To Make Death Love Us (7 page)

"For certain,
madam. He was a great scholar of that greatest of all Southern—perhaps of all American—writ­ers,
Edgar Allan Poe."

"I wouldn't know
about that."

Undaunted, Will
went on. "Why, his collection of Poe memorabilia is world famous. His collection concerning the
history of Baltimore is no small shuck, either. Now, Mrs. Pratt, I wonder if . . ."

"I am not Mrs.
Pratt. I'm her nurse and companion."

Will frowned. This
was more difficult than he'd imag­ined.

There was a piping
sound from inside the room to the right of the door. It had the clarity of a bell.

"Who is it? Who's
there, Agnes?" the voice asked.

"I don't know, Miss
Serena," said the nurse, with the thought in her mind that she didn't want to know.

"Well, whoever it
is, tell him to come into the parlor," said the voice, ever so sweetly.

"I don't think so,
Miss Serena," said the nurse, taking in Will Carney head to toe with one disparaging
glance.

"I do, Agnes. I
really do think you should show the gentleman into the parlor."

The nurse frowned,
but could really see no harm in it as long as she was there to see nothing underhanded was
attempted. Whatever this man was selling, he would make his pitch, fail in that, and soon be
gone. What harm could there be in that?

And Serena, that
poor, lonely creature, had no friends, no other voice but her own, her mad mother's, the kindly
doctor who ministered to their needs, and an occasional tradesman. Another voice, no matter how
absurd a thing it proposed, might be good for Serena. It might entertain her for a little while,
anyway. With that thought, Agnes ushered Will in.

Will Carney held
his hat in his hands and bowed to Serena stiffly from the waist when Serena insisted on the nurse
introducing them. Serena smiled at Will and there was enchantment in it. She ordered tea for both
of them.

Will took the chair
opposite Serena when it was offered. The sight of her legs thrust straight out upon the flowered
cushions gave him a start. If she had heard or sensed it, she gave no sign. She poured the tea
herself and reached out her hands to serve him. When he took the cup and saucer from her, his
hand brushed against hers.

"I am sorry," she
said.

"Sorry, yes, for
what?"

"For the injury to
your hand."

"You could tell
that just by brushing your hand against mine by accident?"

"Yes."

"That is a
wonder."

Will came every day
at about the same hour and they sat and chatted together. One day, he met Mary, the mother, who
smiled at him vaguely and simpered prettily at his flattering compliments. All the while, he was
scheming how to make profit out of all of this. By the end of the week, the nurse trusted him
enough to leave Will and Serena alone.

The doctor, during
his regular visits, was pleased at the animation that seemed to spark Serena because of Will's
visits. However, the doctor wondered secretly if the poor, afflicted child was falling in
love.

When they were left
alone, Will Carney spoke to Serena of the wonders of the great, wide world and made her hunger
for it. She revealed her magical ability to read the printed page with her fingers. Oh, what an
attraction she was going to be if he could manage it.

There was only one
thing for it.

"I've come to love
your daughter, Mrs. Pratt."

He looked first at
Mary Pratt and then to Serena. The moon girl's face shone with the love of being loved. In that
moment, Will said to himself that he wouldn't ever ask for another thing if only that beautiful
creature could be made whole and perfect. Not to get her sight back—that was perhaps asking too
much of Providence—but only to have her legs grow as pretty as the rest of her.

"I want to make her
my wife."

Mary Pratt clapped
her hands for the romance of it. That she should find it objectionable did not occur to her.
However, the nurse-companion called the doctor at once.

He came running. He
looked Will Carney over with a sharp eye and didn't like what he saw now that Will wanted to be
more than a casual visitor of an afternoon. The doctor checked into Will's past and found out
what Will was. Will hadn't been particularly careful about hid­ing his past. He had left too many
clues and loose ends, too many mistakes with his name on them.

The doctor told
Mary and he told Serena. Mary cried because it addled her head to have to decide about things
like what was right or wrong, good or bad.

But Serena only
nodded her head and smiled.

"He's a liar and a
cheat. A charlatan. A carnival man. He's unstable and shiftless. He's had a sordid past and will
have undoubtably a rotten future, if he has any at all. He is trouble. Born to it and bound to
inflict it on Serena. He is all that and more. I've heard certain stories, stories I am too
genteel to repeat. Suffice it to say, the man is an out-and-out scoundrel." The doctor's face was
red with barely suppressed fury.

"I know," Serena
said. And she did know. After all, hadn't she gone back inside herself often enough, back into
that special dream-place that told her all she needed to know of this man Will Carney and more
besides? Per­haps she and she alone understood who this man was, saw the true face hidden beneath
Will Carney's fagade.

"You know?" said
the doctor, with disbelief. "But how could you? You've no experience.with the real world, with
this kind of man."

"I could read it in
his face when I touched him," she said, and it was true, for she could see people in more than
one way.

"Then you can see
it's out of the question. I can't allow it."

"On the contrary,
you can't stop it, doctor," said Serena.

"I can. I will. I'm
trustee of your father's estate. I'll go to law to see that this jackanapes doesn't marry the
heiress he thinks you to be."

"I'm of legal age,"
Serena said with determination.

"I'll do everything
in my power to stop it," said the doctor stubbornly.

Serena just shook
her head. "You don't understand. Not truly, nor can I make you understand. Be happy for me. I am
quite happy for myself." She reached out and covered the doctor's rough hand with her small,
delicately boned fingers. "Besides, you don't have power over me or my life. I let you think it
so because it gives you comfort."

"But Serena . . ."
the old man began, the shadow of tears in the corners of his eyes.

"Be still, my old
and beloved friend. I don't need to be protected from the world. It has been so but I never
wished it. I've been sitting in the window all the after­noons of my life waiting for the one,
waiting for a Will Carney to come and take me out into the world."

But the doctor was
not swayed.

He offered Will
Carney three thousand dollars for Will to leave and never come back. Will pretended shock and
injury to his heart.

"You're afraid I
want the money that might come to her from her father's publishing business. I don't. I'll tell
you that."

"Will you sign a
paper to that effect?" said the doctor quickly, sure he had Will backed into a corner with that
one.

But Will surprised
him.

Will smiled and
said, "I'll sign anything you damn well please."

The doctor had a
paper drawn up and put him to the test. Will signed it without hesitation but the old doctor
wasn't in the least bit satisfied. What, however, could he do? He sensed there was much pain and
trouble for Se­rena in this flashy young man, who could lie as easy by smile or word of mouth as
others could breathe.

Still, what else
but pain and terrible loneliness did Se­rena have inside this strange house? Could he in all
con­sciousness, prevent her from trying her wings, from fly­ing, even if she was only to crash to
the ground a stone's throw away?

"But it can't be
love. It isn't that. You want to make a public show of her! Isn't that your plan, sir?" the
doctor accused Will.

Will took it in
stride. "I am a man of the carnival. It's the way I make my bread and no shame in it. I've got a
fat lady, a midget, a rubber man and a mute strong man in my company. It might look like small
shakes to you but I don't mean to stay that way. I've got my ambitions. I've got my
dreams."

"My point. Just my
point," insisted the doctor. "Your only aim is to exploit Serena's . . . her
condition."

Will Carney stared
across the table at the man who stood between him and his dream.

"Hell! What kind of
life has she got now? I want to give her a life outside this mausoleum she's trapped
in."

"The humiliation
will kill her."

Will was angered by
that, almost more than he in­tended to be. "Humiliation! Humiliation to know that she can earn
her own bread, make her own way in the world, have people around her to talk to. You yourself
know its what she needs to get her through the long lonely days, else what was the purpose in
letting me come around if not to bring some color and life and excitement into her
life?"

"You presume to
..."

But Will hadn't
finished. "Damn, you insult me, sir, and my friends. We may not be your kind of people, Doctor,
but we are people just the same. If these were other days, I'd have to ask you to step outside
and settle this."

"If I were twenty
years younger I'd . . ." began the doctor, clenching his fists and then stopping, letting it
pass. There seemed no getting around it.

In the end, a
compromise was reached. Serena would go with Will Carney but there would be no marriage. It was
better than Will had hoped for. There had been a terrible sickness in him when he thought of
getting into the conjugal bed.

This way Will
Carney had the use of her with none of the rest of it.

Serena never seemed
to expect, nor did she demand, any outward sign of love, either physical or mental, from Will.
Will was sure that Serena had accepted the idea, had resigned herself to his love, to submitting
to his wants or desires. He could tell by the way she looked at him, by the expression on her
face when he came into the room, but he never had quite the courage to test her for
it.

And Serena never
brought it up.

Perhaps because she
already had him again and again in her dreams.

Inside the van it
was as dark as a cave. The light of the work lamp, hooked to the dashboard in the cab, merely
created an oblong of ochre glow. It made a pale nimbus of Serena's hair. It seemed to gather
light where there was no light. For the rest, a detail here and there was picked out. Paulette,
her huge bulk jammed tight among fallen boxes and bales, was seen, in her white sail of a dress,
only as a very slightly paler gray against gray velvet.

Paulette was crying
steadily, more in embarrassment than fear, for having wet herself. She was fastidious about her
personal self, allowing no least soil or stain to mar her huge body. It was the greatest portion
of her pride, as well.

"Stop your crying,
Paulette, please," Colonel John said in a surprisingly deep and vibrant voice. It echoed in the
van, sounding good to his own ears, strong, masculine and, he hoped, without a trace of fear. In
the dark, no one hearing his voice would imagine him a midget.

"Did you take your
. . . Have you taken your . . . Have you relieved yourself, Paulette?" Serena asked, her mind
confused by the jumbled emotions that Paulette projected. It seemed an unkind question but was
not meant as such.

Paulette began to
weep anew.

Serena tried to
reach out to her in the gloom, tried to push a hazy, comforting dream to Paulette across
the
narrow confines of the wrecked
truck—in fact, to each of them, but the accident had unnerved her and her powers seemed to have
waned.

"Damn it, enough!
You mustn't cry any more, sweet Paulette," said Colonel John, not at all unkindly. He reached up
to rap on the window to the cab but it was too high for him and he, like Paulette, was walled in
and trapped by dangerously balanced goods.

"Can you reach the
window, Serena?" he asked.

Serena moved what
little she could, and Colonel John could see her a bit better in the light. She raised her arm
and the whiteness of it floated in the air like a length of ectoplasm risen from the spirit
world. Her fingers moved and trembled, a white sea anemone, a five-fingered sea creature from the
lightless depths, sensitive and alert, sensing the very vibrations in the air.

Her delicate
fingers absorbed the infinitesimal heat cast by the yellow work light. Her fingers reached the
window and drummed lightly upon it.

"Can it be forced
open? Can we break through it, my dear?" the Colonel asked, his face hidden in the
dark.