Household (27 page)

❖

Last week they had actually been able to purchase the charming little pianoforte that Juliet played so beautifully. It also seemed to her that during the last three full moons, Mark’s howls had been infinitely less frequent and his periods of recuperation shorter. Was the curse winding down? Mark enjoyed his walks around the city and more than once had expressed admiration for the American female. He had not mentioned anyone specifically nor would he, she was sure of that. She stifled a sigh. It was really no good to think of the curse’s cessation until they—Mark, Colin and Juliet—were able to...

“
’Tis time, my dear.
”

Lacy rose hastily. For once, she had not noticed the arrival of her great-grandfather. She prayed he had not been a party to tier thoughts, but divining the fact that he was in good humor, she guessed that he had not.

She went down the hall and into the living room, furnished now with a center table flanked by ten straight-backed chairs and the cushioned Queen Anne chair reserved for her. It was a pity, she thought, that the table could accomodate only ten people; for the sake of those who hoped for words from the beyond, she wished it could be twice as many. As she approached her chair, she heard gasps of surprise and knew that each of those present was having second thoughts about her vaunted abilities. There was a paucity of light in the chamber, but most of it came from the dim gaslit globe directly over her chair. It cast a pale green light upon her face and diminutive body and, as had happened before, those present probably looked upon her as little more than a child.

She stood at the table, wishing she could make use of the candelabrum placed in its center. She gladly would have conducted her sittings by sunlight. She enjoyed awakening to brightness and, at first, she had used several branches of candles. However, the protests of those who believed, erroneously, that spirits would only emerge in darkness, caused her to abandon the practice and adhere to custom. It was, she guessed, a custom promulgated by those spurious mediums whose manifestations owed more to stage-magic than to the spirit entities they professed to summon and which were composed of cheesecloth rather than ectoplasm.

As she sank down in her chair, Lucy thought she heard a startled gasp. She looked around the table but could not distinguish the features of anyone present. She could tell from their shapes that there were more women than men—seven to three, in fact. That, she reasoned thankfully, would make matters much easier. Men were ever more skeptical than women, and the negative energy produced by a circle of psychologists, lawyers and judges made her very weary indeed.

“Miss Veringer?”

Lucy stiffened. Someone present knew her by the name she no longer used, having, for convention’s sake, called herself Driscoll and setting about the fiction that Mark was her brother. She gazed around the table vainly trying to pierce the gloom, but to her regret the Old Lord, vigilant as ever, descended upon her. She felt the familiar pounding in her forehead and then nothing more.

At length, the entity known as “Beowulf” departed, and Lucy, opening her eyes, gazed tiredly around a table where everybody was excitedly talking or, as was the case with several women, weeping. She smiled, realizing that the Old Lord had made good his promise and brought back a group of what he would call “innocuous phantoms.” She slumped gratefully among the cushions in her chair. Soon they would go and she could sleep.

“Oh, Swithin, he
was
your father. You can no longer doubt it!”

Lucy tensed, wondering which of the ladies had spoken.

“Wasn’t it a miracle? Surely you must agree now?”

“It was remarkable, Mother,” came the answer couched in terms she remembered so very well, even though she had met the speaker only twice. She felt rather than saw his gaze upon her as he continued. “I believe I have met the medium.”

“Met her? But you never told me...” his mother began.

It was not Lucy’s custom to speak to any of the people that came to her sittings. As the Old Lord had warned, “
Address a word to any one of them and the whole lot of them will be upon you like a swarm of locusts!
” However, upon this occasion she said, almost without conscious volition, “Yes, we have met, Mr. Blake. It is so very nice to see you again.” She got to her feet.

“Miss Veringer!” Amidst a growing babble of exclamations and questions, Swithin Blake arose and strode to her side, grasping her hands warmly. “I knew I could not be mistaken,” he said raising his voice above the clamor. “But why are you here?”

“I...” Lucy began and then, much to her consternation and subsequent regret, fainted dead away.

❖

A month after her third and all-important meeting with Swithin Blake, Lucy, curled on the sofa in the library, watched him striding up and down with an ecstasy mitigated by pain. Since the moment when she had fainted at his feet, she had seen him two and three times a week during the first fortnight. In these last two weeks, he had been there nearly every day. Seven days, three hours and an untold number of minutes ago he had told her he loved her, and since then he had proposed at least 20 times, refusing to be discouraged by her gentle procrastinations. He had just proposed to her again, interspersing his pleas with concerned comments on her state of health.

She knew she looked peaked and could not tell him that much of her weakness was due to lack of sleep, as she tried to find a solution to what seemed an insolvable problem—her duty to the Household. If only she could have told him the truth—but that was impossible. Given his unexpressed but obvious doubts concerning the validity of her occult powers, he would scarcely give credence to anything she told him about her great grandfather, her great-aunt and uncle and her cousin Mark, whom he now believed to be her brother.

“But it is ridiculous. You tell me you are merely resting. How many times in this last month have you been ‘resting’ when I have come to see you? It would not surprise me to learn that you’ve contracted the anemia so prevalent in the city.”

“Oh, I could not have that!” Lucy cried, with a haste she immediately regretted.

Swithin came to stand by her sofa. “Why could you not?” he demanded angrily. “These damned sittings are a drain on your energy, and you know it!”

Lucy’s gaze shifted from his accusing stare to the folds of her new dimity gown with its pattern of blue and pink roses. She replied diffidently, “I do not have anemia. The doctor will attest to that.”

“Ah, so you have been to see a doctor,” he said accusingly. “And what did he say was the matter with you?”

“Nothing.” She raised her eyes that she hoped were candid. She did hate lying to Swithin, but there was no help for it.

“Nothing?” he echoed dubiously. “It is my belief that you did not go and are merely trying to fob me off, but you will not succeed. You are not strong enough to continue with these sessions. A fortnight ago you sustained another fainting spell. That is two in as many weeks.”

“I did not faint last night,” she reminded him.

“You were noticeably paler. Oh, Lucy,” he said, sitting on the edge of the sofa, “if I did not love you so much, if I’d not loved you from the first moment I saw you, I would not insist that you abandon this pursuit.”

“I cannot,” she said in a low, unhappy voice.

“Why not?” He smote his hands together. “Oh God, I hate the way they are using you. I even hate your loyalty, noble as it is.”

“They are not using me, Swithin,” Lucy said gently. “I wish your mind were not sealed shut. In spite of all you’ve seen this past month, you are determined to believe that Mark is hidden in some closet or that I am a ventriloquist rather than a medium.”

He looked at her in surprise. “I have never said...”

“You’ve no need to say anything.” She smiled at him. “I know you.”

“I love you. I want you to marry me and come away from here, from this house that is redolent of death!”

“Swithin!”

“Is it not?” he demanded. “You are like some latter day Charon, ferrying souls back across the Styx and living on the edge of a cemetery. I do not give credence to the arguments that you can afford nothing better. I can take care of you, your brother and those mysterious cousins I so seldom meet.”

“We belong here!” Lucy exclaimed. “All of us must stay together.”

“Why?”

“I can tell you nothing more than I have told you,” she said miserably. “I cannot leave, and I shall not leave. I beg you’ll not ask it of me!”

He stared at her for a long moment and then said incredulously, “Does your celebrity mean so much to you?”

“My celebrity?” She stared at him, wide-eyed with shock and hurt. “It means nothing to me!”

“Does it not?” he countered. “Does it not when each day you are receiving letters from men prominent in their fields, from judges, from physicians, from philosophers...”

“No, no, no!” she exclaimed.

“Then why?”

The moment had come. Experiencing the ecstasy of love for the first time in her life, Lucy had half-persuaded herself that Swithin would not need to know the truth, but there was no escaping her dark heritage. The time of the full moon was almost upon them. As she had done the previous month, she planned to make some glib excuse about Mark and the others. As well as she knew herself, she knew that having once received that knowledge, he would not reveal it. He would only go away and never see her again. A small sob escaped her “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.” He put his arms around her and held her against him. “What is troubling you?”

Before he could answer, a dish full of fruit which had been on the table, suddenly sailed across the room and dropped its contents over the couch, a rain of apples, pears and grapes.

“Good God, what’s that?” Swithin stared about the room. In that same instant, a chair began to bounce up and down, and the table rocked from side to side. The overhead light swayed and another chair slid over to them. Swithin leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s an earthquake!”

“No,” Lucy said despairingly, “it’s not. It’s my great-grandfather, and he’s telling me there’s something you must know. He wants me to tell you now. Please listen.”

“Lucy, my dear, you are not making sense. In an earthquake...”

“It is not an earthquake!” she repeated. “You see... everything is quiet now.”

“But...”

“Please,” she repeated. “Sit down and listen.”

He stared at her confusedly. “Very well.” He resumed his seat. “But I do not see what your great-grandfather... ah, well, continue, my dear.”

He listened quietly while Lucy talked. His silence disturbed her. There seemed something ominous about it. She could not be quite sure of that, however, and she did not look at him. Consequently she was deprived of the play of emotion she might have seen on his features and, in speaking, she was also deliberately closing her mind to any vibrations she might have picked up.

As she talked, she strove to be emotionally detached from the agonies that had afflicted the Household in the years following the eviction of Erlina Bell. Even though the seeds of evil had been planted long before, it was impossible not to blame the greater part of their misfortunes on her. However Lucy could not remain totally detached, not when she spoke of Juliet’s tragic encounter with Simeon Weir and the equally tragic death of her brother Colin. Yet, meeting them now, she was sure that Swithin would be hard put to imagine a time when Juliet had not been bright, gay and a little brittle. Her vulnerability was gone and Colin’s as well. Lucy had an interior shiver, thinking that if such a horrid fate were to befall her, she would do as Colin had done and leave instructions as to the disposal of her body. Tony should have respected his brother’s wishes in regards to both of them. Yet selfishly enough, she was glad he had not. Mentally, she fled away from these thoughts. She had to finish her narrative, her Arabian Night’s fantasy that must spell the death of all her hopes concerning the only man she could ever love.

Valiantly she continued and was surprised to find that as she finally concluded her history that the sun was definitely lower. In another hour or so, Juliet and Colin would emerge from their crypt. She looked at Swithin and found him grim. She had anticipated that, but she had not expected to hear him say, “Was it necessary to tell me all this?”

“I thought it was,” she conceded, still too emotionally drained to fathom the workings of his mind.

“I could have accepted a simpler refusal,” he returned witheringly.

“A simpler...?” She stared at him in consternation.

“A yes or a no, would have sufficed—but this fairy talc... ! What manner of fool do you think me? You may deceive yourself into believing you live in a world of ghosts and demons, and you may deceive half the population of Boston. However I, I hope, am a rational man. I haven’t believed in Red Riding Hood and the Wolf since I was five!” He rose and moved toward the entrance hall. “I will,” he said heavily, “bid you good afternoon, Miss Veringer.” He went swiftly out of the room, and seconds later the front door closed softly behind him.

Lucy slipped from the sofa and ran after him. She did not get very far, for she stumbled and fell. She did not try to rise but lay there, weeping as bitterly as she ever had in the whole of her life.

“
Child, darling.
”

She felt the Old Lord close beside her. “Oh, Great-grandfather, he’d not believe me? Why?”

“
He prides himself on being a rational man, child. As I, myself, once did, laughing at gods and demons alike and breaking the eternal laws. I only hope that
...”

She was frightened at the sudden termination of his sentence. “What do you only hope?” she whispered.

“
Nothing, child. You are weeping. Do not weep.
”

Lucy’s curls were stirred by a gentle breeze that was no breeze but the five fingers of her great-grandfather, trying vainly to soothe her. “I love him. I did not want to tell him, but I could not leave you all, and he had to know the reason why. Why would he imagine I was refusing him?”

“
Because he did not understand. He is sorely confused, as I once was. God grant he does not learn as I learned, but he will not. The curse does not lie on his head.
”