Alice in Bed Read Free Page A

various organs, Miss James. Consider—” And he’s off and running, don’t ask me for details.
    In an instant I see through him as if he were transparent. Underneath the religiosity lurks a ruthless ambition. This young cleric is prepared to claw his way to the top of the heap, and will spend the remainder of his life groveling before his superiors and condescending to his inferiors.
    â€œThe human eye, just to consider one organ, is too well designed to have arisen by accident,” he is saying, adding more anatomical minutiae, which I’ll spare you. A standard speechlet, I suppose. When he winds down, I say, “I wonder if your bishop ever went out into the woods and saw a wasp caught in a spider web. A torment worthy of Dante, I assure you. The wasp struggles, at first believing it will escape but becoming more tightly wrapped all the while in its sticky winding-sheet. The struggle is agonizing, lasting hours. When it stops struggling I am sure the wasp knows it will die.”
    With a handkerchief the clericule dabs at his nose, which (I have just now noticed) drips. His hands fumble with the tracts. His tonguedarts out to catch a stray crumb from his mustaches. How quickly he is undone—by a supine female invalid.
    â€œIt is a pity to waste your theology on me, Mr. Yardley, when there are other invalids who would be more easily redeemed.” He smiles thinly, fishes his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, mimes surprise at the lateness of the hour, and takes off as if fleeing a pestilential city. Afterwards, I tell Nurse to toss out the tracts, which are no doubt crawling with microbes.
    â€œIf you don’t mind, Miss, I’ll give them to the Bachellers.” The Bachellers are among the most miserable of Leamington’s impoverished families. Mrs. B has had all her teeth pulled and unable to afford new ones, subsists on soup and sop. Mr. B is grotesquely crippled from a work accident and cannot work. There are nine or ten small Bachellers in various states of misery.
    â€œI’m sure they’d prefer something more filling and sanitary, Nurse.”
    She clears the tea things briskly, without looking at me. I am afraid I am a continual disappointment to her. By early evening the duel with the cleric has ripened into a severe neuralgia. I am stretched out on my back like a dead Crusader, with the heavy velvet curtains drawn, thinking of the past, of Cambridge, of my dead parents, of poor Wilky, of William’s small son—all our beloved dead laid out in the earth of the Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

    W ILLIAM J AMES
    G ARDEN S TREET, C AMBRIDGE, M ASS.
    J ULY 26 TH 1887
    T O A LICE J AMES
    I am desolated to hear of your latest troubles. We hear much about Suppressed Gout even here on these shores; Dr. Beach says that if the poison could be made to come out in your joints, your nervousness would leave you entirely.
    I think I have told you of Mrs. Leonora Piper, a Boston medium who has impressed me by minutely describing the illnesses of some of Alice’s California relations, as well as the most embarrassing secrets of our household. Most mediums are fakes and rogues but Mrs. P seems to be the genuine article. She has brought some comfort to poor Alice (and me) after the death of our little Herman.
    Would it be too much to ask you to snip a sample of your tresses (about two inches in length) and send it to me with your next letter, and I will let you know Mrs. P’s “diagnosis.” I know your skepticism about the occult, but what is there to lose?

    A LICE J AMES
    11 H AMILTON T ERRACE
    L EAMINGTON, E NGLAND
    A UGUST 13 TH 1887
    T O W ILLIAM J AMES
    I hope you will forgive my base trick about the hair. It came not from my head but from a deceased friend of Nurse’s. I will be curious to hear what the woman will say about it. Its owner was in a state of horrible disease for a year before she died—tumors, I believe! I thought it would be a test of