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Zhou Jia closed the computer, stood up, walked to the edge of the sofa, and slowly sat down beside Hatty. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"You don't have to sleep, if you continue like this, I'm going to have the diaries removed." His tone revealed that he wouldn't do that, just to scare the mischievous kitten, "What did your friend tell you again?"

"Pierre, he asked me to find evidence in my diary for his 'adultererous woman'. ”

"Adulterer?"

He always believed that Henry Adams and Elizabeth Cameron had a leg, and suspected that they had something to do with Shamrock's death. "The evidence that Pierre found was a secret letter from Henry to Madame Cameron. The letter was dated December 7, 1884, the day before Clover's death, and it said, 'I am going to dedicate my next poem to you, and I am going to engrave your name on the stone path in front of my house, ......'. ’”

"It's really numb enough, it's still very conservative in that era, right?"

Zhou Jia leaned forward against him and said, "Judging from the diary in the back, Clover already knows about their relationship, and that Mrs. Cameron doesn't hide it very much, and even flirts with Clover's husband in public. ”

This is enough to touch the moral bottom line, no wonder there are so many rumors after Clover's death, and the time of her death is indeed doubtful. ”

Zhou Jia had a rare relaxed look on his face, and a trace of pride after solving the mystery: "But things are not as simple as imagined." ”

"Go on. He was intrigued by what she had to say.

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Boston, March 30, 1885

Monday was cloudy with light rain

The car is still on the way. We were silent.

I can't think of anything to say, and I don't want to say anything. My mind went blank and the weekend salon would take all my energy away and clean up. It's all thanks to one man – Mrs. Elizabeth Cameron. The way she had been in front of everyone yesterday was as if she were the mistress of the room.

I think George must have heard the gossip too, and he looked at me with pity in his eyes.

So, I took my diary out of my bag and started writing the latest notes. As long as I have time today, I will take the time to write, and I want to write down every detail of what happened today.

We came from Washington, D.C., and we ended up driving from Washington Road into Boston City. This long road that runs through Boston, near the South Suburbs, has an old building called the Boston-Female-Asylum.

That's where we're going today.

Parked the car, we entered the heavy gate and walked through the hallway. The one who led the way led the way, and we followed quietly, and no one spoke. The hallway smelled of disinfectant water, the posters on the walls were peeling off, and there were some pictures of children hanging from them.

We stopped outside a double door.

The button on the door had to be pressed to open the door, and the first door closed behind us, sealing us between the two doors. I thought to myself: this is like a women's shelter, it's a women's mental hospital. Asylum is more comfortable than Madhouse.

The door to the inner level was opening, and I don't know why I was starting to get nervous.

A long hallway. As we passed, the doors on both sides of the hallway were open and I could see that most of the rooms were empty.

We move on.

A woman in a suit approached us.

"Madam Dean?" said George, stepping forward and shaking her hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. She said, "I'm Hilary Foster." ”

Then, she turned to me. "You're Shamrock, Ellen's daughter?"

"Yes. I said, holding her hand at the same time, and I could tell from the Dean's words that she had an unusual relationship with my mother, and it was not known whether the owner of these hands would be able to answer my questions, but she always maintained a kind smile and an elegant demeanor, which made my heart feel much more relaxed.

If my mother were still alive, she would be about the same age as her, probably a little older than her. Her hair began to turn gray, and she wore a pair of half-moon glasses with gold chains around her neck.

"Hello. She said, "I don't know why I'm sure I've seen her before." She gestured towards the end of the hallway, "Please follow me!"

Her office was spacious, with rows of books on the shelves behind her desk, and a lot of cardboard boxes piled up on the floor, and the paper was spread out from the boxes, looking a little messy. She sat down behind a desk and gestured to the two chairs across from the desk, where George and I sat down.

George opened his mouth first and asked, "Madam Dean, you said in your last letter to me that many things must be discussed in person, and today I am here and I have brought Shamrock with me, so I hope you will be able to speak up, please tell us everything you know." ”

"Ahh She said, "We have about seventy or eighty girls, and the cost of more than 12,000 a year is an astronomical amount, and to be honest, it is really difficult to rely on the charity fund and the little donation every year." As the two of them had seen, the women's shelter was moving out, still on Washington Street, but it was moving to the suburbs. And I'm about to leave my job and move to California, a warmer south, to live with my daughter. ”

She suddenly raised her hand and pointed to the cardboard box behind us.

"I made some discoveries while I was compiling the dossier. I happened to hear from a friend that Mr. Agassis was asking about the 'angels,' and I thought maybe I should talk to you about it. ”

George's tone became serious, and he asked, "A friend, there are few people who know that I am investigating Alan Sturgis Hooper, and I ask them to keep it a secret, your friend, but a whistleblower!"

I stole a look at George. He was always gentle in front of me, and I almost forgot about his other identity, the leader of the "Saturday Club". His occasional compelling presence was surprising, and at times I felt that he was much more mature than I was, and that he didn't look like a young man in his early twenties at all. I thought that if he hadn't been amorous, he would have had a good impression of me, but his feelings were very restrained and he never showed them too much in front of me.

Don't let momentary emotions occupy your reason. In this regard, he is even better than Henry.

She smiled and said, "It's worthy of 'everyone's Agassi,' and since there aren't many people, I think you can guess who the whistleblower is, right?"

George whispered a name: "Julian Hawthorne." ”

"For the past two years, Julian has been writing books about his father, and he knows that my father and I are friends who talk about everything, so he has always come to talk to me. She whispered, "But don't worry, he only told me about it, and no one else knew about it." ”

I was amazed and hurriedly asked, "You are not talking about Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, are you?"

The dean nodded, and continued, "I knew Nathaniel Hawthorne when he was just the editor of a small magazine before he even started writing novels. ”

I asked George, "Why investigate him, and what does he have to do with my mother?"

George replied, "I have been investigating the members of the Transcendentals, and Mr. Hawthorne has a deep relationship with the Transcendentals, and for a long time he was a neighbor of Mr. Emerson. ”

The dean interjected, "Although Hawthorne does not admit to being a member of the Transcendentalists, he has been exposed to Transcendentalism since he was in Boston. As I remember, he also went to the 'Creek Farm' (11) for a while. He has also openly courted many women, Mary Slesby, Elizabeth Peabody...... Eventually, he married another female Transcendental member, Peabody's sister Sophia. Foster is my husband's last name, my last name was Hillary-Silsbee, and Mary Silsbee was my sister. It should be said that he pursued me first, but there was really no romantic feeling between us, so he turned his attention to my sister. Fortunately, we had a very speculative conversation, so we maintained a deep friendship. ”

The dean turned to me and said, "He started his crazy pursuit of women after 1937, because in that year your mother married Dr. Hooper!"

"My mother?" I was even more surprised.

"When I first met Ellen, Hawthorne was infatuated with her. Perhaps it should be said that he loved your mother only from the beginning to the end! The list of courting your mother was even longer, and you probably knew Hawthorne and Henry James (12)!"

"William's father?" George didn't expect his friend's father to be one of them.

"Actually, there is another person, unknown to the outside world, who Hawthorne told me. She paused and said the other person's name, "Pastor William Alleyry Channing." ”

George and I both fell silent. The Reverend Channing was the most important missionary of the Unitarian Church. And his beliefs and ideas deeply influenced Transcendentalism in New England. He was very knowledgeable, good at preaching and lecturing, and had a great prestige among the parishioners.

"When Qian Ning met your mother, she was already middle-aged, and she was also impressed by her talent, and he should have called her the first name, 'Angel'. ”

Listening to her say this, I can now probably understand why Ms. Fuller said that "perfume is sprinkled in the desert wind", and of course she felt that her father was not worthy of her mother, and that she thought of her other suitors...... Mr. Hawthorne aside, and Henry James I. From William's face, you can imagine how handsome his father was when he was young, and I heard that William's younger brother looks the most like his father, and his appearance is already a favorite topic of conversation among the ladies of Boston.

"One is a revered priest, one is a brilliant novelist, and the other is a handsome and charming scholar, and of the three of them, Allen chose none of them, but your father, a doctor. In the end, the quality she values most is kindness and honesty. This disappoints Hawthorne to the extreme, and he pursues women everywhere, trying to forget her. Three years after your mother's marriage, James married, and in 1942, in July Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, and in October, Pastor Channing died. Your mother died in '48, and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was published two years later. But when I read his novels, I always felt that the world in the novel was the opposite of reality, and he had made himself, James, and Channing into a character, a young priest of outstanding intelligence, grace, and respect, while the heroine's husband was a short, old, ugly doctor, how ironic! In Hawthorne's novel, she even chose him beyond the moral and secular eyes! Abandoned that pathetic husband!" Her expression suddenly became a little sad, and she sighed. Hawthorne couldn't accept her early death even more than your mother's marriage. He once told me that just before Channing died, the two of them had met, and Channing begged him to protect the 'angels' and beware of the pathetic and greedy doctor, who both hated your father. ”

I knew the content of "The Scarlet Letter", but I never thought that there was such a story behind it. Hearing the characters in the story allude to the three men with whom my mother was closely connected, I felt like I was in the ice of the Bay of Maine. The complex relationships reflected in the book, the hidden love and hatred...... I tried to find the flaws, biting my lip and feeling the churning waves inside.

The dean turned to George and said, "You go to Julian and ask about his father, Nathaniel, and Alan, and say that you want to investigate the cause of Alan's death. Little Julian felt uneasy and immediately came to talk to me. He always thought that his father had been depressed before he died, because he was carrying a 'secret'. Julian also felt that Alan's death had hit his father too hard, and he had always felt that there was something else hidden in it......" She paused for a long time before speaking again, "and I happen to know something, and I think, if I don't tell it, these things will be buried forever, like this abandoned sanatorium, and become a secret that no one will ever know." ”

George said, "So, you're willing to say it, right?"

The dean nodded, and she pulled a file from the pile of papers on her desk and opened it. "I've been sorting out my files since last year because I'm preparing to move. As you know, although this place is called a women's shelter, most of the girls sent by their families are somewhat mentally ill and not normal. This floor is the general area, and the upstairs west area is the isolation area, where there are many female patients with schizophrenia. When I checked the personal belongings of a female patient named Samantha, I found that she had drawn a lot of crayon drawings. ”

(To be continued.) )