror.
Anna and I exchanged glances.
“Why don’t we give it a few days?” said Anna. “Give Mhàthair’s tea a chance to do its work.”
“I want to see,” said Meg. “I already know it’s going to be bad.”
Anna looked at me in dismay, and I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t see how we could refuse.
“Well,” Anna said, “in that case, let’s get you tidied up a bit.”
She worked at loosening and wiping away the yellowish crust that continued to ooze from the cuts around Meg’s mouth and eye. I got my hairbrush, which had softer bristles than Meg’s, and ran it carefully over her hair, taking pains to avoid the raw area, trying gently to encourage a wave or curl to form. Anna stood in the background, chewing her nails.
When I handed Meg the mirror, she looked into it and turned her face from side to side. She lifted her fingers to her ruined cheek, tracing the outline of the stitched-up gash, before hovering over the deep new hollow. Then she set the mirror on the bed and wept.
Chapter Thirty-four
Two days later, Dr. McLean decided to replace Meg’s morphine with a bright red tonic.
As he put the syringes in a box with the remaining morphine, he paused and knitted his brow. He pushed the ampoules, both empty and full, around with his finger.
“Well, that’s very odd,” he finally declared. “I would have sworn I brought more than this. There should be four left. You’ve not accidentally double-dosed her, have you?”
“I should think not,” replied Angus, with more than a little affront.
“No, of course not,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “I must have miscounted.”
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. I knew exactly where they’d gone, and why Ellis had looked so improbably healthy.
—
When Anna saw the tonic, she nodded in satisfaction. To her, it indicated that everything was just a little more right with the world.
To Meg, it meant she could no longer sleep through the pain. Additionally, Dr. McLean insisted that deep breathing was no longer enough. Now Meg also had to get up and shuffle the length of the hallway twice a day to ward off blood clots.
Meg bore this bravely, but it was clear that every step was agony. Anna and I would flank her, holding her elbows, and giving encouragement. When we got her back to her room, we’d help her into the chair, where she’d sit stiffly until she felt up to the task of lying back down, because lying down required using the muscles in her abdomen and back. Lifting, laughing, coughing, breathing—all of it caused pain.
Rhona had been a constant presence since the morning after Meg’s injury, and she and Mhàthair made continuous adjustments to the soup we spooned into her. We consumed it as well, and its ever-changing nature was a source of mystery to me. One time, a pile of tiny lime-green leaves appeared on the corner of the big table in the kitchen. I fingered them absentmindedly, thinking they might be mint. They turned out to be the first spring shoots of stinging nettle, and I had to sit for hours with my hands submerged in a bowl of snow. This amused Anna and Meg no end, although Meg finally called an end to the merriment because she couldn’t bear the pain of laughing anymore. What they didn’t notice was that my laughing had turned to crying.
There was no getting around it—a few days meant three, four at most. My grace period was almost up.
—
Four days turned into five, and then six, and there was still no sign of Ellis and Hank. I almost wished they’d return just to get it over with, because a bolt of terror ran through me every time the front door opened.
Nights were even worse. My brain turned and turned, robbing me of sleep, yet I couldn’t come up with a single solution. I had no money at all, either in a bank or on my person, so even if I’d known how to bribe my way onto another freighter, I didn’t have the means. I also had nowhere to go at the other end.
Although there was no longer any need, I continued to sleep in Meg’s room. I was afraid that Ellis would come back and look for me in mine.