Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  Staring where he showed me, I, like the scholar, could make out nothing. I knew of course that this had not been the case with the girl.

  'And the story?'

  'A hundred years ago, the tale has it, one of the great landowning families had one young fair daughter. She was noted as wonderfully vivacious, and how she loved to dance all night at all the balls in the area - for in those days, you understand, sleepy

  L____ was quite a thriving bustling town. Well, it would seem she visited the church and saw the window, and saw the figure of Satan.

  She found him handsome, and, in the way of some young girls, she -

  I do hope you are broadminded - she fell in love with him, with the Devil himself. And she made some vow, something adolescent and messy, with blood and such things. She invited him to come in that form and claim her for a dance. And when the next ball was held, about one in the morning, a great silence fell on the house. The orchestra musicians found their hands would not move, the dancers found their feet likewise seemed turned to stone. Then the doors blew open in a gust of wind. Every light in every chandelier went out - and yet there was plenty of light, even so, to see by: it was the light of Hell, shining into the ballroom. Then a dark figure, a tall dark man, entered the room. He had come as she requested, to claim his dance.

  It seems he brought his own orchestra with him. They were masked, every one of them, but sitting down by the dance-floor they struck up such a waltz that no one who heard it could resist its rhythm - and yet not one in the room could move! Then he came to the landowner's daughter and bowed and asked her for the honour of partnering her.

  And she alone of all the company was freed from the spell. She glided into his arms. He drew her away. They turned and whirled like a thing of fire, while all the rest of the room danced in their bones to the music, unable to dance in any other way, until all their shoes, and the white dresses of the women, and the fine evening clothes of the gentlemen, were dappled inside with their blood! How gruesome!' the scholar cried. He beamed on me. 'But presently the Devil dashed his partner away through the floor. They vanished, and the demon musicians vanished, although no other there was able to regain motion until the cocks crew. As for the girl, they found her skin -her skin, mark you, solely that - some days later on a hill. It had been danced right off her skeleton. But on her face, such as there was of it, was fixed a grin of agonized joy.'

  He paused, grasping his hands together. He said presently, 'You see, in my modest way, I employ these old stories. I am something of a writer…' as if that excused him.

  But I too was smiling. I was thinking of the girl, but not the girl in the story. Miss Lindensouth's strangeness and her youth, the way we had met, and the hold I had instantly obtained.

  'It is a fact, young girls do sometimes,' he said, 'embrace such morbid fantasies - the love of death, or the Dark Angel, the Devil. Myself, I have penned a vampire fiction on this theme -'

  I looked at the window again, along the rose-tree. Nothing was there, except a slight reflection, thrown from the candles, of my own height and dark clothing and hair. These were out of scale and therefore did not fit.

  The scholar offered me a glass of tea, but I explained to him I was already late for one. I told him where, to see if this might mean anything to him. But he was living in the past. He bade me a cheery regretful farewell.

  I rang the bell of the Italian House, and soon enough a maidservant ushered me in. The rooms inside were no longer remotely Italianate.

  They had been choked up with things, furniture, and tables of photographs of staring statue-people, bowls of petals, pianos with shut lids. The entire house-lid seemed shut. It smelled aromatically,

  in the crumbling way an old book does.

  The aunt received me presently in an upper parlour.

  'Madam Lindensouth. How very kind of you. I bring you greetings from Archaroy, but the snow acted as Providence.'

  She was a stern thin woman with a distinct look to her of the niece, the same long black brows, but these pale eyes were watery and short-sighted. She had frequent recourse to pince-nez. Her gown was proper, old-fashioned, and of good material. She wore lace mittens, too.

  'And you are a Mr Mhikalson. But we have not met.'

  'Until this moment.'

  I approached, raised a mitten, and bowed over it. Which made me remember the Devil in the story. I smiled, but had concealed it by the time I lifted my head. She was gratified, she made no bones about that. She offered me a chair and rang for the samovar. I told her of her invented cousins in the city, concocting anecdotes, waiting for her to say, perhaps sharply, But I have never heard of these people.

  To which I must reply, But how odd, for they seem to have heard of you, Madam Lindensouth, and of your daughter. Thereby introducing a careful error which would then make all well, confirming we were at cross-purposes, these Lindensouths were not her Lindensouths.

  And getting us, besides, to the notion of a niece.

  I wondered, too, how long it would be before that niece contrived to make an entrance. Had she not been listening on an upper landing for the twangle of the bell? Or had she given me up? I had not specified a time, but had come late for so eager a visitor.

  Then the tea arrived, which Madam served up-country fashion, very black, with a raspberry preserve. As we were drinking it, she still had not fathomed the cousins in Archaroy. She had simply accepted them, and we had begun to steer our conversation out upon the state of the weather, a proposed wolf-hunt, literature, and the world in general.

  Suddenly however the aunt lifted her head.

  'Now that must be Mardya coming down. My niece, Mr Mhikalson.

  You must meet her, she will want to question you about the city.'

  I felt a wave of relief - and of interest, having learned at last the

  phantom's familiar name.

  I wondered how I should feel when she came in, but inevitably she had not the same personality en famille as she had had outside in the wolf-throated snow-night. Just then she had come from her trance before the window of the rose-snake. But now she had had all night to think of me, all morning pondering if I should come back.

  She stole into the room. Nothing like her sure-footed tread, both mercurial and wanton, of the night. She bore her hands folded on her waist before her, pearl drops in her nacre ears, her eyes fixed only on the aunt.

  'Here is a gentleman from Archaroy,' announced Madam. I did not correct her.

  The girl Mardya dashed me off a glance. It hung scintillating in the overheated air after her eyes had once more fallen. It said, You? You are here? You are real?

  'He has friends, Mardya, who claim to be related to us. It must be the fur connection, or perhaps the diamond connection.' They were suspected of being in trade, that was it - but since she did not inquire it of me, I did not hazard. Traders, evidently, she did not pretend either to know or not to know. 'Well, Mardya,' she said.

  Mardya inclined her head. Her hair was piled upon it, black and silken, not wholly tidy, and so revealing it was none of it false. Her cheeks were flushing now, paling again to a perfect paper white. The earrings blinked. She was acting shy in the presence of her kin.

  'Your aunt has kindly warned me,' I said, 'that you will want to know about the city. I must tell you at once, I am a frequenter of libraries. I read and do very little else.' Behold, madam, I am not in trade, but a beast of leisure and books.

  Mardya, not speaking, stole on towards us. Taking the aunt's glass, she refilled it at the bubbling tea-pitcher.

  'But no doubt you ladies spend a great deal of time with books,' I said. 'The town is very quiet. Or is that only the disaster of winter?'

  'Winter or summer. Such summers we have,' said the aunt. 'The heat is intolerable. My brother had a lodge up in the hills, but we have had to get rid of it. It is no use to us, it was a man's place. My niece, as you say, is something of a reader. And we have our sewing and our

>   music.'

  'And do you, Miss Lindensouth,' I said briskly, 'never dance?'

  She had given back the glass of tea, or I think she would have dropped it. Her whole slender shape locked rigid. Her white eyelids nailed down on her cheeks quivered and would not stop.

  'I do not - I do not dance,' she said - the first thing she had said, in this presence.

  'But I heard such a strange little story today,' I began to the aunt amiably. 'A man I met this morning, an authority on your local legends -'

  'Will you not have another glass of tea?' said Mardya.

  'No, thank you, Miss Lindensouth. But I was saying, the story has to do with a certain window -'

  'Do have another glass,' said Mardya.

  Her voice was hard with wrath, and her eyes were on me, full of tears. She expected betrayal. To have wounded her so easily gave me the anticipated little thrill. She was so vulnerable, one must protect her. She must be put behind the iron shield, defended.

  'No, thank you so much. In fact I must tear myself away and leave you, Madam Lindensouth, in peace.' I rose. 'Except - I wonder if I might ask a great favour of you, madam? Might I borrow your niece for half an hour?' The long brows went up, she adjusted the pince-nez. I smiled and said, 'My sister has imposed the most wretched duty. I was to buy her a pair of gloves, and forgot in my haste of leaving. Now I shall arrive late besides, and probably will never be forgiven. But it occurred to me Miss Lindensouth, who has just the sort of hands, I see, that my sister has, might advise me. She might even do me the kindness of trying on the gloves, selecting a colour. I find this sort of task most embarrassing. I have no idea of what to look for. Which, if I am honest, is why I forgot the transaction in the first place.'

  The aunt laughed, superior upon the failings of the fumbling male.

  'Yes, go along with Mr Mhikalson, Mardya, and assist him with these troublesome gloves. You may place my own order while you are doing so.'

  I bowed to her mitten once more. She sighed, and I caught the faint acidity of medicine on her breath.

  'Perhaps, since you must remain here, you will dine with us tonight?'

  she said, with the grudging air that did not mask a lively curiosity she had begun to have about me.

  'Why, Madam Lindensouth - to be sure of that I will go personally to shovel more snow on the line.'

  She laughed heartily, and bade me get along. Her eyes of watery steel said, If I had been younger. And mine: Indeed, madam, there can be no doubt. But I am too respectful now, and besides maybe I am in search of a wife, and you see what a fine coat this is, do you? But nevertheless, I know where the fount is, the sybil. We understand one another in the way no man finds it possible to understand or to be understood by any woman under forty, and surely you are not much more?

  Down in the street, Mardya Lindensouth spoke to me in a strange cold hot voice.

  'I trust you rested well.'

  'No. I could only lie there and think of seeing you again. I have thought of nothing else since our meeting.'

  'But something delayed you.'

  'Strategy. You saw how I have managed it. I am to dine.'

  She would not take my arm.

  'There are no gloves,' I said, 'I have no sisters.' I said, 'Run her errand later. Where can we go?'

  And all at once, in an arch in one of the old walls of the street, she was leaning her spine to a door, her hands on my breast. It was a daring situation, hidden, unfrequented, yet anyone might look from an upper floor, or come by and see.

  I leaned against her until her back pressed the backs of my hands into the damp wood. She was, though I could only speculate how, no stranger to kisses. Presently, engorged and breathless we pulled apart, and went on down the street. This time she took my arm.

  We went to a pâtisserie along one of the boulevards. To my dismay, at one point, I saw three of my fellow travellers from the train, the

  estate manager among them, going by the window, hesitating at the door - and thank heaven passing on.

  She did not eat anything, only sipped the scalding beverage, which was not so flavoursome as the samovar of Madam.

  'I dreamed of you,' she said, 'all night. I was burning. I thought I should run out into the snow to get cool. But I should freeze there.

  You would come and find me and warm me in your arms. But you would never come back. I knew you at once.'

  'Who am I?'

  'Hush. I do not want to say your name.'

  'Mardya, tell me about the church.'

  'You know everything about me.'

  'The window, Mardya.'

  'Not here…'

  'No one can hear, you whisper so softly, and your warm breath brushes my cheek. Tell me about the window.'

  'It was quite sudden,' she said. Artless, she added, 'Two years ago, when I was fourteen.'

  'Well?'

  'I saw it. The same way the girl does in the story. At first, I tried not to think of it. But I began to dream - how can I tell you those dreams?

  - they were so terrible. I thought my heart must stop, I should die - I longed for them and I feared them.'

  'Pleasure.'

  'Such - such pleasure. I tried not to know. But it has been all I could think of. There is nothing here - in the town. I see no one. No one comes to her house but her friends, the Inspector of Works, the banker - everyone is old, and I am old too when I sit with them. I become like them. My hands get so stiff and my neck and my eyes ache and ache. I have nothing to live for. But now, you are here.'

  'Yes, I am here.' I put my foot gently against hers under the tasselled tablecloth. Our knees almost touched, the fabric of her dress stirred against me. Her cheeks were inflamed now. All about us, human things went on with their chocolate, their tea and cake and sugar.

  'Tonight she will have those two or three friends to dine with you.

  We will dine on chicken bones and aspic tarts. We have no money.'

  'Mardya, be quiet.'

  'I must tell you -'

  'What? How to remain behind in the house after the others have left?'

  She caught her breath.

  I said, 'I remember the lamp burning and how you go about improperly at night, and I would imagine you have fooled her, she never knows. So you are clever in such matters. Shall I hide in some cupboard?'

  'Not now. How can I speak of it? I shall faint.'

  'If you do that, we shall attract attention.'

  'Secretly then. When the darkness comes. In darkness.'

  'One candle, perhaps. You must let me look at you. I want to see all your whiteness.'

  'Hush,' she said again. Her eyes swam, her hands pressed on the glass of tea as if to splinter it. 'I have never -' she said.

  'I know.'

  'You will - care for me?'

  'You will see how I will care for you.'

  Neither of us could breathe particularly well. We burned with fever, our feet pressing and our hands grasping utensils of the tea-table as if to save them in a storm. But she shook so that her earrings flashed, and she could hardly hold the tea-glass any more. I took it from her, and found it difficult in turn to let go of.

  Presently, I settled our account, and we left the shop and went to another, where she ordered needles for her aunt.

  I escorted her up through the town, the second time, past the smoking braziers and the lamplit nothingness of other people and other things.

  On the rise, in the same snow-bounded stone archway, I thrust her back and crushed her to me. Her hands clutched my coat, she struggled to hold me as if drowning. We parted, and went separate ways, to scheme and wait like wolves for the night.

  The dinner party - for such it was to be - was to be also all I had predicted from the picture Mardya had painted.

  The Inspector of Works was there, a blown man with an overblown face, and his wife, a stubborn mouse of a woman much given to a sniff, an old maid in wife's clothing. The elderly unmarri
ed banker had also come, perhaps an ancient flame of Madam's. But we animals were of a proper number and gender, and progressed two by two.

  Madam Lindensouth came to dinner in a worn black velvet and carbuncle locket. When Mardya entered there was some life stirred up, even in the banker. She had on a dress the colour of pale fire, between soft red and softer gold, with her white throat and arms exposed. Madam did not bat an eyelash, so clearly she had not been above suggesting a choice of finery. Mardya was self-conscious, radiant. She flirted with the banker and the Inspector in a way, patently, they had never before experienced, the delicious clumsy coquettishness of an innocent and charming young girl. Only with me was she very cool and restrained. Yet as we came to the table, she did remark, 'Oh, Mr Mhikalson, I have been worrying about it. Those gloves in that particular shade of fawn. Are you quite sure that your sister will be content?'

  Her daring pleased me. I said, unruffled, 'I thought they were more of a yellow tone. The very thing. But then, I told you, I have no judgement in such matters.'

  All this required an explanation, that Miss Lindensouth had been in the town with me buying handwear for my relative. A knowing look passed between the banker and the Inspector's mouse.

  Presumably not one of them had heard the latest news of my train.

  There had been a message at the inn on my return there. The line was expected after all to be clear by four the next morning. The train would depart one hour after, at five o'clock. Of course, I might be prepared to miss it. They might assume I would have no more pressing engagement than a wooing, now I was so evidently embarked.

  All through the desiccated dinner, my fellow guests tried to wring from me, on Madam's behalf, the story of my life, my connections, my prospects. I remained cordially reticent, but here and there let fall

  a word for myself. I am a good liar, inventive and consistent, and quite enjoyed this part of the proceedings. For the meal, it was a terrible event. There was not a drop of moisture in any of it, and the wine, though wet, was fit only for just such a table, and in short supply besides.