HESTER’S DIARY II
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From the station I made a phone call to the bookshop. My father could not hide his disappoi when I told him I would not be ing home. “Your mother will be sorry,” he said.‘Will she?“
‘Of course she will.“
‘I have to go back. I think I might have fouer.“
‘Where?“
‘They have found bo Angelfield.“
‘Bones?“
‘One of the builders discovered them when he was excavating the library today.“
‘Gracious.“
‘They are bound to get in touch with Miss Wio ask her about it. And her sister is dying. I ’t leave her on her own up there. She needs me.“
‘I see.“ His voice was serious.
‘Don’t tell Mother,“ I warned him, ”but Miss Winter and her sister ire twins.“
He was silent. Then he just said, “You will take care, won’t you, Margaret?”
***A quarter of an hour later I had settled into my seat o the window and was takier’s diary out of my pocket.
I should like to uand a great deal more about optics. Sitting with Mrs. Dunne in the drawing room going over meal plans for the week, I caught sight of a sudden movement in the mirror. “Emmeline!” I exclaimed, irritated, for she was not supposed to be in the house at all, but outside, getting her daily exercise and fresh air. It was my own mistake, of course, for I had only to look out of the window to see that she was outside, and her sister, too, playing nicely for once. What I had seen, caught a misleading glimpse of, to be precise, must have been a flash of sunlight e in the window and reflected in the mirror. On refle (On refle! An unintended drollery!), it is the psychology of seeing that caused my misapprehension, as much as any strangeness in the ws of the optical world. For being used to seeing the twins wandering about the house in places I would not expect them to be, and at times when I would expect them to be elsewhere, I have fallen into the habit of interpreting every movement out of the er of my eye as evidence of their presence. Hence a flash of sunlight reflected in a mirror presents itself in a very ving mao the mind as a girl in a white dress. To guard against errors s<var></var>uch as this, one would have to teaeself to view everything without preception, to abandon all habitual modes of thought. There is much to be said in favor of su attitude in principle. The freshness of mind! The virginal respoo the world! So much sce has at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be uood for turies. However, in ordinary life, one ot live by such principles. Imagihe time it would take if every aspect of experience had to be scrutinized afresh every minute of every day. No; in order to free ourselves from the mu is essential that we delegate much of our interpretation of the world to that lower area of the mind that deals with the presumed, the assumed, the probable. Even though it sometimes leads us astray and causes us to misinterpret a flash of sunlight as a girl in a white dress, whewo things are as unlike as two things be.
Mrs. Dunnes mind does wander sometimes. I fear she took in very little of our versation about meal plans, and we shall have to go over the whole thing again tomorrow.
I have a little plan regarding my activities here and the doctor.
I have told him at great length of my belief that Adeline demonstrates a type of mental disturbahat I have her entered nor read about before. I mentiohe papers I have been reading about twins and the associated developmental problems, and I saw his face approve my reading. I think he has a clearer uanding now of my abilities and talent. One book I spoke of, he did not know and I was able to give him a summary of the arguments and eviden the book. I went on to point out the few signifit insistehat I had noticed in it, and to suggest how, if it were my book, I would have altered my clusions and reendations.
The doiled at me at the end of my speed said lightly, “Perhaps you should write your own book.” This gave me exactly the opportunity have been seeking for some time.
I pointed out to him that the perfect case study for such a book was at and here in Angelfield House. That I could devote a few hours every day t on writing up my observations. I sketched out a number of trials and experiments that could be uaken to test my hypothesis. And I touched briefly on the value that the finished book would have in the eyes of the medical establishment. After this I lamehe fact that for all my experience, my formal qualifications are not grand enough to tempt a publisher, and finally I fessed that, as a woman, I was irely fident of being able bring off su ambitious project. A man, if only there were a man, intelligent and resourceful, sensitive and stific, having access to my experiend my case study, would be sure to make a better job of it.
And in such a ma was decided. We are tether!
I fear Mrs. Dunne is not well. I lock doors and she opens them. I open curtains and she closes them. And still my books will not stay in their place! She tries to avoid responsibility for her as by maintaining that the house is haunted.
Quite by ce, her talk of ghosts es on the very day the book I am in the middle of reading has pletely disappeared, only to be replaced by a novella by Henry James. I hardly suspect Mrs. Dunne of the substitution. She scarcely knows how to read herself and is not given to practical jokes. Obviously it was one of the girls. What makes it hy is that a striking ce has made it a cleverer trick than they could have known. For the book is a rather silly story about a governess and two haunted children. I am afraid that in it Mr. James exposes the extent of his ignorance. He knows little about children and nothing at all about governesses.
It is dohe experiment has begun.
The separation ainful, and if I did not know the good that is to e of it, I should have thought myself cruel for inflig it upon them. Emmeline sobs fit to break her heart. How is it for Adeline? For she is the one who is to be the most altered by the experience of indepe life. I shall know tomorrow when we have our first meeting.
There is no time for anything but research, but I have mao do one additional useful thing. I fell into versation today with the schoolteacher outside the post office. I told her that I had spoken to John about the truant and that she should e to me if the boy is absent again without reason. She says she is used to teag half a class at harvesttime when the children go spud-hug with their parents in the fields. But it is not harvesttime, and the child was weeding the parterres, I told her. She asked me which child it was, and I felt foolish at not being able to tell her. The distinctive hat is no help at all iifying him, since children do not wear hats in class. I could go back to John but doubt he will give me more information than last time.
I am not writing my diary much lately. I find that after the writing, late at night, of the reports I prepare every day about Emmeline’s progress, I am frequently too tired to keep up with my own record of my activities. And I do want to keep a record of these days and weeks, for I am engaged, with the doctor, on very important research, and in years to e, when I have gone away ahis place, I may wish to look bad remember. Perhaps my efforts with the doctor will open some door for me into further work of this kind, for I find the stifid intellectual work more engrossing and more satisfying than anything I have ever dohis m for instance, Dr. Maudsley and I had the most stimulating versation on the subjemeline’s use of pronouns. She is showing an ever-greater ination to speak to me, and her ability to unicate improves every day. Yet the one aspect of her speech that is resistant to development is the persistence of the first person plural. “We went to the woods, ” she will say, and always I correct her: “I went to the woods.” Like a little parrot she will repeat “I” after me, but in the very sentence, “We saw a kitten in the garden, ” or some such thing.
The doctor and I are mutrigued by this peculiarity. Is it simply an ingrained habit of speech carried over from her twin language into English, a habit that will in time right itself? Or does the twinness go so deep ihat even in her language she is resistant to the idea of having a separate identity from that of her sister? I told the doctor about imaginary friends that so many disturbed children i, and together we explored the implications of this. What if the child’s dependen her twin is so great that the separation causes a mental trauma such that the damaged mind provides solace by the creation of an imaginary twin, a fantasy panion? We arrived at no satisfactory clusion but parted with the satisfa of having located another area of future study: linguistics.
What with Emmeline, and the research, and the general housekeeping that o be done, I find I am sleeping too little, ae my reserves of energy, which I maintain by healthy diet and exercise, I distinguish the symptoms of sleep deprivation. I irritate myself by putting things down and fetting where I have left them. And when I pick up my book at night, my bookmark tells me that the previous night I must have turhe pages blindly, for I have no recollect<q>9９ｌｉb?</q>ion at all of the events on the page or the one before. These small annoyances and my stant tiredness are the price I pay for the luxury of w alongside the doctor on our project.
However, that is not what I wao write about. I meant to write about our work. Not our findings, which are doted thhly in our papers, but the pattern of our minds, the fluency with which we uand each other, the way in which our instant uandis us almost to do without words. When we are both engaged in plotting the ges in sleep patterns of our separate subjects, for instance, he may want to draw my attention to something, and he does not o speak, for I feel his eyes on me, his mind calling to me, and I raise my head from my work, quite ready for him to point out whatever it is.
Skeptics might sider this pure ce, or suspect me of magnifying a to a habitual occurrence by imagination, but I have e to see that when two people work closely together on a joint project— two intelligent people, I mean to say—a bond of unication develops betweehat enhaheir work. All the while they are jointly engaged on a task, they are aware of, acutely sensitive to, each other’s ti movements, and interpret them accly. This, even without seeing the infinitesimal movements. And it is no distra from the work. On the trary, it enha, for our speed of uanding is quied. Let me add one simple example, small in itself but standing in for tless others. This m, I was i upon some rying to see a pattern of behavior emerging from his jottings on Adeline. Reag for a pencil to make an annotation in the margin, I felt the doctors hand brush mine and he passed the pencil I sought into it. I looked up to thank him, but he was deeply engrossed in his oers, quite unscious of what had happened. In such a ork together: minds, hands, always in jun, always anticipating the others needs and thoughts. And when we are apart, which we are for most of the day, we are always thinking of small details relating to the project, or else observations about the broader aspects of life and sce, and even this shows how well suited we are for this joint uaking.
But I am sleepy, and though I could write at length of the joys of co-auth a research paper, it is really time to go to bed.
I have not written for nearly a week and do not offer my usual excuses. My diary disappeared.
I spoke to Emmeline about it—kindly, severely, with offers of chocolate and threats of punishment (and yes, my methods have broken down, but frankly, losing a diary touches one most personally)—but she tio deny everything. Her denials were sistent and showed many signs of good faith. A knowing the circumstances would have believed her. Knowing her as I do, I found the theft ued myself and find it hard to explain it within the general progress she has made. She ot read and has no i in other people’s thoughts and inner lives, other than so far as they affect her directly. Why should she want it? Presumably it is the shine of the lock that tempted her—her passion for shiny things is undiminished, and I do not try to reduce it; it is usually harmless enough. But I am disappointed in her.
If I were to judge by her denials and her character alone, I would clude that she was i of the theft. But the fact remains that it ot have been anyone else.
John? Mrs. Dunne? Even supposing that the servants should have wao steal my diary, which I don’t believe for a minute, I remember clearly that they were busy elsewhere in the house when it went missing. In case I was wrong about this, I brought the versation around to their activities, and John firms that Mrs. Dunne was i all morn<s>.</s>ing (“making a right racket, too, ” he told me). She firms that John was at the coach house mending the car (“noisy old job ”). It ot have beeher of them.
And so, having eliminated all the other suspects I am obliged to believe that it was Emmeline.
A I ot shake off my misgivings. Even now I picture her face—so i in appearance, so distressed at being accused—and I am forced to wonder, is there some additional factor at play here that I have failed to take into at? When I view the matter in this light it gives rise to an uneasiness in me: I am suddenly overwhelmed by the presehat none of my plans is destio e to fruition. Something has been against me ever since I came to this house! Something that wants to thwart me and frustrate me in every project I uake! I have checked and rechecked my thinking, retraced every step in my logic, I find no flaw, yet still I find myself beset by doubt… What is it that I am failing to see?
Reading over this last paragraph lam struck by the most uncharacteristic lack of fiden my to is surely only tiredhat makes me think thus. An ued mind is proo wander into unfruitful avenues; it is nothing that a good nights sleep ot cure.
Besides, it is all over now. Here I am, writing in the missing diary. I locked Emmeline in her room for four hours, the day for six, and she khe day after, it would be eight. On the sed day, shortly after I came down from unlog her door I found the diary on my desk in the schoolroom. She must have slipped down very quietly to put it there; I did not see her go past the library door to the schoolroom even though I left the door open deliberately. But it was returned. So there is no room for doubt, is there?
I am so tired a I ot sleep. I hear steps in the night, but when I go to my door and look into the corridor there is no ohere.
I fess it made me uneasy—makes me uneasy still—to think that this little book was out of my possession even for two days. The thought of another person reading my words is most disf. I ot help but think how another person would interpret certain things I have written, for when I write for myself only, and know perfectly well the truth of what I write, I am perhaps less careful of my expression, and writing at speed, may sometimes express myself in a way that could be misinterpreted by another who would not have my insight into what I really mean. Thinking over some of the things I have written (the doctor and the pencil—su insignifit event— hardly worth writing about at all really), I see that they might appear to a stranger in a light rather different from what I intended, and I wonder whether I should tear out these pages aroy them. Only I do not want to, for these are the pages that I most want to keep, to read later, when I am old and gone from here, and think back to the happiness of my work and the challenge of reat project.
Why should a stific friendship not be a source of joy? It is no less stific for that, is it?
But perhaps the answer is to stop writing altogether, for when I do w<s>藏书网</s>rite, even now as I write this very sentehis very word, I am aware of a ghost reader who leans over my shoulder watg my pen, who twists my words and perverts my meaning, and makes me unfortable in the privay own thoughts.
It is very aggravating to be preseo oneself in a light so different from the familiar one, eve is clearly a false light.
I will not write any more.
Endings
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