Mother Aegypt and Other Stories Part 13

"It's by way of being her house of mysteries, isn't it?" said Bridget, sorting through the linen hamper.

"Her command post, if you like, where she plans the battle against the wicked dead every night. There's strange things goes on in there! Chanting all hours, and flashes of light , and sometimes screams to freeze the blood in you! She's a brave lady, the mistress. all for our Danny's sake, just to keep his dear heart beating."

"I'm afraid he gets a little restless now and then," said Annimae uncomfortably. "He says that sometimes he doubts that there's any spirits at all."

The mother and daughter were silent a moment, going about their tasks.

"Poor boy," said Bridget at last. "It's to be expected, with him growing up the way he has. Seeing is believing, sure, and he's never seen danger."

"Do you believe in the spirits?" Annimae asked.

"Oh, yes, Ma'am," said Gardenia quietly. "Without a doubt."

So the brief bright days blinked past, like images on nickelodeon screens, and the long fevered nights pa.s.sed in lazy ecstasy. The last of the summer fruit was garnered away in the vast cellars, with Bridget and her daughters carrying down tray after tray of gla.s.s jars full of preserves. The orchards were golden.

When the leaves began to fall, G.o.dfrey and G.o.dwin raked great red and yellow heaps that were set to smolder in the twilight, like incense.

There came an evening when Annimae was awakened at midnight, as she always was, by the summoning bell. Yet as its last reverberation died away, no customary calm flowed back like black water; instead there came a drumming, ten times louder than the desultory beat of hammers, a thundering music, and faint voices raised in song.

As she lay wondering why anyone would be drumming at this hour of the night, she felt Daniel sit up beside her.

"Listen!" he said eagerly. "Don't you hear? They're dancing!"

"Is that all it is?" said Annimae, a little cross. The sound frightened her for some reason.

"It's their holiday. We must go watch," said Daniel, and she felt him getting out of bed.

"We mustn't!" she cried. "It's not safe for you, honey."

"Oh, there's a safe way," he said, sounding sly. She heard him open a cabinet and take something from a hanger. "I go watch them every year. This year will be the best of all, because you're with me now. Don't be afraid, my darling."

She heard him walk around to her side of the bed. "Now, get up and come with me. I've put my shroud on, and I'll walk behind you all the way; and no one will see us, where we're going."

So she slid from the bed and reached out, encountering a drape of gauze cloth. His hand came up through it and took hers rea.s.suringly, tugged her impatiently to the secret panel. So quickly they left the room that she had no time to pull on even a st.i.tch, and she blushed hot to find herself out in the corridor naked. Yet it was a hot night, and in any case much too dark to be seen.

"Fifty paces straight ahead, Annimae, and then turn left," Daniel told her.

"Left? But I've never gone that way," said Annimae.

"It's all right," Daniel said, so for love's sake she followed his direction. She walked before him the whole way, though she kept tight hold of his hand through the shroud. Left and right and right again he directed her, through so many turns and up and down so many stairs she knew she'd never find her way back alone, even when they reached a place with windows where milky starlight glimmered through. The house was silent, the corridors all deserted. The drumming, however, grew louder, and the clapping and chanting more distinct.

"This is the earliest thing I can remember," Annimae heard Daniel say. "I woke up in the dark and was scared, and I tried to get out. How I stumbled over everything, in my shroud! I must have found the catch in the panel by accident, because the next thing I knew, there was the corridor stretching out ahead of me. It seemed as bright as stars, then. I followed after the music, just as we're doing now. And, look!

This is the window I found."

They had come around a corner and entered a narrow pa.s.sage ending in a wall, wherein was set one little window in the shape of a keyhole. Daniel urged her toward it, pus.h.i.+ng gently She could see something bright flickering, reflecting from below along the beveled edges of the gla.s.s.

"My true love, I do believe somebody's lit a fire outside," said Annimae.

"Yes! Don't be afraid. Look out, and I'll look over your shoulder," said Daniel.

So Annimae bent and put her face to the gla.s.s, and peered down into a courtyard she had never before seen. There was indeed a fire, a bright bonfire in the center, with a column of smoke rising from it like a ghostly tree. Gathered all around it, swaying and writhing and tossing their heads, were all the servants. G.o.dfrey and G.o.dwin sat to one side, pounding out the beat of the dance on drums, and all their brothers and sisters kept time with their clapping hands, with their stamping feet. they were singing in a language Annimae had never heard, wild, joyful. Now and again someone would catch up an armful of autumn leaves and fling them on the blaze, and the column of smoke churned and seemed to grow solid for a moment.

The beat was infectious, enchanting. It roused desires in Annimae, and for the first time she felt shame and confusion. This was neither in fairy tales nor in the Bible. It did not seem right to feel her body moving so, almost against her will . Daniel, pressing hot behind her, was moving too.

"Oh, how I stared and stared," said Daniel. "And how I wanted to be down there with them! They never have to live in fear, as I do. they can dance in the light . How can I dance, in a shroud like this? Oh, Annimae, I want so badly to be free! Watch now, watch what happens."

Annimae saw Gardenia filling her ap.r.o.n with leaves, to pitch a bushel of them on the fire. The flames dimmed momentarily, and when they roared up again she saw that two new dancers had joined the party.

Who was that black man, bigger than all the rest, waving his carved walking stick? How well he danced! The others fell back to the edges and he strutted, twirled, undulated around the fire. Now he was sinuous as a great snake, powerful as a river; now he was comic and suggestive. Annimae blushed to see him thrust his stick between his legs and rock his hips, and the stick rose up, and up, and he waved and waggled in it such a lewd way there were screams of laughter from the crowd. Even Daniel, behind her, chuckled.

Shocked as she was by that, Annimae was astounded to see a white girl down there at the edge of the fire, joining the black man in his dance. Who could she be? What kind of hoydenish creature would pull her skirt up like that and leap over the fire itself? Her hair was as bright as the flame, her face was fierce, her deportment mad as though she had never, ever had elderly aunts to tell her what ladies mustn't do. Oh! Now she had seized a bottle from one of the onlookers, and was drinking from it recklessly; now she spat, she sprayed liquor into the fire, and when the others all applauded she turned and sprayed them too.

Then the black man had slipped his arm around her. He pulled her in and the pace of the dance quickened. Round and round they went, orbiting the fire and each other, and the drumming of their heels drove Annimae almost to guilty frenzy. Rough and tender and insistent, the music pulsed. As she stared, she felt Daniel's hands move over her, and even through the shroud his touch drove her mad. She backed to him like a mare. He rose up like a stallion.

"You're my fire, Annimae," moaned Daniel. "You're my music, you're my dance. You're my eyes in the sunlight and my fever in the dark. We will escape this house, some day, my soul!"

It was all Annimae could do to cling to the windowsill, sobbing in pleasure and shame, and the drumbeats never slowed Though they did cease, much later. Annimae and Daniel made their unsteady way back through the black labyrinth, and slept very late the next day The next afternoon, Gardenia came to Annimae as she walked in the garden and said: "If you please, Ma'am, there's two old ladies come to call on you ."

Annimae went at once inside, back through chambers she hadn't entered in months, out to the front of the house. There in a front parlor alarmingly full of the cold light of day sat Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh, inspecting the underside of a vase through a pair of lorgnettes.

"Why, child, how pale you are!" cried Aunt Pugh, as Annimae kissed her cheek.

"How you do peer out of those spectacles, child!" said Great-Aunt Merrion, giving her a good long stare through her lorgnette. "Far too much reading in sickrooms, I'll wager. Wifely duty is all very well, but you must think of yourself now and then."

Annimae apologized for being pale, explaining that she had a headache, and wore the gla.s.ses against brightness. She bid Gardenia bring coffee for three, and poured as gracefully as she could when it came, though she still spiked a little.

The aunts graciously overlooked this and told her all the news from the almond ranch. Her father's investments had suddenly prospered, it seemed; the mortgages were all paid off, the servants all hired on again. Her father had once more the means to dress as a gentleman, and had bought a fine stable of racehorses. Why, they themselves had come to visit Annimae in a grand new coach-and-four! And all the merchants in town were once again respectful, deferential, as they ought always to have been to ladies of gentle birth.

But Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh had heard certain loose talk in town, it seemed; and so they had known it was their duty to call on Annimae, and to inquire after her health and well-being.

They asked all manner of questions about Annimae's daily life, which Annimae fended off as best she might, for she knew it was dangerous to speak much of Daniel. Detecting this, the old ladies looked sidelong at each other and fell to a kind of indirect questioning that had never failed to produce results before.

Annimae was tired, she was still a little shaken and, perhaps, frightened by the violent delight of the previous evening. Her aunts, when all was said and done, had known her all her life. Somehow she let slip certain details, and the aunts pressed her for explanations, and so- "Do you tell me you've never so much as seen your husband, child?" said Aunt Pugh, clutching at her heart.

"Good G.o.d Almighty!" Great-Aunt Merrion shook with horror. "Miss Pugh, do you recollect what that Mrs. Delano said outside the milliner's?"

Aunt Pugh recollected, and promptly fainted dead away.

Annimae, terrified, would have rung for a servant at once; but Great- Aunt Merrion shot out a lace-mittened fist and caught her hand.

"Don't you ring for one of them" she whispered. She got up and closed the parlor door; then produced a vial of smelling salts from her handbag. Aunt Pugh came around remarkably quickly, and sat bolt upright.

"Child, we must break your heart, but it is for your own sake," said Great-Aunt Merrion, leaning forward. "I fear you have been obscenely deceived."

She proceeded to relate what a Mrs. Delano had told her, which was: that she had a cousin who had known Mrs. Nightengale in Louisiana right after the Waw, when all her cares were first besetting her.

This cousin, who had an excellent memory was pretty sure that Mrs. Nightengale's baby had not merely been sick, it had in fact died. Moreover, there were stories that Mrs. Nightengale was much too familiar with her household staff, especially her coachman.

"If you know what I mean," Great-Aunt Merrion added.

Annimae protested tearfully, and gave her aunts many examples of Daniel's liveliness. Aunt Pugh wept like a spigot, rocking to and fro and moaning about the shame of it all, until Great-Aunt Merrion told her to cease acting like a fool.

"Now, you listen to me, child," she said to Annimae. "There's only one reason that woman would concoct such a c.o.c.k-and-bull story. I'll tell you why you can't look on the face of that son of hers! He is a mulatto."

"That's not true!" said Annimae. "I saw his baby picture."

"You saw a picture of the baby that died, I expect," said Aunt Pugh, blowing her nose. "Oh, Annimae!"

"There used to be plenty of old families got themselves a little foundling to replace a dead boy, when the estate was entailed," said Great-Aunt Merrion. "So long as there was a male heir, decent folk held their tongues about it. Money kept the nursemaids from telling the truth.

"Well, hasn't she plenty of money? And didn't she move clear out here to the West so there'd be n.o.body around who knew the truth? And who'll see the color of her sin, if he's kept out of sight?"

"What's his hair like, child? Oh, Annimae, how you have been fooled!" said Aunt Pugh.

"Likely enough he's her son" sneered Great-Aunt Merrion. "But he's not the one who ought to have inherited."

Annimae was so horrified and angry she nearly stood up to her aunts, and as it was she told them they had better leave. The old women rose up to go; but Great-Aunt Merrion got in a parting shot.

"Ghosts and goblins, my foot," she said. "If you're not a fool, child, you'll sneak a penny candle and a match into that bedroom, next time you go in there, just you get yourself a good look at that Daniel Nightengale, once he's asleep. You'd better be sure than be a lasting disgrace to your father."

Annimae fled to the darkness to weep, that none might see her. Two hours she fought with her heart.

All the fond embraces, all the words of love, all the undoubted wisdom of the Spiritualists and her own wedding vows were on her heart's side. But the little quailing child who lived within her breast too thought of the aunts' grim faces as they had spoken, backed up by the dead certainties of all grandmothers and aunts from the beginning of time.

In the end she decided that their dark suspicions were utterly base and unfounded. But she would slip a candle and a match in her ap.r.o.n pocket, all the same, so as to prove them wrong.

And when she came in to Daniel at last, when his glad voice greeted her and his warm hands reached out, she knew her heart was right, and silenced all doubt. Sam came in and served them supper, and she listened and compared the two voices, straining for any similarity of accent. Surely there was none!

And when the supper dishes had been taken away and Daniel took her in his arms and kissed her, she ran her hands through his thick hair. Surely it was golden!

And when they lay together in bed, there was none of the drum-driven madness of the night before, no animal hunger; only Daniel gentle and chivalrous, sane and reasonable, teasing her about what they'd do when he could go to Paris or Rome at last. Surely he was a gentleman!

But she had slipped the candle and the match under her pillow, and they lay there like wise serpents, who wheedled: Wouldn't you like just a glimpse of his face?

At last, when he had fallen asleep and lay dreaming beside her, she reached under the pillow- and brought out the match. No need to light the candle, she had decided; all she wanted was one look at his dear face. One look only, in a flash no evil ghost would have time to notice. And who would dare harm her darling, if she lay beside him to keep him safe? One look only, to bear in her mind down all the long years they'd have together, one tiny secret for her to keep like a pressed flower Annimae touched his face, ran her fingers over his stubbly cheek, and set her hand on his brow to shade his eves from the light . He sighed and murmured something in his sleep. With her other hand, she reached up and struck the match against the bedpost.

The light bloomed yellow.

Daniel was not there. n.o.body was there. Annimae was alone in the bed.

Unbelieving, she felt with her hand that had been touching his cheek, his brow, that very second.

There was nothing there.

That was when Annimae dropped the match, and the room was gone in darkness, and she could feel her throat contracting for a scream. But there was a high shriek beginning already, an inhuman whine as though the whole room were lamenting, and that was Daniel's voice rising now in a wail of grief, somewhere far above, as though he were being puked away from her, receding and receding through the darkness.

ANNIEMAE!".

The bed began to shudder. The room itself, the very house began to shake. She heard a ringing impact from the bathroom, as the silver pitchers were thrown to the tiled floor. The table by the bed fell with a crash. A rending crack, a boom, the sound of plaster falling; a rectangle full of hectic blue-white light , and she realized that the secret panel had been forced open.

Annimae's mind, numb-shocked as it was, registered Earthquake with a certain calm. She grabbed her robe and fled over the tilting floor, squeezed through the doorway and ran down the long corridor.

Tiny globes of ball lightning crackled, spat, skittered before her, lighting her way at least. But she could see the walls cracking too, she could see the plaster dropping away and the bare laths. The carpet flexed under her feet like an animal's back. The shaking would not stop.

She rounded a corner and saw Mrs. Nightengale flying toward her, hair streaming back and disheveled, hands out as though to claw the slow air. Her face was like a Greek mask of horror and rage, her mouth wide in a cry that Annimae could not hear over the roar of the failing house. She sped past Annimae without so much as a glance, vanis.h.i.+ng in the direction of Daniel's rooms.

Annimae ran on, half-falling down a flight of stairs that was beginning to fold up even as she reached the bottom, and then there was a noise louder than any she'd heard yet, loud as an explosion, louder than the cannons must have been at Gettysburg. To her left there was an avalanche of bricks, mortar, splinters and wire, as a tower came down through three floors and carried all before it. It knocked out a wall and Annimae saw flowers glimmering pale through the plaster-dust, and dim stars above them.

She staggered forth into the night and fled, sobbing now, for her heart was beginning to go like the house. On bleeding feet she ran; when she could run no further she fell, and lay still, and wept and knew there was no possible consolation.

Some while later Annimae raised her head, and saw that the sky was just beginning to get light in the east. She looked around. She was lying in a drift of yellow leaves. All around her were the black trunks and arching branches of the orchard, in a silence so profound she might have gone deaf. Turning her head uncertainly, looking for the house, she saw them coming for her.

A throng of shadows, empty-eyed but not expressionless, and at their head walked the dancers from the fire: the black man with his stick, the red- headed hoyden. Beyond them, dust still rising against the dawn, was the nightmare mountain of rubble that had been the home of true love.

Annimae lay whimpering at their approach. With each step they took the figures altered, changed, aged. They became Sam and Bridget Lacroix. The sullen shades in their train began to mutter threateningly, seemed about to surge forward at Annimae; but Sam stopped, and raised his cane in a gesture that halted them. His sad stern face seemed chiseled from black stone.

"Shame on you, girl," he said. "Love and Suspicion can't live together in the same house, no matter how many rooms it has."

Annimae scrambled to her feet and ran again. They did not follow her.

She forgot who she was, or why she was traveling, and she had no destination in mind. By day she huddled in barns or empty sheds, for the sunlight hurt her eyes unbearably. By night she walked on, ducking out of sight when a horseman or a carriage would come along her road. For some days she wandered up a bay sh.o.r.e, following the tideline. The mud felt cool on her cut feet.

At length she came to a great city, that whirred and clattered and towered to the sky. She regarded it in wonder, hiding among the reeds until nightfall, hoping to pa.s.s through in the dark. Alas! It was lit bright even after midnight. Annimae edged as close as she dared, creeping through the shadows, and then turned to stare; for she found herself outside a lovely garden, planted all in roses, shaded by high dark cypresses, and the wrought-iron gate was unlocked. It seemed as though it would be a comforting place to rest.

She slipped in, and stretched out on one of the cool white marble beds. Angels mourned, all around her.

When the pastor at Mission Dolores found her, she was unable to speak. He had his housekeeper feed her, bathe her, and tend to her feet; he sent out inquiries. No one came forward to claim Annimae, however, and the sisters at the Sacred Heart convent agreed to take her in.

In the peace, in the silence punctuated only by matins and evensong, gently bulked by well-meaning maternal women, still she remained mute; but her memory, if not her voice, began to come back to her.

There was still too much horror and confusion to absorb, though one fact rose clear and bleak above the rest: she had lost her true love.

He had been dead. He had been imaginary He had been real, but she had betrayed him. She would never hear his voice again.

She would be alone the rest of her life.

And it seemed a grimly appropriate fate that she should come full circle to end up here, a child in a house full of aunts, confined to the nursery where she clearly belonged, having failed so badly at being a grown woman. Perhaps she would take the veil, though she had always been told to distrust Catholics as minions of the Pope. Perhaps she would take Jesus as her new husband.

But one morning Annimae woke to a welling nausea, and barely made it to the little bathroom at the end of the dormitory hall before vomiting. Afterward she bolted the door, and ran water for a bath.

Stepping into the water, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

She stared, and stared unbelieving at her swollen body

Merry Christmas from Navarro Lodge, 1928.