Ghosts and Other Lovers Read Online Free PDF Page A

front of the fire, which she was seldom allowed to do. For there was work to be done -- there was always work to be done -- and the best way to keep warm, said her sister Mildred, was to keep busy: it wasn't worth arguing. And it wasn't really the temperature of her fingers which bothered her but something else that seemed at odds with it: although they felt chilly, her hands perspired profusely and constantly. She wiped them whenever she could, on her apron or a towel, but it did no good. Her hands were always cold and damp.
     
    Just like Mr. Elphinstone's hands.
    She tried not to think of it. It was too silly. What could his hands possibly have to do with hers? Was there such a thing as a cold in the hands that she might have caught from him? She had never heard of such a thing -- a cold in the head, a cold in the chest, but not the hands -- but that didn't mean it wasn't possible. A doctor would know . . . but doctors were expensive. Her father, seeing her perfectly healthy, would not countenance a visit to a doctor. If she tried to explain to her father she was certain his idea of a "cure" would be the same as Mildred's: more hard work, less idle dreaming. She didn't try to tell him, or anyone. Embarrassed by this odd problem, she washed her hands often, and kept a supply of pocket handkerchiefs.
    One afternoon as she helped her sister shake out and fold clean linen from the drying line, Mildred suddenly screwed up her face and said sharply, "Eustacia! Have you a runny nose?"
    "No, sister." She felt her face get hot.
    "Where do you suppose this came from?" There on the stiff, freshly washed whiteness of the sheet glistened four little blobs of mucus. On the other side, Eustacia had no doubt, would be found a fifth, the imprint left by her thumb. She stood mute, blushing.
    "Have you lost your pocket handkerchief? 'Tis a filthy, childish habit, Eustacia, to blow your nose into your fingers; something I would not have expected from you, careless though you often are in your personal habits. And so unhealthy! You should think of others."
    "I didn't! My nose isn't -- ! I didn't, Mildred, honestly!"
    Mildred might have believed her since Eustacia, for all her faults, was no liar, but she couldn't stop, was scarcely aware of, the little furtive gestures by which she attempted to dry and hide her hands.
    Mildred's eyes narrowed. "Show me your hands."
    There was a kind of relief in being caught, in being forced, at last, to share her dirty secret. Despite her having just wiped them, her hands were already moist again. Welling up from the ball of each finger, pooling in the palms, was something thicker, stickier, and less liquid than the perspiration she had, for several days, believed -- or wished -- it to be.
    Face twisting in disgust, Mildred held her sister's hands and examined them. Something nasty. But it had to be as obvious to Mildred as it was to Eustacia herself that the substance had not been blown or wiped onto the hands but was being produced -- excreted -- through the skin of the hands themselves.
    "I don't know what it is," Eustacia said. "It's been happening . . . several days now. I told you my hands were cold. You can feel that. At first it was only the cold . . . then, they seemed to be wet -- and now . . . this. I don't know what it is; I don't know how to make it stop." She burst into tears.
    Tears were always the wrong tactic with Mildred. Scowling, she flung Eustacia's hands back at her, and wiped her own harshly in her apron. "Stop bawling, girl, it doesn't pain you, does it?"
    Still sobbing, Eustacia shook her head.
    "Well, then. It's nothing. No more'n a runny nose. Go wash yourself. Wash your hands well, mind. And keep them warm and dry. Maybe you should rest. That's it. Lie down and keep warm. You can have a fire in your room. Rest and keep warm and you'll be as right as rain by tomorrow."
    Eustacia stopped crying, pleased to know she would have the luxury of a fire in her room, and the still