“As if I’d borrow money from gangsters. Come on,” Harlan said, grinning out of the side of his mouth. “I haven’t lost that much.”
“Harley, you should—” Dovie started to say, but she stopped herself as the sound of footfalls moved past the locked bedroom door. The footfalls stopped, followed by the sound of rustling taffeta, as though someone were listening at the keyhole. Harlan widened his eyes and clapped a hand over his mouth in pretend silence. Dovie smiled down at him, a finger pressed to her lips. A few seconds ticked by, and then the distinct music of an Irishwoman clearing her throat could be heard in the hallway, before the steps moved away.
Laughing, Harlan took up a pillow and swung it at Dovie, hitting her fragile shoulder with a muffled plumpf. She squealed, laughing, collapsing into the bedclothes as Harlan rolled onto her on his elbows. “Shhhh!” she whispered, her hands threading through his hair as he rained kisses on her forehead, her cheek, the corner of her ruby mouth, the hollow at the base of her collarbone. “Harley!” she protested, silent laughter shaking her body.
“Shhhh,” he countered, brushing his nose along the creamy planes of her neck where it met her shoulder. Her skin was delectable, the fine hairs at the base of her skull tickling when he pressed his lips there. He loved the warm girl-smell of her, spicy, like incense lingering on her skin.
“Really, you’ve got to tell them the truth. They’ll never like me otherwise.”
“Later,” he whispered into her hair. “Plenty of time for that. Later.”
“Sibyl, please listen,” Benton was protesting downstairs as they entered the front hallway of the Beacon Street town house, Sibyl moving quickly, as if she could abandon his doubt behind her on the stoop. Outside in the street, the taxicab containing Professor Friend pulled away with a sputter of engine backfire, the professor waving farewell through the back window as the cab rolled down Beacon Street.
“I don’t care,” she insisted, shrugging off her coat with impatience and flinging it in the general direction of the hall stand. It missed and fell to the floor in a heap, which Sibyl didn’t even bother to pick up. “You can say whatever you want to say, you can analyze it as much as you like. But I know what I saw. I was there. I know that it happened.”
In the shadows of the rear hallway, silhouetted by the La Farge, the immobile form of Mrs. Doherty watched their arrival. Sibyl met her eyes only briefly, finding them concerned and preoccupied, as if she had something to say to her, but Sibyl dismissed the housekeeper with a curt shake of her head, and the woman scowled and disappeared into the kitchen.
She marched into the drawing room, one thumbnail brought to her lip for a chew. The afternoon was wearing into evening, and she knew that within the hour the other members of the Allston household would trickle back into the house. Lan would arrive from his office, after a day spent mulling import figures. Dovie was probably upstairs dressing, or lolling on her bed, flipping through one of her gossip magazines. Sibyl had promised to be home hours earlier, and in the back of her mind she worried that Dovie would be annoyed with her for being so late.
Harlan either would or would not appear in time for supper. He had been vanishing with increasing regularity as his health improved, and often Dovie would be absent at the same time. Sibyl presumed that they crept away to escape all the watching eyes of the house, though neither of them elaborated on their movements when Sibyl wasn’t with them.
The mantel clock in the inner drawing room chimed the thirty minutes before their usual dinner hour. She heard the bustling sounds of Mrs. Doherty laying the flatware in the dining room, lighting candles, arranging flowers. Sibyl ought to check in with Betty in the kitchen. Betty should be informed that Benton was staying. And perhaps that Harlan’s appearance wasn’t assured.
This minutiae of household maintenance crowded in on Sibyl’s mind in a way both tedious and comforting as she crossed the drawing room. Over the fireplace, the portrait effigy of a youthful Helen, still frozen in doubts of her own, seemed to track Sibyl’s movements with her painted eyes. Sibyl glared up at the image of her mother, feeling cross and betrayed. She threw herself onto the window seat in a froth of petulance, slouching with her arms crossed, not looking at Benton.
“Sibyl,” Benton said, following close on her heels. “You mustn’t think I don’t respect you. You mustn’t think I don’t give credence to what you’re saying. Please. You’ve been deceived by someone you’ve trusted.”
She glared at him with open defiance. “I don’t see how else I’m meant to take it,” she said. “You’re saying I’m mistaken, that I didn’t see what I know perfectly well that I saw. I’m not mad, Ben. But I know that I can’t explain it in a way that’ll persuade you, so there’s really no use in our continuing to discuss it.”
He lowered himself with care onto the window seat opposite her, elbows on his knees, hands knitted together. “I’m the one who’s failing to explain.” He paused, probing with his eyes to meet her gaze. She avoided him. “Let me see if I can do better. Will you at least listen? Please?”
Sibyl softened. She didn’t think she’d ever heard Benton say “please” quite so many times at one stretch. He was usually too stubborn to be that solicitous. She flicked a glance at him, just enough to test his intent, but it was enough. He caught her eye and held it, smiling, leaning closer. From somewhere in the inner drawing room, they both heard a leisured squawk as Baiji the macaw reminded them that he was bearing witness to their conversation.
“All right,” she relented. “But you won’t be able to persuade me. I can see that I was wrong about Mrs. Dee, all right. She’s not the first person I’ve been wrong about, is she? Don’t you think I feel foolish enough already?”
Benton’s face took on a pained cast. “You needn’t,” he said, voice low. “I never meant—”
“I take no pleasure in being made a fool of,” Sibyl whispered, her quietness signaling the depths of her fury.
“Of course you don’t,” he said. A tentative hand edged nearer, coming to rest on Sibyl’s knee.
“So,” she said, noticing the pressure of his hand there. Her anger simmered lower. “Explain it, then. Tell me how I didn’t see what I know that I saw.”
Benton took a long breath and said, “I’ll try. Let’s consider first the actual content of this vision, all right? What was it?”
“You know what it was,” Sibyl said, irritated. “I saw the ocean, and the night sky. And then I saw the ocean liner. After practicing, I could move around on the ship and see into the dining room. I was looking for Mother and Eulah, and while I was looking something happened to the ship. Everyone starting running, and it listed to one side. Then, instead of finding them, I saw Professor Friend.”
“Right,” Benton said. “Now, forget the vision for a moment. Have you ever had the experience of thinking about someone right before you get ready for bed, and then having a dream about them?”
“I suppose so,” Sibyl said slowly. “Though I don’t generally remember my dreams.”
As she said this, she heard a distant thunk from somewhere upstairs. She glanced upward. Then Sibyl turned her attention back to Benton, doubting that he could persuade her to abandon what she knew, in her innermost self, to be true.
“That doesn’t matter. I’m speaking in hypotheticals. Oftentimes dreams seem nonsensical, don’t they? Cause and effect will be jumbled, laws of physics won’t apply, scenes will change without reason. Am I right?”
Benton’s cool eyes bored into Sibyl’s own as he spoke, making her feel revealed, as though he were looking directly into her thoughts. The sensation was somehow both awkward and pleasurable at once. She shifted, her cheeks coloring.
“Well, yes. I guess,” she demurred.
“And yet, within that nonsense you usually find recognizable elements, don’t you? People or places that you know, perhaps juxtaposed in an unexpected way. We generally don’t awaken thinking we’ve dreamed about things that have no meaning, after all. In dreams the sense mi
ght be drained away, but most of the elements will be familiar, possibly even familiar enough that we can guess why we might have had a given dream on a given night. Someone lately seen might appear, or a scene lately visited, but the two ideas won’t naturally seem to belong together. At first.”
Sibyl furrowed her brows. “Maybe,” she allowed.
“Some men working in my field have a term for that phenomenon. It’s called condensation. In dreams, a single image can reference multiple different experiences. So a single element of the subconscious can appear as a symbol in juxtaposition with something that seems initially unrelated to it. But if we look more closely at the symbol, if we evaluate its chain of associations, then we begin to understand all its different meanings.” He looked intently at her, and she read in Benton’s face the eager hope that she was seeing ahead to the conclusion that he wanted her to draw.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” she said, stubborn. “What do the visions that I’ve been seeing have to do with dreams? I told you I never remember my dreams anyway. And the visions are nothing at all like being asleep.”
Benton rubbed his free hand over his forehead, battling frustration. Overhead, another thunk vibrated through the rafters of the town house. Sibyl glared at the ceiling, and looked down again.
“So you’ve said.” Benton spoke from behind the hand on his forehead. “But you must see the connection. When do you have these visions most clearly?”
“When I—” Sibyl started to say, but didn’t finish.
“Am under the influence of a very heavy, very dangerous narcotic,” Benton finished for her.
“Really, Ben. It’s not so bad as all that.” She frowned, sitting back in the window seat cushions. “And what about Mrs. Dee’s? I was perfectly myself. I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”
The young psychologist blinked at her, astonished. “The cough syrup,” he said.
“What do you mean, cough syrup?” Sibyl said, baffled.
“Oh, come now.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, gaze floating to the ceiling again out of frustration.
“I thought you’d know. Sibyl, there’re opiates in that cough syrup. In most cough remedies and tonics, in fact. That’s one reason they’ve finally started regulating them.” He stared at her. “Didn’t you know? Why, they’re all the same, chemically speaking. Opium. Morphine. Cough syrup. Laudanum.”
“Laudanum, too?” she said, a thought flashing through her mind, not fully formed. It vanished before she could get hold of it.
“Certainly. Same thing. They all have the same effects, just in varying strengths. That’s why they’re so dangerous, these patent medicines. It’s all too easy for people to become dependent on them without even knowing it.”
“But,” Sibyl protested, aggravated with Benton but not understanding why. “I fail to see what that has to do with this condensation business that you’re talking about.”
“Opiates,” Benton said, “cause vivid waking dreams. It’s the same, psychologically speaking, as what you might see while you’re asleep. Only you’re awake, and the interference of the drug makes the imagery even more intense.”
“So?” Sibyl glared. She thought she might see where Benton was going.
Overhead, an even louder thunk, and the sound of something metallic dropped and rolling across a wooden floor.
“What on earth . . . ?” Sibyl muttered to herself. Benton paid no attention.
“Consider. Your mind has been much on your mother and sister lately. You’re reminded of them every day here in the house. And then it’s the anniversary of the sinking, always a difficult time. Yes?”
“I suppose,” she said.
“So naturally your subconscious might turn to images of the sea, of an ocean liner even, in reference to them around this time of year.”
“Even so—”
“Even so. And you’d just been looking at Professor Friend across the table from you. His was the freshest face in your mind before Mrs. Dee shut off the lights. Further, he’d provided you validation and support when I myself did not. You were grateful to him. He encouraged your wish to contact them, and so became tangled up with the idea of them in your mind. It’s only natural that you’d superimpose him into your dream.”
“But—” she started to object.
“Sibyl,” Benton said, his voice gentle, eyes probing, pleading for her comprehension. “It’s just a dream. That vision you’ve been having—it’s a projection of your unconscious mind. A manifestation of your grief over losing Helen and Eulah. It’s perfectly understandable, and nothing whatever to be embarrassed about. But you must see that there’s nothing of clairvoyance or spirit communication or anything else about it.”
She watched him speak, weighing what he was saying. Sibyl had to admit that it made sense, what Benton argued; that the image she kept seeing in the scrying glass could just be fragments from deep within her mind, creating what looked like a coherent picture as a way of giving her what she yearned to have.
“But,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “it seemed so real.” She searched his eyes for understanding, and probing there, found patience and sympathy. But not anything that might be called belief.
“I know,” he whispered back. He seemed on the point of saying something further, his eyes hunting deep into her own.
“As real,” she said, “as you are now.” She placed her hand over his where it rested on her knee, and pressed there. She waited, lips parted.
A stricken look crossed Benton’s face, and he murmured, “Sibyl, I . . .”
She edged nearer, wishing to hear what he was about to say. “Yes?”
And then his lips were pressed to her mouth.
Sibyl barely had time to register what was happening before a thumping of chair legs on hard wood and rustling of papers caused them to leap up from their intimate conference in the window seat, abruptly dropping their hands. The outline of movement emerged from within the darkness of the inner parlor, and out of the shadows stepped the form of Lan Allston, one hand propped on his vest pocket, and the other with a newspaper at his side, tapping the side of his leg meditatively. His icy sailor’s eyes were dark, his mouth flattened into a disapproving line.
“Oh!” Sibyl exclaimed, taken by surprise. “Papa. I didn’t realize you were—”
“Good evening, Professor Derby,” Allston said with a curt nod at Benton. Then he turned his attention to his daughter. “I don’t suppose you’ve told the staff that we’ll be having another guest for supper this evening, have you?”
“Really, Captain Allston, I wasn’t—” Benton started to say.
“I was . . . that is, I was just—” Sibyl stammered, talking over Benton. She glanced sidelong at the young professor, grappling for an explanation. He looked back at her, with the faintest of shrugs and a half-smile.
“I thought not. Well, no matter. I’ll do it myself.” He pulled the chronometer out of his vest pocket to reassure himself of something and stuffed it back while tucking the newspaper under his arm. “Well. We’d best be excusing ourselves to dress, I suppose. Derby, you’ll be fine the way you are. I can’t see Mrs. Doherty causing too much of a fuss. No more than usual, at any rate.”
“Ah,” Benton started to say. Abashed, he hunted around himself, as though searching on the floor for something to say. Instead of finding it, he folded his hands behind his back, rocked on his heels, and said, “Well, that’s kind of you, sir. I’d be glad to stay.”
“Excellent,” Lan said, though his tone indicated that the invitation was not meant to be regarded as optional. He crossed the front parlor and offered Sibyl his arm to lead her upstairs. For lack of anything better to do, she took it.
“Make yourself at home, Ben,” she said with a resigned smile. “We’ll only be a minute.”
Sibyl allowed herself to be led out of the drawing room and toward the stairs, in part relieved to be freed from her puzzling interacti
on with Benton. She wondered what her father might have overheard. She watched his weathered face under her eyelashes, waiting for a sign. In the vestibule behind the stairs the La Farge window, its forest glade scene lush with leaded and pebbled glass, glowed with the last of the early evening light.
“You know, my dear,” he said as they started up the stairs, “he’s a clever man, that Benton Derby. I’ve always thought so.”
Sibyl wasn’t sure where her father was heading with this vague insight, and had no wish to reveal more of their conversation than was necessary. “So he is,” she said, speaking with care. “I’m fortunate to have him for a friend.”
“Hmmm!” her father rejoined. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped. Sibyl looked up into his face. The corners of her father’s eyes crinkled, and he smiled down at her. “I think you should listen to his judgment,” Lan Allston said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, unsure how much her father knew.
A long moment passed, Lan Allston smiling that unnerving and unpersuasive smile, but there was an abiding sadness somewhere behind his cool pale eyes, and for a moment Sibyl found herself feeling something she had never felt for her father before—pity.
“I mean,” he said, “that I believe I was wrong, to encourage you to keep seeing that woman. I thought it would help. I did. But Professor Derby’s right. It’s better you not go anymore. It’s all just dreams and childish nonsense. None of it means a fig. And, worse than that, it stands in the way of a clear view of the real world. Better for us to look ahead with hope, than look back with regret.”
“But, Papa,” she started to object. Her father’s face closed to her interjection.
“No,” he said, in the tone that Sibyl recognized as signaling the end of a conversation. “I should never have let you get so involved. That was wrong of me. Now, I’d like you to stop. Immediately.”
Sibyl was puzzled at this unexpected admission from her usually reserved parent. She searched his eyes, looking for some clue as to the source of that profound sadness that she saw there.