Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

Dr. Jerome DuPont has the deep liquid eyes and intense gaze of a professional charlatan; but he smiles ruefully, and gives a dismissive shrug. “Not very remarkable, I’m afraid,” he says. He has a trace of a foreign accent. “Such things are merely another language; if one speaks it, one takes it simply for granted. It is others who find it remarkable.”

“You converse with the dead?” asks Simon, his mouth twitching.

Dr. DuPont smiles. “Not I,” he says. “I am what you might call a medical practitioner. Or an investigative scientist, like yourself. I am a trained Neuro-hypnotist, of the school of James Braid.”

“I have heard of him,” says Simon. “A Scotsman, isn’t he? A noted authority on clubfoot and strabismus, I believe. But surely professional medicine does not recognize these other claims of his. Is not this Neuro-hypnotism simply the reanimated corpse of Mesmer’s discredited Animal Magnetism?”

“Mesmer posited a magnetic fluid encircling the body, which was certainly erroneous,” says Dr. DuPont.

“Braid’s procedures involve the nervous system alone. I might add that those who dispute his methods have not tried them. They are more accepted in France, where the doctors are less prone to craven orthodoxies. They are more useful in hysterical cases, than in others, of course; they cannot do much for a broken leg. But in cases of amnesia” — he gives a faint smile — “they have frequently produced astounding, and, I may say, very rapid results.”

Simon feels at a disadvantage, and changes the subject. “DuPont — is it a French name?”

“The family was French Protestant,” says Dr. DuPont. “But only on the father’s side. He was an amateur of chemistry. I myself am an American. I have visited France professionally, of course.”

“Perhaps Dr. Jordan would like to make one of our party,” says Mrs. Quennell, breaking in. “On our spiritual Thursdays. Our dear Governor’s wife finds them such a comfort, to know that her little one, now on the other side, is so well and happy. I am sure Dr. Jordan is a sceptic — but we always welcome sceptics!” The tiny bright eyes beneath the doggy coiffure twinkle roguishly at him.

“Not a sceptic,” says Simon, “only a medical doctor.” He has no intention of being lured into some compromising and preposterous rigmarole. He wonders what Verringer is thinking of, to include such a woman on his Committee. But evidently she is wealthy.

“Physician, heal thyself,” says Dr. DuPont. He seems to be making a joke.

“Where do you stand on the Abolitionist question, Dr. Jordan?” says Mrs. Quennell. Now the woman is turning intellectual, and will insist on a belligerent discussion of politics, and will doubtless order him to abolish slavery in the South at once. Simon finds it tiresome to be constantly accused, in his individual person, of all the sins of his country, and especially by these Britishers, who seem to think that a conscience recently discovered excuses them for not having had any conscience at all at an earlier period. On what was their present wealth founded, but on the slave trade; and where would their great mill towns be without Southern cotton?

“My grandfather was a Quaker,” he says. “As a boy, I was taught never to open cupboard doors, in case some poor fugitive might be concealed within. He always felt that to put his own safety at risk was worth a good deal more than barking at others from behind the protection of a fence.”

“Stone walls do not a prison make,” says Mrs. Quennell gaily.

“But all scientists must keep an open mind,” says Dr. DuPont. He appears to be back in their previous conversation.

“I am sure Dr. Jordan‘s mind is as open as a book,” says Mrs. Quennell. “You are looking into our Grace, we are told. From the spiritual point of view.”

Simon can see that if he tries to explain the difference between the spirit, in her sense of the word, and the unconscious mind, in his, he will get hopelessly tangled; so he merely smiles and nods.

“What approach are you taking?” says Dr. DuPont. “To restore her vanished memory.”

“I have begun,” says Simon, “with a method based on suggestion, and the association of ideas. I am attempting, gently and by degrees, to reestablish the chain of thought, which was broken, perhaps, by the shock of the violent events in which she was involved.”

“Ah,” says Dr. DuPont, with a superior smile. “Slow but steady wins the race!” Simon would like to kick him.

“We are sure she is innocent,” says Mrs. Quennell. “All of us on the Committee! We are convinced of it!

Reverend Verringer is getting up a Petition. It is not the first, but we are in hopes that this time we will be successful. ”Once more unto the breach‘ is our motto.“ She gives a girlish wiggle. ”Do say you are on our side!“

“If at first you don’t succeed,” says Dr. DuPont solemnly.

“I have not drawn any conclusions, as yet,” says Simon. “In any case, I am less interested in her guilt or innocence, than in…”

“Than in the mechanisms at work,” says Dr. DuPont.

“That is not quite how I would put it,” says Simon.

“It is not the tune played by the musical box, but the little cogs and wheels within it, that concern you.”

“And you?” says Simon, who is beginning to find Dr. DuPont more interesting.

“Ah,” says DuPont. “For me it is not even the box, with its pretty pictures on the outside. For me, it is only the music. The music is played by a physical object; and yet the music is not that object. As Scripture says, ”The wind bloweth where it listeth.“”

“St. John,” says Mrs. Quennell. “”That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.“”

“”And that which is born of the flesh is flesh,“” says DuPont. The two of them peer at him with an air of gentle but unanswerable triumph, and Simon feels as if he is suffocating under a mattress.

“Dr. Jordan,” says a soft voice at his elbow. It is Miss Lydia, one of the Governor’s wife’s two daughters. “Mama sent me to ask if you have yet seen her scrapbook.”

Simon inwardly blesses his hostess, and says he has not had that pleasure. The prospect of murky engravings of the beauty spots of Europe, their borders decorated with paper fern fronds, is not usually alluring to him, but at the moment it beckons like an escape. He smiles and nods, and is led away. Miss Lydia places him on a tongue-coloured settee, then fetches a heavy book from the adjacent table and arranges herself beside him. “She thought you might find it of interest, because of whatever it is you are doing with Grace.”

“Oh?” says Simon.

“It has got all of the famous murders in it,” Miss Lydia explains. “My mother cuts them out and pastes them in, and the hangings, too.”

“Does she indeed?” asks Simon. The woman must be a ghoul as well as a hypochondriac.

“It helps her to make up her mind, as to which among the prisoners may be worthy objects of charity,”

says Miss Lydia. “Here is Grace.” She opens the book across their knees and leans in his direction, gravely instructive. “I take an interest in her; she has remarkable abilities.”

“Like Dr. DuPont?” Simon says.

Miss Lydia stares. “Oh, no. I do not go in for any of that. I would never let myself be hypnotized, it is so immodest! I mean that Grace has remarkable abilities as a dressmaker.”

There is a subdued recklessness about her, thinks Simon; when she smiles, both bottom and top teeth show. But at least she is healthy-minded, unlike the mother. A healthy young animal. Simon is conscious of her white throat, encircled with a modest ribbon ornamented with a rosebud, as befits an unmarried girl. Through layers of delicate fabric, her arm presses against his. He is not an insensible block, and although Miss Lydia‘s character, like that of all such girls, must be unformed and childish, she has a very small waist. A cloud of scent rises from her, lily of the valley, enveloping him in olfactory gauze. But Miss Lydia must be unconscious of the effect she is producing on him, being necessarily ignorant of the nature of such effects. He crosses his legs.