I BECAME A CONSTANT OBJECT at the invalid’s bedside. The first time I called to visit him after his injuries, Mrs. McGrath, the landlady who by now had seen me twice before, asked: “Who are you? Not a relative; if I have eyes I can see that well enough.” But there was not exactly a clamor from people to help her look after her boarder, and she quickly tired of trying to chase me away. A nurse came for a few hours a day at first, and a doctor periodically visited. The Englishman was still a stranger in our country, as much a stranger in New York City as I ever was.
He had been lucky enough to escape any burns on his body, but he had inhaled too much smoke. He had trouble breathing and speaking, and slept for long periods during the day. His eyes had also been severely irritated by the smoke and ashes, and for several days he had to wear a bandage over one eye for four hours, then switch it to the other. I was sent on errands to retrieve his repaired spectacles and his suit after it was mended and cleaned. He gave me permission to read or dip into any of the books on his shelves.
There was a sadness to his book collection. Almost half of the books I looked at seemed to have been presented from one person—the author or someone else—to another as a gift. There were inscriptions, and names, and records of the book being given by beloved sisters, fathers, lovers. All the books had been cherished, at some time, before being sold to strangers.
I did my best to follow his directions in caring for his various plants and the creeping bookworms, which I was then charged with returning to the professor at Columbia College who had loaned them. A few book hunters visited in my presence and Mr. Fergins instructed me to retrieve volumes from his collection and to put away payments for them in a locked drawer. There was a large man in a big beaver hat who also appeared; I remembered him as the same man whom I saw speaking with Mr. Fergins on the steps of the courthouse. I was shelving a new shipment of books while the two men met in the bedroom. They spoke in whispers and, though I tried to listen, I could not hear much. It seemed they were talking of the trial, and the caller muttered about “the damned thief” and exclaimed his wish to “hang him high and dry.” When I helped him back on with his coat, the visitor, carrying out a bundle of books, seemed disgruntled.
I wondered whether it was difficult for Mr. Fergins to part with volumes that he took such good care of. He laughed when I asked, relating the story of a man named Don Vincente, a monk and bookseller in Barcelona who coveted his own selection of books so much that he began to follow his customers home and murder them, taking back the books he had sold them. When asked at his trial why he would commit murder over books, he cried, “Books, books, books. Books are the glory of God!” The strangest thing about the story was that some histories of the incident insisted Don Vincente could hardly read. “Perhaps,” mused Mr. Fergins when I asked how it was possible, “that was what drove him to such lengths. The books were just their outsides, just physical things, so that was all that was important to Don Vincente. I suppose he is the black mark on the history of my trade—but at least one cannot question his dedication.”
One evening as I was preparing to exit the house, the landlady stopped me in the receiving room, which was dimly lit at this hour and smelled faintly of cinnamon.
“Well, I should think your visits are coming to an end about now,” she said.
I was surprised as much by her words as by the fact that after ignoring me for so long she was now addressing me again. “Ma’am?”
She raised her voice as though I could not hear. “Certain young men, coming and going at all hours, it is frightening some of the ladies who board with me.”
For a moment my mind stumbled, but then I remembered the reports I had seen in the newspaper just days earlier about a young lady in another part of the city who, when found in a state of undress in the middle of the night, had alleged two colored men had tried to abduct her from her chambers. I had noticed more wary and warning expressions since then.
“Ma’am, if I may . . .”
Her face was coloring red. “When I ask you a question, I suggest you jump to answer. Now, I shall ask you, young man, once more, how long you believe I ought to welcome you here.”
“Mr. Clover will be welcomed by you however long I board here, Mrs. McGrath.”
We turned and saw Mr. Fergins standing at the entrance to the receiving room, which was around the corner from his rooms. His body was bent over, one hand on the wall, while on the other side his weight was supported by his feeble umbrella. I had thought the bookseller was asleep when I’d slipped out of his room. He asked sternly if she understood him and waited until the landlady murmured that it was so. I hadn’t felt so grateful since I had come to New York City.
Mr. Fergins worried that I was wasting all my free time in the two weeks since his accident tending to him. I was a young man, he would say. I suppose he was implying that my calendar should be filled with amusing adventures and romances. I did not want to say what I really thought: that I could see there was no one else who would be at his side, and anyway, with the cold weather curtailing my walks, I would be nowhere else but my dismal room.
One afternoon, I brought him some warm blueberry cake the landlady’s daughter had handed me with a shy smile when I entered.
As had become my habit, I sat in a chair by his bed reading to myself while he rested, sometimes sleeping, at other times sighing musically.
He sat up on the mass of pillows. “My luck has run against me again. Anyway, that’s how I feel when I lie awake at night. But do you know, I’m beginning to feel stronger than I have in a long time.”
He gestured for his spectacles case and I helped him put them on. “That is excellent to hear, Mr. Fergins.” The truth was, I was concerned by his appearance. He was pale and seemed frailer.
“What are you reading?”
“I hope you don’t mind me taking it down,” I said, showing him the book in my lap. “All the talk of Stevenson—”
“Kidnapped,” he said with a nod.
“I had read Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and of course Treasure Island, but never this. What do you think of it?” I asked.
“Strange Case.”
“What?”