Mother Aegypt and Other Stories Part 10

"Dear, you mustn't say such a thing! It may be He sends us our little aches and pains to remind us we ought to be ready at all times to come before Him, but-"

"I prayed the boys would die," Aunt Caroline told her. "I thought of having them suffocated in their cradles. G.o.d forgive me, forgive me! And it wasn't a week after that the pains began."

Aunt Elizabeth had drawn away from her. Her face was a study in stupefied horror.

"Never!" she said at last. "Those dear, sweet little lambs? Oh, Caroline, you never! Oh, how could you? Oh, and to think-"

Aunt Caroline had begun to sob hoa.r.s.ely, rocking herself to and fro in her agony. Aunt Elizabeth watched her a moment, struggling to find words, and at last found them.

"Well," she said, "It's-Henry would say, this is proof of the infinite mercy of the Almighty, you know7. For, only think, if you had followed such a wicked thought with a deed, what worse torments would await you eternally! As it is, the sin is hideous but not so bad as it might be, and these timely pangs have made you reflect on the peril to your eternal soul, and you have surely repented! Therefore all may vet be well-"

Aunt Caroline toppled forward. Aunt Elizabeth leaped up, screaming, and the men stopped work at once and ran to be of a.s.sistance. Upon examination, Aunt Caroline was found not to have died, but merely fainted from her pain, and when revived she begged feebly to be taken to her chamber. Aunt Elizabeth, rising to the occasion, directed the men to improvise a stretcher from the ladder. She paced alongside as they bore Aunt Caroline away, entreating her to call on her Savior for comfort.

The little girl watched all this with round eyes.

"There's one secret out," remarked the tyger. "I wonder whether any others will show themselves?"

The east wind was blowing. It swayed the cloths on the long tables, it swayed the paper lanterns the servants had hung up on lines strung through the trees in the garden. The tyger lashed his tail as he paced.

The little girl was walking from lantern to lantern, peering up at them and wondering how they would light when evening fell.

"Your Uncle Randall asked your Mamma to marry him today," said the tyger.

"He did it in front of Uncle Henry and Aunt Elizabeth," said the child.

"Because he thought she wouldn't like to say no, if they were present," said the tyger. The child nodded.

"But Mamma said no," she concluded. "Then Uncle Randall had a gla.s.s of wine."

The tyger put his face close to the bars.

"Something bad is going to happen," he said. "Think very hard, quickly: are you a rabbit, or do you have teeth and claws?"

"What the h.e.l.l's it doing?" said a hoa.r.s.e voice from the other end of the courtyard. The child. looked up to see Uncle Randall advancing on her swiftly. He had a strange blank look in his eyes, a strange fixed smile.

"Hasn't it ever been told not to go so near a wild brute? Naughty, naughty little thing!" he said, and grabbed her arm tightly. "We'll have to punish it."

He began to drag her away in the direction of the potting shed. She screamed, kicking him as hard as she could, but he laughed and swung her up off her feet. He marched on toward the thicket behind the shed, groping under her skirts.

"We'll have to punish its little soft b.u.m, that's what we'll have to do," he said wildly, "Because a dutiful uncle must do such things, after all, ungrateful little harlot-"

She screamed again, and suddenly he had stopped dead in his tracks and let her fall, because Cousin Louise was standing right before them and staring at Uncle Randall. She was chalk-white. She seemed as though she were choking a long minute, unable to make a sound, as the little girl whimpered and scrambled away on hands and knees.

Uncle Randall, momentarily disconcerted, regained his smile.

"What?" he demanded. "None of your business if we were only playing."

Cousin Louise threw herself at him. Being, as she was, a tall girl, she bore him over so he fell to the pavement with a crash. His wig came off. She beat him in the face with her fists, and found her voice at last, harsh as a crow's: "What were you going to tell her? Were you going to tell her you'd cut her tongue out if she ever told what you did? Were you? Were you?"

Uncle Randall snarled and attempted to throw her off.

"Ow! Who'd believe you, stupid b.i.t.c.h? The guests'll be arriving, I'll say you've gone mad-"

The child climbed to her feet and ran, sobbing, and got behind the menagerie wall. There she cried in silence, hiding her face in her skirts.

When she ventured out again at last, neither Uncle Randall nor Cousin Louise were anywhere in sight. The tiger was looking at her steadily.

"That's another secret come to light," he said. "Now, I'll tell you still another."

Rubbing her eyes with her fist, she listened as he told her the secret.

Mamma and Aunt Elizabeth carried the babies into the chapel, so the nurserymaid was able to spare her a moment.

"Lord, lord, how did your face get so dirty? As if I ain't got enough to see to!" she grumbled, dipping a corner of her ap.r.o.n in the horse-trough and was.h.i.+ng the little girl's face. "Now, hold my hand and be a good child when we go in. No noise!"

She was a good child through the solemn ceremony. Mamma watched the little boys tenderly, anxiously, and Uncle Henry and Aunt Elizabeth smiled when first John, and then James, screamed and went red-faced at having Satan driven out with cold water. Uncle Thomas was watching Mamma. Aunt Caroline was tranquilly distant: she'd taken laudanum for her pain. Beside her, Cousin Louise watched Uncle Randall with a basilisk glare. Uncle Randall was holding himself upright and defiant, smiling, though his face was puffy with bruises.

Afterward they all processed from the chapel and up the long stairs, to arrange themselves in ranks before Grandpapa, that he might give them his blessing. He stared from his high white bed and had to be reminded who they all were. At last he moved his wasted hand on the counterpane, granting an abbreviated benediction on posterity, and they were able to file from the sickroom into the clean-smelling twilight.

The wind had dropped a little but still moved the lanterns, that had candles inside them now and looked like golden moons glowing in the trees. It brought the sweet smell of wood smoke from an early bonfire. The dusk was lavender, so lambent even-thing looked slightly transparent, and the milling guests in the garden might have been ghosts. The child wandered among them, unseen as a ghost herself, watching.

There were stout old gentlemen with iron-gray wigs and wide-brimmed hats, who spoke at length with Uncle Henry about harvests and horse fairs. In high white wigs were young men and young ladies, lace-trimmed mincers of both s.e.xes, who wondered why there were no musicians, and were quite put out to be told that there would be no dancing because of mourning for Papa.

Admiring gentlemen in silk stockings, slithery as eels, crowded around Mamma to pay her complements, and Uncle Thomas held her arm possessively and smiled at them all. Aunt Caroline, on a couch that had been brought out for her, looked on dreamily Uncle Randall edged through the crowd, telling first one inquirer and then another how his bruises had come at the hands of a low s.l.u.t of a chambermaid, d.a.m.n her eyes for a scheming hussy, wanted a guinea for favors as though she were the Queen of Sheba, screamed like a harpy when he'd paid her out in the coin she deserved! Ha-ha.

John and James lay in the arms of the nurserymaid and Aunt Elizabeth, who was glad to get off her feet, and the little boys stared in wide-awake astonishment at the glowing lanterns and ignored all their well-wishers, who moved on speedily to the collation table for cider and ham anyway. Some guests vanished in pairs into shadowy corners. There were perfumes of civet- musk strong in the air, there was wine flowing free. Someone got drunk remarkably quickly and tripped, and his wig went flying. It hit Uncle Henry in the face with a poof and a cloud of powder. People t.i.ttered with laughter.

The little girl walked through the shadows to the keeper's shed. She found the ring of keys where he had hung it up before hurrying off to the somewhat lesser collation for the servants. n.o.body but the tyger saw her as she came and tried the big bra.s.s keys, one after another, in the padlock that secured the door of his pen. At last it clicked open.

She slipped it off. The bolt was a simple one, just like the bolt on the nursery door. Sliding it back, she opened the door of the pen.

The tiger paced swiftly forward, his green eves gleaming. He looked much bigger out of his prison.

He turned and gazed at her a moment; put out his warm rough tongue and slicked it along the pulse of her wrist, the palm of her hand. She felt a shock go through her body, an electric thrill of pleasure. She parted her lips but could find no words, only staring back at him in wonderment. He turned his head to regard the party in the sunken garden.

"Now," said the tyger, "We'll see, won't we?"

He stretched his magnificent length, gave a slight wriggle of his shoulders, and bounded across the courtyard. Standing beside the empty cage, she folded her little hands and watched.

He charged the party, vaulting from the top step into the sunken garden. Horrified guests looked up to see him land in the midst of them all, and gilt chairs were knocked over as people scrambled to get away from him, screaming in their panic. Some staggered on their high heels, some kicked off their shoes and ran in their slippery stockinged feet. Aunt Elizabeth went over backward in her chair, clutching young James, and both began to shriek. The servants fled for their lives. Aunt Caroline watched all from her couch, too drugged to care.

But the tyger leapt straight through the garden like a thunderbolt, overtaking Uncle Thomas, whom it felled with a sidelong rake of one paw. Uncle Thomas went down, howling and clutching himself, and blood ran red all down his white silk hose. The tiger didn't even pause, however, it sprang clean over him and continued forward, and the only person left before it now was Uncle Randall, who had broken a heel on the topmost of the opposite steps and was still there, frantically attempting to yank off his tight shoe.

Uncle Randall looked up into the tyger's eyes, but had no time to do more than bleat before it struck him. He broke like a doll, and rolled over with it into the darkness.

There was a second's hush, cries cut off abruptly in those who still crouched or lay sprawled in the sunken garden. Uncle Henry, who had crawled to Aunt Elizabeth's side, rose on his elbow to look and said, "O Lord G.o.d!"

The tyger appeared at the top of the steps, dragging Uncle Randall by the back of the neck. Uncle Randall's head hung at a strange angle and his body was limp. The tyger's eyes reflected back the light of the golden lanterns.

It stared at them all a moment before opening its jaws. Uncle Randall dropped like an empty coat.

The tyger's beard was red.

It bared its fangs, and turned and bounded away into the night.

When they asked her why, she explained. After she had told them everything, they made her explain it all over, and then explain once more. No matter how often she explained, however, they did not hear what she said.

Finally they sent her away, to a convent school in France. It was by no means as bad as it might have been.

She made no friends, but her eves being now accustomed to look for detail, she saw keenly the fond possessive looks or angry glances between the other girls, heard the midnight weeping or sighs, saw the notes hastily exchanged; watched the contests for dominance and knew when the cloister gate was locked and when it was left unlocked, and who came and went thereby and when they came too.

The heavy air buzzed like a hive. She no more thought of partic.i.p.ating in the convent's inner life than she would have thrust her hand into a wasp's nest, but she watched in fascination.

Then, one morning at Ma.s.s, above the high altar, the crucified Christ opened green blazing eves and looked at her. He smiled.

Nightmare Mountain.

There was once a poor man, and he had a daughter.

He wouldn't for a second have admitted he was poor. He owned a fifty-acre almond ranch in San Jose, after all. He came of fine stock from the South, and all his people on both sides had owned property before the War. It was true their circ.u.mstances had been somewhat reduced in the days following the capitulation at Appamattox; it was true he and all his kin had been obliged to flee persecution, and head West. But they were people of account, make no mistake about it.

Great-Aunt Merrion would sit on the front porch and look out over the lion-yellow hills, and recollect: "My daddy once owned three-fifths of Prince County, and the farm proper was seven miles to a side. Nothing like this." And she would sniff disdainfully at the dry rows of little almond trees.

And Aunt Pugh, who sat on the other side of the porch and who hated Great-Aunt Merrion only slightly less than she hated the Yankees, would wave her arm at the creaking Aeromotor pump and say: "My daddy once owned a thousand acres of the finest bottom-land on the Mississippi River, as verdant as the gardens of Paradise before the fall. How happy I am he cannot see the extent to which we are reduced, in this desert Purgatory!"

Then they would commence to rock again, in their separate chairs, and little Annimae would sigh and wonder why they didn't like California. She liked it fine. She didn't care much for the ranch house, which was creaking and shabby and sad, and full of interminable talk about the Waw, which she took to be some hideous monster, since it had chased her family clear across the country.

But Annimae could always escape from the house and run through the almond trees, far and far along the rows, in spring when they were all pink and white blossoms. Or she might wander down to the edge by the dry creek, and walk barefoot in the cool soft sand under the cottonwoods. Or 79 she might climb high into the cottonwood branches and cling, swaying with the wind in the green leaves, pretending she was a sailor way high in the rigging of a s.h.i.+p.

But as she grew up, Annimae was told she mustn't do such things anymore. Running and climbing was not proper deportment for a lady. By this time there were two mortgages on the ranch, and Annimae's father went about with a hunted look in his eyes, and drank heavily after dinner, bourbon out of the fine crystal that had been brought from Charleston. As a consequence Annimae very much regretted that she could no longer escape from the house, and sought her escape in the various books that had been her mother's. They were mostly such romances and fairy tales as had been thought proper for genteel young ladies a generation previous.

To make matters worse, the money that had been set aside to send her to a finis.h.i.+ng school had gone somehow, so there was no way out there, either; worse vet, Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh took it upon themselves to train her up in the manner of a gentlewoman, her dear Mamma (whose sacred duty it would have been) having pa.s.sed away in the hour of Annimae's birth. They had between them nearly a century's worth of knowledge of what was expected of a fine planter's lady in charge of a great estate, but they so bitterly contradicted each other that Annimae found it next to impossible to please either of them.

When Annimae was fifteen, her father sold off some of the property to the county though Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh warned that this was the beginning of the end. He bought Annimae a pianoforte with some of the money, that she might learn to play. The rest of the money would have paid off the mortgages, if he hadn't speculated in stocks.

By the time Annimae was seventeen she played the pianoforte exquisitely, and across the sold-off fields the new Monterey Road cut straight past the ranch house, within a stone's throw of the window before which she sat as she played. Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh were mortified, and thenceforth withdrew from the porch to the parlor, rather than be exposed to the public gaze on the common highway.

One night Annimae came to the end of an air by Donizetti, and fell silent, gazing out into the summer darkness.

"Do play on, child.," said Aunt Pugh irritably "The young have no excuse to sit wool-gathering. A graceful melody will ease your father's cares."

Annimae's father had already eased his cares considerably with bourbon, upstairs at his desk, but ladies did not acknowledge such things.

"I was just wondering, Aunt Pugh," said Annimae, "Who is it that drives by so late?"

"Why, child, what do you mean?" said Great-Aunt Merrion.

"There's a carriage goes by every night, just about half-past nine," said Annimae. "It's very big, quite a fine carriage, and the driver wears a high silk hat. The strangest thing is, the carriage-lamps are all set with purple gla.s.s, purple as plums! So they throw very little light to see by. I wonder that they are lit at all.

"The horses' hooves make almost no sound, just gliding by. And lately, it goes by so slow! Quite slow past the house, as though they're looking up at us. Who could they be?"

Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh exchanged a significant glance.

"Purple gla.s.s, you say," said Great-Aunt Merrion. "And a driver in a top hat. Is he an old buck-"

and I am afraid Great-Aunt Merrion used a word no true lady ever uses when referring to a member of the Negro race, and Aunt Pugh smiled spitefully at her lapse behind a fan.

"I think so, yes," said Annimae.

"I expect that must be poor crazy Mrs. Nightengale," said Aunt Pugh.

"Poor!" exclaimed Great-Aunt Merrion, with what in anyone less august would have been a snort.

"Poor as Croesus, I'd say. Nouveau Riche, child; no good breeding at all. Do you know how Talleyrand Nightengale made his money? Selling powder and ball to the Yankees! For which he most deservedly died young, of the consumption (they said), and left that bloodstained and ill- gotten fortune to his wife.'

"I heard he shot himself in a fit of drunken despondency and shame," a.s.serted Aunt Pugh. "And she's n.o.body. Some storekeeper's daughter from New Orleans. And there was a child, they say; but it was a puny little thing, and I believe she had to put it into a sanatorium-"

"I heard it died," stated Great-Aunt Merrion, and Aunt Pugh glared at her.

"I believe you are misinformed, Miss Merrion. So what should this foolish woman do but take herself off to the Spiritualists' meetings, and venture into the dens of fortune-tellers, like the low-bred and credulous creature she was."

"And what should that foolish woman come to believe," said Great- Aunt Merrion, cutting in with a scowl at Aunt Pugh, "But that all her misfortunes were caused by the unquiet spirits of those who perished due to Northern aggression supplied by Nightengale Munitions! And one evening when she was table-rapping, or some such diabolical nonsense, her departed husband supposedly informed her that she had to run clean across the country to California to be safe."

"Nor is that all!" cried Aunt Pugh, leaning forward to outshout Great- Aunt Merrion. "She believed that if she built herself a house, and never let the work stop on it, she would not only escape the predations of the outraged shades of the Confederacy, but would herself be granted life everlasting, apparently in some manner other than that promised by our dear Lord and Savior."

"I do wish," said Great-Aunt Merrion, "Miss Pugh, that you would not raise your voice in that manner. People will think you lack gentility. In any case, child-the Widow Nightengale has built herself a mansion west of town. It is a vile and vulgar thing. She calls it Nightengale Manor; but the common children of the street refer to it as Nightmare Mountain. I do hear it has more than a hundred rooms now; and night and day the hammers never cease faking. One wonders that a lady could endure such appalling clamor-"

"But they do say she shuts herself up in there all day, and only ventures forth by night, in that purple carriage of hers," said Aunt Pugh. "Or goes occasionally to make purchases from shopkeepers; yet she never sets a foot to the ground, but they come out to her as though she were the Queen of Sheba, and she picks and chooses from their wares."

"It never ceases to amaze me how common folk will abase themselves before the almighty dollar,"

said Great-Aunt Merrion with contempt, and Aunt Pugh nodded her head in rare agreement.

But on the very next evening, as Annimae's father was lighting the fire in the parlor himself-for the Chinese servants had all been discharged, and were owed back wages at that-Annimae looked out the window and saw the strange carriage coming up the drive.

"Why Daddy, we have callers," she exclaimed.

Annimae's father rose up swiftly, white as a sheet, for he was expecting the Marshall. When the gentle knock came, his mouth was too dry to bid Annimae stay, so she got up to open the door; though Great-Aunt Merrion hissed, "Child, mention that our house boy just died, and you do not yourself customarily-"

But Annimae had opened the door, and it was too late.