Eddie's eyes shone in the sunlight cascading through the window. "Tell me more about this leg."
I left them mid exchange and entered the long room where I'd found Caroline and Josef yesterday. Most patients sat upright against their pillows, eating the boiled chicken from metal plates. Not all had the strength to lift a fork, however, and had to be fed by nurses—including Caroline. I ducked under the tunnel of bedframes to arrive at hers, making sure to stay out of view of anyone in a white pinafore. Once the nurse left with Caroline's empty dishes, I jumped onto the young woman's lap.
"Hello," Caroline said. "What's this?"
I froze beneath her pale blue gaze.
"I like pussycats," she said to me in a whisper. "I can't see you, but your fur feels exquisite."
I put my paws on her chest and examined her eyes. To my horror, they were identical to the one I found at Shakey House and altogether unnatural looking, giving her the appearance of a china doll. I hadn't seen them on my last visit because she'd kept her back to me. At least now I understood her involvement in the murders. She'd been the recipient Mr. Uppity's ill-gotten pearls.
Caroline stroked my head. "Who let you in here, Miss Puss?"
I glanced at Eddie in the entry hall, still deep in conversation with our greeter. Desperate to draw his notice and draw it now, I yowled with all my being. The patients pointed and laughed at me with riotous enthusiasm, as if I'd provided post-luncheon entertainment. Fiddlesticks. Their ruckus drew the attention of both Eddie and the nurses. The women rushed us, causing me to ponder—ah, the burden of verbosity!—what a group of them might be called. After all, geese had gaggles, dogs had packs, crows had murders. I settled on stern of nurses and ran like the devil.
I hopped from bed to bed, exciting the broken humans into an unmanageable state as I avoided the nurses' grasping hands. Pillows and bedpans and spoons filled the air—hoorah! Several boys with crutches banged them against the bedframes, creating a rhythm that drove me around the room faster than the horse-drawn carriage. I was a lion in a jungle of blankets. I was untouchable. I was glorious.
"Run, cat, run!" they cried. "Run, cat, run!"
Eddie hovered in the doorway, shamefaced, his hands in his coat pockets. On my second go-round, someone beseeched him to help, and he reluctantly obliged. When he headed in my direction, I doubled back, landed in Caroline's lap, and waited for truth to break the horizon. He reached us, out of breath. "I am ashamed to admit," he said to Caroline, "the wayward cat is mine. May I take her?"
Caroline handed me to Eddie and looked up at him. Perhaps look was the wrong term.
His reaction to the girl's eyes surpassed even my own. He stared into their depths and stammered, "Two makes a pair!"
A Ghost of a Girl
A girl with two glass eyes can be most persuasive. The stern of nurses crumbled at her request that I be allowed to stay, and, after issuing several admonitions about "the hell cat," they left to quiet the rest of the patients. When the room returned to a state of normalcy, I curled in Caroline's lap, where she stroked my fur with hands spun—I swear it—from silk. If not for her unfortunate association with a murderer, I might've added her to my list of approved humans.
Eddie fell into the familiar role of bedside companion and pulled up a chair. When he introduced himself, she mentioned one of his older pieces, "The Fall of the House of Usher," a tale he wrote the summer we met. "A fan!" Eddie said with a toss of his head. "And a fair one at that. If I may admit, you remind me of Mrs. Poe."
"I do?" She nestled her hands into my fur to warm them.
"Yes, except for your eyes. Hers are hazel, and yours are the loveliest shade of…let me think."
"Blue?"
"How mundane a description. No, I shall call them oceania."
"We secretly call them Ferris Blue since most of us are graced with the color. But I like your description better."
"Ferris? As in the great Ferris family?"
"Miss Caroline Ferris. Pleased to make your acquaintance." She held out her hand, skeletal and frail, and waited for Eddie to shake it. He did so, gently.
"That's a very old name you carry," he said, "one of the oldest in Philadelphia."
"It is heavy at times," she said. "But one cannot simply set these things aside when one grows weary. Still, being a Ferris has its charms. Or, rather, had them. Gala invitations have dropped off sharply since my unfortunate turn. Most are factories of tedium, but I am sad to have missed Charles Dickens in March. My second cousin Bess hosted a dinner in his honor."
"I met him then. Twice. An enthralling storyteller, if I may confess. Boz and I run in the same circles, and he was cordial enough to grant me interviews." Eddie took his coat off and pushed it back on the chair. "I could have listened to him for hours."
"Did he tell many stories?"
"We spoke mostly of poetry."
"And his manner?"
"As if Philadelphia would make a fine footstool."
"I knew it!" She giggled, rousing me from my contentment. But the delight was short lived. Her voice resumed its usual dirge. "My Uncle Gideon still mingles with that crowd. You may have seen his name in the paper or heard it in the streets around Rittenhouse Square."
"Gideon Ferris? I thought he fell on hard times after Jackson killed the U.S. Bank."
"No, no, we still own several coal mines to the west." She began to stroke me again, and I rolled belly side up. "How else could he have afforded my new eyes?"
"Yes, it is a considerable mystery."
I peeked at Eddie. Strange that he'd repeated the constable's phrase from yesterday. He smoothed his mustache, as if uncertainty preceded his next statement.
"If you don't mind me asking, Miss Ferris, how did you lose them?"
"Vanity," she said matter-of-factly. "It is a sad story, Mr. Poe, and I do not wish to trouble you."
"Sad stories are my life's work." He crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knee. "I would be honored to hear yours."
Caroline sat back against her pillows and blinked her doll eyes. I fairly expected them to roll back in her head. "You wouldn't know it to look at me now," she said, "but I was once quite pleasant to behold. The summer I turned eighteen, I received three marriage proposals." Her face brightened. "In those days of never-ending sunshine, I wanted for nothing. Private tutors in art and poetry, dancing assemblies at Powel House, gowns stripped from the fashion plates, regattas on the Schuylkill. And, Mr. Poe, you have never properly summered unless you've summered on Cape May. I'm almost ashamed to admit these pleasures in the company of unfortunates." She gestured to the occupied beds around her. "Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody poor. And mercy no more could be, if all were as happy as we."
"William Blake," Eddie replied. "Well stated."
"Like all good fairytales, however, mine was not without tragedy. And it struck soundly my twentieth year." She reached for a glass of water on her nightstand, and Eddie handed it to her. After a sip, she continued. "In October of 1837, my parents booked passage on the steamship Home to travel from New York to Charleston. But a gale overtook the vessel and broke her apart near Ocracoke, scattering bodies to the sea. Lifeboats were of no use as they capsized in the boiling surf. Ninety-five souls lost, including those of my parents, only a quarter mile from the shore." The liquid in her glass trembled, so Eddie took it from her and replaced it on the nightstand.
"Take heart, Miss Ferris. I, too, lost my parents at a young age, and I am no less a man."
"Thank you," she said. "I will remember that in my darkest hours. Though I suppose, all of my hours are dark now."