Chapter 3 #3
Until now, Jane had never been in the presence of a phonograph.
Or, well, at least one that was operational.
She’d see them in the homes of her father’s acquaintances in the more respectable suburbs of Milwaukee, like Downer Woods, where polished streets shone with golden lamps and cobbled stones that glimmered in their cleanliness.
Terence suddenly looked down, brow pinched and mouth tight, when he must’ve misinterpreted her awed silence for displeasure. “I-If you’d wish to change it I’ve the music of Liszt, Vivaldi, Dvo?ák, Bizet, Grieg, Beethoven—”
“Terence, I assure you, Bach is fine enough,” Jane said, rising from her chair so that she may approach the phonograph.
Her body popped and cracked as she stretched, grateful for the chance to at last move.
She didn’t dare touch the device, but she did ghost her fingers over its tonearm, the horn that vibrated with music.
“I’ve just never seen one of these things work before.
Y’know, my father once owned one. Never had a chance to work it, though. ”
“Oh? How come?”
“Back home, each of us sisters has a pet: Meredith has Patroclus the hound, Emmy has her daughters Titania and Ophelia, and I suppose her husband Ethan is enough of a pet, and I have Mr. Thompson. He’s this orange tom I found in our rubbish a couple years back, and he has a proclivity to hunt and chase, but only after dust bunnies.
Would be a cold day in Hell before he’d be a proper cat and hunt a bird.
“So, anyway, you see, he had been chasing one of those dust bunnies through Father’s study when his tail knocked into the leg of the stand holding the phonograph and then—” Jane mimicked an explosion with her hands, “Crash! Thing broke into a thousand shards! It broke in ways I never thought it possible for wood and metal to break! It truly was an epic mess; words alone fail to do it justice.”
As she told her story, Terence had taken a seat in one of the armchairs, leaning forward, chin held in a hand supported on his knee. “Oh, how dreadful… I can’t imagine the rage he must’ve felt.”
“Oh, of course, he was furious. Twenty dollars lay shattered on his study floor, and not once did he have a chance to play any of his cylinders—which he paid about ten bucks a piece for, y’know!
” Jane seated herself on the arm of the loveseat adjacent to Terence, her back to the dwindling fireplace—and the idol’s burning stare.
“That evening he burst into my room, Mr. Thompson hiding on my lap, and he declared—” she put her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest, broadening her shoulders, in a crude caricature of her father.
She puckered her lips, trying to feign the image of his black-and-silver bottlebrush mustache, and bellowed in a nasal baritone, “‘Janie! Your wretched little flea-bitten nuisance has cost me a fortune! He owes me a new phonograph, that heathen! Send him to find work as a mouser, for he shall forever be in debt with me!’”
Terence chuckled, muffling his smirk behind a broad hand. “What of Mr. Thompson’s debt? Does he still owe your father?”
“Very much so. And he’s been accruing overdue fees.”
“Ah, how unfortunate,” he said softly.
The din of Bach’s duet spiraled to an end, leaving only the sound of wind and rain rattling the windows to occupy its air, as Jane and Terence held each other’s stare.
Whenever he smiled, lopsided and gentle, Jane noticed a dimple form in the center of his chin, and it took every fiber of willpower to not reach forward and tap said dimple—and with a fingertip or her lips, she would never say.
“Can we give Vivaldi a try?” She said, clearing her throat and glancing at the phonograph to break free of such traitorous temptations. She stepped up to it and snatched the first canister she saw. “I wish to see how those cylinders work.”
As afternoon dimmed beneath the oncoming twilight, a storm had started to claw at the house. Thunder growled through the skies, between the clouds, rattling the Drowning House to its very foundations. Rain slashed across the windows with a sharpness Jane felt cut down to her bones.
And as the daylight faded, so did Terence’s friendliness.
With every hour that had come to pass, the more he chose to silently brood at the sitting room windows, watching the skies, the rain, the marshes, with a deep crease to his brow.
He had stopped tending to the phonograph hours ago, leaving Jane to steep in the house’s increasingly tense silence.
Jane was freed from her spell of working with the fossils (which had come to primarily consist of mindlessly transcribing notes related to what she had come to identify in an attempt to appear busy) when he cleared his throat and stepped away from the window.
“I think it might be best that we return you to Cambridge,” he said, offering her a tightening of his lips that might have been a smile. Whatever it was, it failed to summon the dimple to his chin.
Jane stretched back in her chair with her arms arched over her head. She removed her glasses by pushing them up so that they could rest in her hair. “I didn’t realize it was already so late.”
“One of many cruel games played by darkness,” Terence uttered with a tone so low and so cold it gave her pause. “Pray that a road is still out there.”
“I… can certainly try,” Jane said, never having been a woman of religion or prayer. She cleared her throat, “So, the fossils I think you may have here are—”
“Why don’t we discuss this tomorrow, Jane?”
She flinched at his interruption and tamed a scowl by biting her lower lip.
She tapped her pen against the rocks before her (two of which she marked as being ammonites, one being a still unidentified fish, one as the imprint of Psaronius fronds, and another was the potential scaly imprint of a Lepidodendron tree; none of which were high-value finds, but Jane had been excited to identify them nonetheless). “But, you see, I can bring these—”
“Tomorrow, Jane,” his hands braced the desk. They shivered so intensely that the rocks rattled. Even the veins just below his skin seemed to writhe. Sweat pearled along his temple as his gaze on her remained unmoving. “Please.”
Is a storm truly that frightening? Jane would’ve found Terence’s apparent fear of thunder and rain adorable if he weren’t staring at her with the grimness of a fresh funeral.
“Alright, then…” she said as she tried to swallow down a prickle of disappointment, a stab of betrayal.
She packed her things in silence, leaving only the rocks and her father’s book on the desk, excuses for her to return to the house tomorrow. Mrs. Foster, who seemingly disappeared as the skies outside grew darker, had Jane’s coat and hat waiting for her in the foyer.
“Will I see you tomorrow then?” Jane asked, eagerly looking up at Terence as they waited for Ruben to retrieve the cab.
The worry that’d previously chilled his features softened, and his mouth twitched in a weary grin. It wasn’t until her hand started to overheat that she realized that he gently gripped her fingers. “I couldn’t wish for such to come sooner, Jane.”
Ruben came to the door, his coat already soaking wet, and gestured for Jane to join him underneath his newfound umbrella. Mud sucked at Jane’s boots as they crossed the lawn, threatening to vacuum her into the depths of the earth with every step.
“See you tomorrow, Terence!” She shouted over the rain before hauling herself into the cab. A hopeful promise, even if he didn’t call back to her.
A soothing cacophony of rain drummed against all sides of the carriage as Jane rested her head back against the seat with a sigh.
As much as the sudden curtness in Terence’s attitude and his urgency for her to leave perplexed (and, admittedly, to a lesser degree, hurt) her, she couldn’t deny the satisfaction she felt about the work she had done today—and the time she’d spent with him.
Whenever she pictured the warmth of his eyes, the timid twitch of his lips as he allowed himself a smile, the heat of his shadow over her shoulder, a hot, tingling pit wriggled in her stomach.
She craved more. More of him, his attention—his praise.
Anticipation for tomorrow’s visit made her shiver in her seat.
Hopefully whatever foul mood ails him now will be long gone in the morning!
The ardor that thrummed in her soul was snuffed out when she was suddenly launched forward and crashed into the opposite bench.
The carriage lurched once more, throwing her to the floor as she tried to right herself, before coming to an abrupt stop.
The horse screamed outside. Pain blossomed in Jane’s cheek where her teeth bit down deep into flesh.
She choked at the sudden taste of blood bathing her tongue.
As she stood, she struggled to find proper footing with the carriage’s newfound lopsidedness, leaning too far forward and canted to the left at a severe angle.
She pushed open the door and yelped when a slurry of mud poured into the interior, ice cold and thick.
The carriage was half-drowned in muck. Mistletoe, too, was trapped as her vicious bucking sucked her deeper into the mud.
Ruben was pulling on her reins in an attempt to free her.
Jane abandoned her bag in the carriage and rushed to Ruben’s side. Her hands closed over his as she joined him in pulling. Effort stressed her arms and between her shoulders, and she struggled to maintain a grip with her rain-slick gloves.
When Mistletoe showed no signs of even coming loose, Ruben dropped to his knees, plunged his hands into the earth, and started to dig her out. Jane gritted her teeth and continued to yank on the reins.
The mud gave a viscous slurp as Mistletoe launched herself free, taking Jane off her feet and nearly trampling her in her escape. The mare continued to kick and shake as she stamped back toward the Drowning House.
“You all right, Miss Sterling?” Ruben gripped Jane’s arm and hoisted her back onto her feet.
Jane shivered and sputtered mud from her lips but she managed a meek nod. She’d properly mourn her stained clothes once she was warm and dry.
Ruben sighed and ran a hand through his own dirtied hair.
“The marshes are flooded,” he remarked, chewing on his lip as he glanced back at the sinking carriage; with another shiver, Jane hurried to retrieve her bag from the wreckage, holding it close to her chest.
Water crept toward the outermost fringes of the lawn. Lightning clawed across the sky in a blinding strike, and what Jane saw was no longer a marsh but rather a raging sea. She saw no road, no land. There were only distant reeds and those damned crosses bowed beneath another harsh gust of wind.
Once more, Ruben’s hand found its way through his hair. “Mr. Hayes won’t like this,” he groaned.
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t like seeing my front lawn flooded like this,” Jane said, a shiver running through her as rain further soaked through her dress.
Ruben didn’t laugh, or even smirk. He stared into the tempest of frothing mud and water with the silence of a man sentenced to death.