Cousin

It became a very beautiful December when the lovely Jude asked if I would write letters with them - "collaborate on a writing project". 

We had met, once, in 2019 - Montreal. If I remember correctly they were in a mild kind of love with my flatmate. From this, we managed to make one afternoon with both of us which I noted in my diary as being one of the best dates I had ever had, a kind of strange connection. (I think we watched Captain Marvel!) 

In fitting with the butterfly nature of this sole in person interaction, we created a story - made through letters - with no preparation or discussion other than it was Victorian, and we were cousins. Below is the experiment which we began, and which I ended through a lack of reply (because I met someone, lol). 

I could comment more on how my real life seeped into Rena's, or how connected and intimate I felt, or how interesting it was to write with someone else, but you can read for yourself. It was a privilege to be near someone else's writing! 

jess <j--------->

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Cousin 11 messages

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Jess <j--------->	Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 9:21 PM
To: Jude <j--------->
18th December 1895 Mrs McArthur’s Boardings for Respectable Working Women, Woolmanhill Road Aberdeen, Scotland Dearest Cousin; I dash off here a couple of lines between a rather busy day, so excuse the roughness & crumpling of the paper; it is meant as no offence to you but merely a reflection of the rush & bustle of my present existence. At tea with Aunt Janine, she let slip that you were staying at a very pleasant hunting Lodge for the festive season, and I thought that I had not heard that name in too long and that in the Merry spirit, it would be a lovely thing indeed to forge new friends from old family. Here, then, are my glad tidings of the season, and a heartfelt wish from myself and my sweet cat Pansy for a joyous new year for you and your loved ones. Do drink a little wine for me, and remember our days playing in the walled garden under the new snow! - I look over all of this, all of the drivel above, and realise how excessive & ready to hand spring my own falsehoods. In the Ladies’ College we not taught to write hard or truthfully but to fill letters with the literary equivalent of cut flowers and lace. Well indeed !- it has been a long time since the College and I cannot - I refuse. When Aunt Janine mentioned your current abode, she did indeed paint it as a pleasant country lodge, and I trust she believed herself in saying so. Curious, I took the liberty to ask after that address, and found it to be far from its original framing in reality, although likely as dear to the purse. I am certain you know this. It is a great shame to me, realised only in that moment, that I did not know a single fact of you apart from that secret which we now share; a vision of your dear face as a child rose to my mind, but a fog of some sort made comprehending the details impossible. Cousin, do write back soon if you are able - even if this missive, heartfelt yet risky, arrives in your lap like a smart and you begin to hate me, send some word of your true circumstances. Forgive me my indiscretion, my morose and unfestive tone. Blame if you must the demands of my present employment for my unladylike and forthright manner; nursing forces one to unlearn most of a good upbringing. Yours, Rena Josephine

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Jude <j----------->	Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 4:22 AM
To: Jess <j----------->
Ms. R. Josephine Mrs. McArthur's Boardings for Respectable Working Women Woolmanhill Road Aberdeen Dear Cousin — Dear Past, Indeed, we shall parse words. It is Rena's leaning hand that looms at my right. How did she she find me? Cousin, who told you where I am? I do not remember telling our aunt, therefore the culprit lies among our most candid friend: gossip. At my left are three buttons: one of bone, two of velvet. When your letter came to me, I had, but a minute before, endeavored to mend my blue coat, yet found that I hadn't the proper thread. To my relief, something far more urgent than the timorous lives of buttons awaits me this evening: you, my dear.  I wonder whether the missive reached your desk earlier this year detailing (in false economy) my experience at Ben Hope. It was sent from Percy Buchanan, a physician at Inv., to my mother and thus, to my chagrin, replicated a hundredfold and likely presented to family and friends at large for no greater cost than a prayer here and a condolence there; which my mother, being wholly mortal, will never hear, for they are but utterances in the private corners of the world. Excuse my excess, cousin. I have not written to anyone but Percy and S. in months; the second, having discovered my nouveau maison by way of the physician, wrote once with the intention of asking for a favour (which I shall not mention even to you, whom I trust expressly) — which is to say, I have not written to a friend. It is a pleasure to release my mask. I seem to walk in shadow, even more darkly than before now that I am here. This place, beyond any inkling of superstition (my taste for such things is worn thin), feels some nights to be a house submerged. The title belies the true aura, which you rightly mentioned in your letter. The Lodge, they call it. It strikes me now that I am writing as if I were involuntarily interred here. Though some are, I am not. If we were When we were children, was I kin to misery? We were the best of friends, I think. I am sorry to end here, for I fear partiality above all. In future, if we are to continue our correspondence, I should like to read some of your poems. I trust that you are still jotting them down between appointments. Be true, Rena Jade. You have opened a door which I thought to be held fast. Mr. Yves Presley Marjoribanks Twinflower Lodge and Sanatorium Strathpeffer, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire, Scotland [Quoted text hidden]

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jess <j----->	Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 11:02 AM
To: Jude <j----->
Dearest Yves - Oh, to hear from you! I have been in a light frenzy - but Instantly on opening this letter with your supple handwriting, an extension of yourself as I one knew it, my nerves begin to settle. For you are of sound enough mind to write; for you have paper and pen with; for you can send letters freely in reply. Still you do not write of the circumstances which have brought you to stay in the Lodge (altho I am glad to hear it is of your own choosing); and I must assume this is purposeful. It is not necessary to share with me immediately all your secrets, even as I long to ask. I hope, modestly, that you are well, sleeping & eating, and await patiently whichever you choose to tell me. Keep, if you can, your head above the water. While I am not acquainted specifically with the interior of your Twinflower Lodge, but I have worked briefly in others, likely of a lower quality. They can be difficult places, and one needs a doctor who believes one (one hopes this personage is found in Dr Buchanan).  Yves your feeling is entirely correct; it is my raw & leaning hand, which reaches to you in Truest Friendship. It is a shame to learn that your innermost life has been wrung about like old washing in our Dearest Familia, & without your consent, but I cannot be too sorry, for it gave me your whereabouts - a petal landing amongst the rain. And yet I apologise for our family nonetheless, out of long habit, and from sympathetic experience. It is merely gossip and from Aunt Janine of all people, pay it no mind! You mention a mask, so I will recount mine shortly. My life expands to take on many others in the Hospital, and then shrinks to a Pinhead upon return to my chambers. In the midst I seem to become lost again and again. The girl who wished to hound Dr Sophia Jex-Blake’s heels in becoming a Scottish Lady Doctor is dashed; even as one could muse whether she deserved the firm hand that eventually destroyed her. To write an account of ones self! - To be gently asked to share a little poetry last written in freshest girlhood! - over a score of years which have treated me roughly, as if I were a disobedient child who stubbornly refused all schooling.  It is a new window opening; the scent of the heather peculiar to the gardens of ones youth. Still part of me aches to shut the window, for it is Winter still. Winter, Winter, brings me to a word of my own writing situation; my room is a cold one, for the eponymous Respectable Mrs McArthur holds that too warm a room inflames the hearts and bodies of young women somewhat - that a temperature above freezing may encourage thoughts of removing ones clothes. Mrs McArthur is correct in this respect, and I am well dissuaded from this task even when I unfailingly spend my nights alone.  An Abd. Winter is vicious unlike even an Edn. Winter; one can only survive through storytelling. Pansy is not so receptive, so I recount to myself, and they gather in loops in me, like wool. I do not write much either these days. I speak bland healing words, and even them mostly with my hands and demeanour. It is honest work but it carves ones personality out - especially if you come from a different standing than the other nurses and cannot be soothed and remade by communal tea and chatter. A small blessing that I am losing the edges of my « Good » Accent and are picking up a little Doric which is familiar to this region. May God undo my pride in this new year, amen.  Yves, I do not remember you a child of misery but of great sensitivity; one who saw where others did not. We were best of friends. How could it be that we lost each other?  Please; continue with your excess, as you uncharitably dub your writings; I crave it now I remember it.  With Love, Rena Jade (!!)  P.S. (Do give news of S.- of whichever fortune.)  [Quoted text hidden]

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Jude  <j----->	Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 11:37 PM
To: jess <j----->
3rd January, 1896 Dear Cousin — Dear Verity, Shall I blast right in? Consider that I am quite alone in a room envisioned for more than one soul, entailing all the necessary equivalents of a shared apartment. I sleep in the northernmost bed, by the window, so that my dreams do not become trapped in midnight's black junctions. The alternative bed I rotated and pushed against the opposing wall, so that its pillow is not obscured by the shadows cast by the two hanging fixtures parallel to the window. In the event that a fairy darkling happens upon my chamber one zephyrus night, I pray that I am roused not by the impression of a willow's blade against my neck, but by the brightly tinctured breath of a welcome enquirer from the hollow hills of Skye: indeed, that he should sleep and I should wake and look upon his greenness. Cousin, is it right to be alone?  Rena, I request that you do not write of your suffrance at Hospital as if it were not noble and not deserving of reward and congratulations. I am sure that, given a reprise of childhood, you would have fallen, again, in love with medicine and its miracles, and that Jex-Blake, Thorne, and the rest of the Septem would have remained, again, your guides and heroines. I do not doubt for a moment that you have chosen rightly the path which now lays before you, supple as a mare and intransigent as the sun: for when it falls into the North Sea, it rises in another world, never to abandon. Cousin, do you remember the beach? It was Christmas day, perhaps our ninth and tenth year, respectively. Your father accompanied us to go looking for jellyfish—the rose coloured medusae that occasionally come to shore in the night and embed their barbed hands in the sand as the tide recedes. Your father (was Janine there?) gave us each a bit of rolled paper so that we might inspect the creatures without touching our flesh to theirs. I distinctly remember that, upon failing to procure evidence of the stranded creatures (to your extreme disappointment, for you had wanted to perform a dissection) your father called us to the breakwater. We walked to meet him at the middle point between the shore and sea, and turned to face the harbour, beyond which the edge of Leith town stood mildly against the rising day. It was then that, after an intermission of silent reflection, your father uncovered the basket on his arm to reveal a bottle of wine and a bit of bread: I recall it was the mint bread that my mother made nearly every holiday of our youth. He then recited the eucharist and offered wine and bread to you, which you in turn passed to me. The wine mixed rather unpleasantly with the spiced bread, but the combination soothed me and I ceased shivering. My uncle had rare tonics, I do not deny it. Jade, he called you, and Junior, me. When he took us to the beach, I sometimes wished that he were my own father. I am not ashamed. In time, all shall take communion at the breakwater. You asked after S. and I should like to tell you everything, but here is what I may convey: when I explained to her my experience at Ben Hope, upon returning to the hotel at Inv. where she had arranged to meet me, accompanied by her brother (have you met him?), she listened with such a degree of rapt excitement that I began to doubt the truthfulness of my narrative. I was sure that I must be speaking fancifully, adorning words with unnecessary dramatis for the sake of my own Shakespearean agenda. Why should S., friend to acteurs and artistes, take such an interest in my archaeological exploits, which for the life of me have scarcely engaged even the most willing scholar, the most eccentric savant? Cousin, she mystifies me. So unsettled was I by our conversation that I retired to my room and drafted a letter to Buchanan. The next day I sent it, and a week later he arranged my admission into the programme at the Lodge. S. will not come, for she hates the mud. I do not think she has the right shoes, anyway. I shall end with a final question. If you answer only one, let it be this: Are you familiar with the principles of Solipsism?  Yours sincerely, Yves [Quoted text hidden]

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Jess <j----->	Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 9:08 PM
To: Jude <j----->
14 January, 1896 Dear Yves - Ivy - Vetch,  Aloneness is not a sin. If it were we would all be hell destined from our birth and I do not think a God would make such creatures in which he could have so little hope.  With that solemn pronouncement I begin a solemn letter, a swaying letter like my moods.  I am unnerved, I admit, from your description of the beds, the light, the dreams that you live in, all of which have a ritualistic, even pagan arrangement in my head, a sensitivity to chance and form, as if one could capture either a spirit or sanity. Skye through the window, I can smell it. In some manner I wish I were there turning an empty room into a waiting birdcage, but to recover dear Yves, you must fix your mind sternly on joyous, calming things instead of fa  My sensible admonishment, half crossed out - lies. That ones own soul shall surely obey a well bred mind is the unstable ground from which our world rises.  Father is very ill, Yves. I sobbed to read the beach memory, to recall him sweet-tempered, walking; he was very handsome when we were young, tall and distant, all one could wish for from a father. I recall also the forest wrapping the sea and kissing it, kissing the stones of the beach, our own small selves with its wet branches. It was a dark little woods that wished for her its wife water and mimicked it. Do you remember the eerie sound of those woods?- as we rushed with glee to the boathouse and picked blueberries. All simple times where movement was the desire and the completion of that desire together. My father lifting us into the carriage after a long day. He had at that time tonics of soul, calming; good to the children who could love his silences.  It feels, now, that we never visited Leith (altho that must be a fiction) but only saw it leaning on that horizon, as I cannot bring its insides to my mind no matter how I look for it.  My father, with his wine, always: that melange, understood in retrospect, of high control and unruly dim passions. Father is unwell, and when he is well, he is cruel. It has been this way, and my immediate family’s quiet burden, for many years, but I tell you now because it was yesterday only that I received a rare missive from my mother warning of his - his sudden deterioration. I did not predict on leaving my home that it would be my father’s body that could recall me as well as send me, but it shall prove to be so, God forbid it. I go tomorrow. My usually formidable Matron softened when I told of the reason for my absence and I wanted to spit at her feet.  (Who is writing these words? Certainly not Rena Josephine du Cerceau!- this is a writer with an abundance of temper and a lack of respect, a complainer, a grumbler, a disrupter, a most unladylike woman. It is myself, in short. In recognising that I grin and my dull spirits quite lift).  Oh Yves, in asking for S., I get another riddle! May I demand now what happened at Ben Hope? Perhaps the question itself is touching a medusa with bare hands, but I must. While no scholar, it is challenging to suppress ones curiosity when faced with a story that could capture the butterfly attention of S., and lead you to the Lodge also. Ben Hope, Ben Hope. My lips repeat the name of their own accord, awakening Pansy. It is an eerie thing to have a cat, a being so far from oneself. Pansy now is fixed on some invisible moving thing from one wall to the other and her fur rises. Ben Hope. The previous paragraph was perhaps a little flippant. Your secrets are your own, and I promise with my heart to believe your tale, despite my better judgement, my training - for I already know it to be a story unconstrained by Natural Philosophy. No other could do justice to your nature. I even write a little scared of my answer and yet I must know.  Enlighten me as to Solopsism, I already enjoy the feeling of the word, its sibilance.  Your friend,  Rena Jade  P.S. Thank you for your kind words on my profession, cousin.  [Quoted text hidden]

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Jude <j----->	Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 10:14 PM
To: Jess <j----->
25 January, 1896 Dear Cousin — Dear Aura, Please forgive my nonresponse, and receive now my tardiness with the verysame plaisance and joie de vivre with which we have communed previously. At the Lodge the Mist has risen again. I have late been drifting in and out of certain notions that have taken me, in their way, to other places, other ethers, where I think more clearly, with more vigour and with a greater capacity for change. In accordance with these notions I have considered how I might best deliver to you what you have asked; that is, what happened at Ben Hope? I do not remember what I have told you, or whether I have said anything at all about George, Georges, and the mountain.  Narrative of My Experience at Ben Hope, July and August, 1895 When my lease at Cambridge expired, and most all of my compatriots (except George, who had agreed to become my assistant in research) as if by one great sweep, flew off on holiday, I felt the tug of my heart once again northwards, highwards, to the green grass sea of our youth. George and I traveled first to his friends in Glasgow, then to mother for a week, during which we rallied and resurged, for our mission. I put an advertisement in the paper for another fellow, describing our research and the goal of our journey. One man, who also happened to be called Georges (pronounced softly, the French way) responded within the day. George and I met him at Prince's St with a few maps we had taken out from the University. The Frenchman was highly critical of my plan, and even laughed, though he was quite keen with George. The two discussed philosophy, as I meandered with two fingers over a map of Ross-shire and Cromartyshire, around the tiny mountain, which was faint but had once been very gay and striking. Georges then invited us to his room at the Waverley; when new friendships arise, my lackadaisy (infinite grey pool) is often triumphed by my natural curiosity for people, their domiciles, and the things they eat, their clothes and treasured things. And so we came to the hotel, and a very charming place it was. Son Sa chambre was decorated with scores of flowers in various stages of petrification. The man had more books than a librarian, and the glass doors had been removed from the shelves, yet there was very little dust. At the centre of that room was a device which I first thought was an easel for painting, made of metal rather than wood. George took a turn about so as to get a better look at the strange centrepiece. Notre nouvel ami stood before it, placed his hands upon it, and told us that it was: a Solipscope—his invention.  Then Several Days Passed in Fascination Dear cousin, Solipsism is a philosophical teaching. It concerns the difference of mind and matter, and it is a question of existence. I have wondered, in childhood, without yet such a vocabulary as I have received from life, whether I were, so to speak, real. Does this stir you, such trivia? Now, a Solipscope, as Georges defines it, is a device that measures the reality of an object. He believes that some things are more real than others, therefore he is not a true Solipsist, he cannot be, for in believing certain objects to possess more reality than others, one obfuscates the notion that nothing exists but the mind. One fogs the glass, you see. So it was that Georges convinced us to change the ambition of our journey, though the destination remained the same. We traveled up to Inverness and stayed a few days with the folk there. I was sure I had an illness of some sort, because my head was hurting, but George prayed over me and I felt better. When we arrived in sight of the Ben, and saw its glory and its mercy, for once not a word passed between the three of us. George and I got to work erecting the tent while Georges collected some samples for the Soliscope. That night we ate chicken and cheese and drank the last of the wine, for an attitude of general ease and pleasure had settled between us now that we had arrived at last. George and Georges fell asleep, quite slovenly and still in their day clothes, in the same cot. It turned out that they shared more than a name, and the introduction of drunkenness had made them fast friends. While they lay talking, I had feared, as is my way, that my friends would eclipse me and make me their little bug. I could hardly sleep for their snoring; actually one snored and the other whistled through his nose, but I could not tell which was which. I have always tried to make sense of men, and not women. What does this mean, that I am a scoundrel? That I am Narcissus, obsessed with my own visage, or the replication of such traits? That night I wished that you were there, so that your cold hand and your hard, clean mind could come into the tent and keep us s and keep me safe.   The next day we performed several tests of the Solipscope. I still did not understand how to operate the machine, and this was a source of great frustration between me and George, for he took to it quite naturally. Essentially it required both intuition and mathematics at once. You will understand why I found it so difficult, Rena. Numbers do not appeal to me, and never have. Actually they disturb me. As G. and G. worked with a moss they had gathered at the loch, I walked the preliminary rise of the munro and returned at dusk. George was slightly hysterical because I had not told him I was going to walk. He rammed his head into my shoulder, then embraced me, saying that he thought I had died, et cetera. I am ashamed to write that I took pleasure in his reaction, because I had assumed he would not notice that I had gone. You're my friend, he said repeatedly. You're my friend, you're my friend. It was like something else, I don't know. There is too much here to explain.  I slept very well that night. You and S. were in my dream, I remember because I wrote it down. In the dream, she had been badly burned and her face had to be removed and changed. You performed the operation of course. I was not there actually, but rather a spectre in the corner of the room. That is, my presence was nondescript, and I had no role in the goings-on. Whether or not the operation was successful I do not know, as I woke just when your hand grasped the white sheet covering her face. I rose and realized that I was alone in the tent. George had left an explanatory note by my bedside: he and Georges had gone to the loch to bathe. Very well, I thought. I shall use the bucket, and it will be cold all the same, but I will have the benefit of a little privacy. Dear cousin, every event that follows is coloured in mystery, shrouded in obscure stars, impossible to know, even to me—especially to me. The day carried on and I made further adjustments to our timetable, breaking sometimes to look over my diaries from Cambridge. At one point G. and G. returned with very grave attitudes. Apparently they had stood the Solipscope on an outcropping of rock as they bathed and it had blown into the water. It was afloat for several minutes before they noticed it had fallen, for the wind was so loud it covered the sound of the machine meeting the surface of the loch. I was very surprised, especially because I had not seen upon waking that the Solipscope was not present with me in the tent. It is such an unwieldy device, I should have noticed its absence as a great increase of leisurely space. I asked Georges if it was ruined and he said yes, it is dead now. Like his countrymen, he gathered his belongings and left without a word. (He simply walked off.) The metal corpse of his invention he set on the ground outside the tent, to rust and rot. Then, Rena, my George did not speak to me for the rest of the day. He seemed to be touched in some way, or ensorcelled. I was extremely put out. At midday it began to rain, and a true Scottish storm it was. Another night came and went, and I lost track of how many days we had been there. We had still not begun our ascension of the mountain, which was going to be much more difficult with two people. Once I looked up from my diary and realized that George had also left. I knew he wasn't coming back, as if by the untethered logic of a dream. I spent several days looking at the Ben and drawing it from different perspectives. Then the carriage arrived; I had previously arranged for it to come exactly two weeks after our arrival to transport the three of us back to the village. I paid the driver to help me undo the tent and fasten it to the carriage roof. He asked about the other men and I told him the truth—they left of their own accord, quietly and separately. Rena, there is another thing I knew somehow. I knew Georges had gone up the mountain, and I knew George had followed him. It is the torment of my life that I did not go with them. I am afraid of Ben Hope. I watched the great beast belittle in size, first to a hill, then to a high tree. I imagined my friends in a cave, forgetting me. Dear Jade, what marvels await those who abandon. The driver graciously ignored my weeping.  Friend, I cannot describe the relief I feel at writing this out. I know it is a dramatic story, and that you will have many questions. I do not know if I can say more than I have said, for in what I have said I have put my power, my very bones. And may I remark a little on your last letter: I knew your father is ill. Just because it is happening does not mean it is real, exactly. I am very sorry for you, my darling. I also do not want you to respond laboriously to the events of my Narrative. Instead I would like you to place your hands upon it for a second and then carry on. You think I am the withholder. You are the withholder. Tell me, why can't you remember childhood? Or rather: what can you remember? Is there really terror there?  Yours fondly, Yves  [Quoted text hidden]

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jess <j----->	Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 2:20 PM
To: Jude <j----->
Kildrummy Alford Estate Aberdeenshire Scotland  28th January, 1896 Dear Yves, This house is a terrible one. It is a shell with the nut rotted out. I am the nut rotted out, I realise that now very clearly. My mother and her new companion Marcelline are women with their eyes dull as chestnuts kept in a drawer for a year overlong. Each corridor is a long root searching for water it will never find; the world is dry here, dried out by the candle white sun that hunts us each morning.  Perhaps a week ago I could not understand Solipsism but your account now is very welcome. True tears I wept on reading that G & G had departed into mist ! - what a betrayal, a Biblical tale!  It would be better for us all if father died sooner rather than later.  29th January 1896 Dearest,  After musing, all I may counsel is that you must go back to Ben Hope, and do it alone. Bring no "wooden easel", nothing you do not understand. Dearest Yves, you are the instrument, you are made of tempered glass, if you are a bug as you say, you are the iridescent wing through which Truth is scattered. Can you do this? Can you leave? Can you travel up the gay mountain to find it? It appears to me it is the only thing you can do. Yves, you are already insane, and what a power! Could it have been Christ on that hill? Last night I dreamt of the sea again, of my father again. As a sea leech, his jaw opened widely to kiss me on my cheek. I would like to hear more of your dreams. I would like to cut myself out of this webbed house and return to work - easy things like blood, bones, excrement, knowing my place. All this relies on the Man who Slobbers upstairs; mother called me not to mourn him but to nurse him.  In the Parlour of my family home there is a Photograph of two Maggots with their wings wrapped inside them. These maggots have large black eyes, fat and numb in their white swaddling. I know now because I have hatched that these maggots are human children, the two writers of these correspondence in a juvenile form, and that their bodies will break apart entirely into soup and rearrange. This photograph entrances me completely. I look for your companions and mine in the black eyes, our woes of growing, all of world which is somehow predicted and contained by some Natural Philosophy as unknown as to be indistinguishable from Magick. Hard and sharp I am not, not in mind, not in flesh - I remove my gloves again and again to see the blush that my fingerprint causes on the glass. This small shadowed image is the closest I have.  The house is much as same as you may remember except oddly larger. The River Don is flat under the odd sun. Yesterday in the night I blindfolded myself and walked along its banks; it was a curious feeling of knowing I was the only person who actually existed with an earth gathering under my feet to prepare for each step, for her creator, for her destroyer. This sensation did not dissipate on removing the cloth.  I believed, at the minimum, I would enjoy the respite from my nursing, entry into a warm home, time for my thoughts, but instead I am pinned. Hating mother gives me new strength. It is simpler not to attempt an understanding at all and reply to her small words with focussed eyes. Marcelline has decided to befriend me, and does not seem as dead as I thought. She is a few years older than I with a dark, strong face; ugly even, intensely polite. She collects butterflies and has no family. I resist her also, in memory of - in respect of -  Forgive me this; it is very late at night. Our lack of meeting ensures that these letters appear to emerge and send into nowhere which makes a kind of candour very appealing. 1st February 1896 I'll confess nothing, but . Father is dead, and I must leave shortly. Send your next correspondence to the boarding house.   Yours, Rena Jade  [Quoted text hidden]

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Jude <j----->	Thu, Feb 3, 2022 at 10:36 PM
To: jess <j----->
3 February, 1896 Miss R. J. du Cerceau Mrs. McArthur's Boardings for Respectable Working Women Woolmanhill Road Aberdeen Dear Cousin — Dear Faith, This morning at a quarter to ten, I received five letters from Mr. Airdre—an equine, solitary man, forty or forty-one, who sorts through all correspondence entering the Lodge from the Outer World. The first letter was a notice from the Society of Antiquaries which I promptly set in the fire. The second was from Buchanan, which I opened and then also put into the fireplace. Now, I thought, I am on track to become quite warm. The third, fourth, and fifth letters were sealed with the du Cerceau crest, which awakened in me a portentous feeling. I put the pieces into place: that my cousin must have gone home. I then pierced the wax and took some pleasure in doing so. All the rest of the morning I read over the three leaves, three tales, first written in haste, then in utterings and rosy shades, then lastly in resignation, and I fell to my bed and cried. I have no pacifying comment on the matter of your father. Rena, there is a balm in Gilead. I'm sorry. I am out of parchment, otherwise I would have started anew. Please don't worry about the funeral as my mother will likely want to pay for it. Remember that I am your brother in this life, and the Lord shall bless your father's house and guide his spirit to its true home, amen. Whether I shall return to Ben Hope, I don't know. That doesn't matter now. Rena, I am sure that S. will want to see you. She has not forgotten the summer she came to us, and the kindness you and your father showed her. I daresay she would prefer some degree of prominence in the proceedings because of her proximity to his estate. I'm sorry to summon such things, forgive me.  Alas, I remain, Yves [Quoted text hidden]

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Jude <j----->	Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 4:07 AM
To: jess <j----->
15 February, 1896 Miss R J du Cerceau Mrs McArthur's Boardings for Respectable Working Women Woolmanhill Road Aberdeen Inquiry into the disappearance of Mr Yves Presley Marjoribanks, Jr Dear Miss du Cerceau, It is with grave dismemberment that I entrench upon the proceedings between you and Mr Majoribanks, heretofore my patient, who has not been seen in or around the Twinflower property since Saturday last, and did not, as far as I am aware, attempt to notify me of his plans for travel. In entering Mr Marjoribanks' dormitory I sought to discover one from whom he had frequently received word, so that I might in turn negotiate a dutiful exchange of information which may allow me to recover Mr Marjoribank and aid him in the recommencement of treatment. It was in my patient's writing desk that I discovered a list of names and addresses, and deduced that one Miss R J du Cerceau, being the lastly entered addressee, may have recently received an informative letter from Mr Marjoribanks, or may otherwise know, by some intuition, where he has gone. Madame, it is with humble servitude that I request to know the nature of your correspondence with my patient, and whether he has previously indicated any plans for travel, or in the worst case, intimations of a deathly kind. I request that you respond to this letter with due haste.  Cordially, Dr Percival Buchanan Inverness District Asylum Leachkin Road Inverness [Quoted text hidden]

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jess <j----->	Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 11:21 PM
To: Jude <j----->
17th February, 1896 Dr Percival Buchanan Inverness District Asylum Leachkin Road Inverness Dear Sir, What a pleasure to receive this letter from you ! How I have wanted to hear from a personage such as yourself. Yves, I believed, loves and trusts you very much. I do hope you may reward that trust and assist my cousin who, it appears, accompanies now a journey of the spirit with one of the body too. I have some idea where you may find them, some twinkling. No, I write with a kind of glee, for they have escaped - the tiger, the tiger, burning in the night, has got out!  (I have heard some rumour that tigers, once fearsomely roaming, ruling, the Sub-Continent of India, are beginning to dwindle in numbers. For teeth, the Godhead of fire and perfection in them, and their righteous, innocent Anger, bear little weight contra a Gun or Sword.) Were you aware that the 17th of February is Yves' birthday? This may be important to locating my cousin. Astrology of yet cannot be Bourne out by science and, in all honesty my heart quavers a little to take it in complete seriousness, for I am a Woman of Science (being a nurse) yet I know that the Water Bearer (paradoxically of the element Air) is able to hold such fluid knowledges and to Turn them to their own ends, their own meanings. Yves may hold that muddy river in both hands and find the gold in it. Patience, a certain distance, a fine if occasionally mystical intellect - one could describe an Yves no better than that ! Those icy stars do turn in certain predictable patterns, as do we all, under the eyes of some higher power. My what twaddle! Yves is at Ben Hope, dearest Percy. Perhaps you knew this already.  There - I have bled out the flamboyance of self, and as the candle flickers, my concern catches me in my throat. The five walls (an oddly shaped room which I write from) come closer, darken, and the storm which has raged patiently outside for my notice sends a sharp screaming feather of noise into my abode. The whole time I was here, it says. The whole time the world was cold and inhuman. Yes. I confess that I prompted your patient Butterfly Yves to climb that peak.  A madwoman's urgings, entirely irresponsible - inexcusable ---! My father has just died, you see, and work has not filled enough of the cracks in me. Yourself may say this feminine emotionality is why we fail at doctoring -- nonetheless, I have failed many times before, and I understand its symptoms (agony) and its remedies (drudgery).  Dr Buchanan if you have any sense at all you will meet me at Ben Hope in two days. Bring only poetry, and some iodine.  Warm wishes, Rena Josephine du Cerceau. [Quoted text hidden]

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Jude <j----->	Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 8:51 AM
To: jess <j----->
24th February, 1883 Miss Rena Cerceau Her room Kildrummy Alford Estate Aberdeenshire Dear Rena, I am writing to inform you that I shall be visiting at Killy[sic.] again this summer.  That means in three months we shall be reunited and what fun we shall have.  Also I am writing to inform you that a girl will be coming with us because her parents have gone to heaven.  Her name is S[undecipherable]. She is your age although she is quite odd. In fact she is quite like a bird or rather an Amazonian bird of paradise. I am unsure whether or not I should like to have her with us for the every day activities. Yet I do think she will make us less bored when we are inside for storms. Please tell me if there is anything I will need to bring, for example exploration tools. Do tell me if you are happy or not that the girl is coming. A thousand sincerities, Yves 3 Nightingale Way Edinburgh [Quoted text hidden]