Household

by Stevenson, Florence

  “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.”

  His words were meant to be comforting, but they were not. They filled her with fear. It seemed to her that the Old Lord was implying that Swithin was in some manner of danger. “I an worried about him. Is he safe?”

  “Of course he is safe, my dear. I beg you will not fret nor turn your thoughts upon him too much. It will not do, you know.”

  “I do know. I am sorry that I told him so much, but I thought y
ou wanted me to do so... and I knew I could trust him.” She was suddenly aware that she was speaking to emptiness. The Old Lord had gone.

  Lucy rose and fled to her room, flinging herself on the bed, but she no longer wept. It occurred to her that she was frightened for Swithin, but why? She did not know. And thinking of him, she grew angry, too. He should have believed her! Fear quickly replaced the anger again, and this fear was all the more fearful because it was dense, amorphous and unreasonable. Swithin would go home to his family and his comfortable house. He would forget about her and marry a young woman of good family and... Lucy could think no more, would think no more. She lay watching the clouds floating through the sky, clouds streaked with the rays of the descending sun, and wondered how many more sunsets she would see through that window in a room that was suddenly very lonely.

  Four

  Swithin Blake’s anger had evaporated. Sitting in his late father’s library, he stared gloomily into the darkening garden. He had been there a long time, pondering on the fantasies Lucy had spun for him, more than mere fantasies—a phantasmagorical! Yet she had seemed so earnest, so honest, as if every word that fell from her lips was no more than the truth—but how could it be true? He had always been a realist. How could he credit her tale? How could she expect that he would? A mocking laugh rose in his throat and turned into a sob. He had not lied when he told her he loved her from the first moment he had seen her. A vision of her dainty form and delicate beauty came to him. She was so lovely, and to see her in the darkness with all those strange voices issuing from those shapely lips had seemed arrant trickery to him, this despite the evidence of his senses.

  During the time he had been participating in the circle, it had seemed as if his father really had spoken to himself and his mother. She believed it implicitly, but subsequently he had been extremely doubtful. He had been willing to accept Lucy’s chicanery, telling himself that she was the tool of her brother or rather cousin Mark, which was the way they had first been introduced, he recalled now. And whether cousin or brother, Mark was a werewolf?

  “No!” he exclaimed explosively. “No!”

  How could she have expected him to believe that, to believe everything she told him? There had been such hurt in her eyes when he challenged her preposterous tale. Had it been assumed? No, it was real. He had to think!

  Rising, he thrust his hands into his pockets and paced back and forth across the room, trying to understand why she had found it necessary to tell him anything so outrageous. His thoughts were momentarily deflected by the feel of something soft and squishy in his pocket. He found that it was a rather elderly grape and remembered what he had totally forgotten—the disturbance in Lucy’s living room, the rain of fruit!

  What had caused him to put that out of his mind?

  Had he excised it unconsciously because it eluded explanation?

  He stared at the grape and remembered the moving chairs. Purposefully he strode from the library and went into the kitchen where Mrs. Anawalt, the cook, was preparing dinner. As he expected, the housekeeper was there, too, as was one of the housemaids. Tentatively he asked if there had been an earthquake that day. They looked at him with amazement. “Oh, no sir,” they chorused.

  Thanking them, he came out and followed where his feet led him which was out of the doors and in the direction of Lucy’s house. The sun was nearly down, and as he reached the street that lay along the graveyard, he remembered something to which he had paid little heed. She had mentioned that her aunt and uncle dwelt in one of the crypts. He remembered the pair and had thought it one of the anomalies of a big family that Lucy should possess an uncle who was her age and an aunt who seemed much younger. The iron gates of the cemetery were still open. On an impulse, he strode inside. Certainly, it would lend credence to her story if he were to see them in the act of emerging from their tombs.

  Though he was not familiar with this particular cemetery, he rather thought that the larger monuments lay toward the back of the graveyard. He was nearing the path he thought might lead in the direction when he heard a step behind him.

  “Why, Swifty, what are you doing here?”

  He turned quickly and much to his surprise saw Bertie Lowndes, whom he had known at Harvard. He had lost sight of him in the last few years. “Hello, Bertie,” he said cordially. “I haven’t had anyone call me that in years.” He stretched out his hand.

  Bertie shook it. “I suppose not. Once you leave school all the old nicknames go by the boards. What, may I ask, are you doing here after dark? It is not a particularly pleasant place for a stroll.”

  Swithin glanced up and saw that it was growing very dark. “Oh, I know someone who lives near here. I thought I would take a short cut.”

  “I see.”

  “Come to think of it, what are you doing here? I’d heard...” Swithin paused, unable at the moment to remember just what he had heard about Bertie Lowndes. They had never been very close at the university. Bertie had been too inclined to burn his candle at both ends and had belonged to a rather fast set.

  “What had you heard?” Bertie asked in an abrupt and even belligerent turn of voice, almost, Swithin thought, as if he were looking for an argument.

  “Nothing, old man,” he said quickly. “How have you been faring since leaving Harvard?”

  “Well enough. I do not complain. It would be no use.” Bertie shrugged.

  “That sounds as if you might have experienced some disappointments,” Swithin said sympathetically. “I hope they were not too severe.”

  “Not really. Where are you walking? I might as well go along with you.”

  Swithin experienced some little annoyance. It would be no use to go the crypts. Bertie had detained him too long; Juliet and Colin would be gone by now. He blushed, hoping that his old classmate wasn’t a mindreader, but that, too, was in the realm of of the impossible. He said, “I’m bound for a house that is...” He glanced around and was even more annoyed. He was no longer sure where he was. In searching for the right path, he had stepped away from the fence, and now in the increasing darkness, he had lost his bearings. He said, “I don’t actually know where I am. I know I want to go to the gates.”

  “I know the way,” Bertie responded. “I will be glad to show you.”

  “That would be a real service,” Swithin said gratefully.

  “We will go in this direction.” Bertie turned up a graveled path.

  Following him, Swithin was vaguely troubled. Someone had told him something about Bertie, but for the life of him, he could not remember what it was. He had never really been a close friend to Bertie Lowndes. He had taken his legal studies at Harvard very seriously. Bertie, he recalled, had never been serious about anything except enjoying himself and in rather strange ways, now that he thought of it. He had formed some kind of a society, and there’d been a scandal of sorts. Again he could not remember quite what. Esoteric studies had come into it. Yes! Bertie had been playing around with the occult. And hadn’t one of his cronies been hurt during a weird ceremony? He had not heard much about it, mainly because the whole matter had been suppressed by the college authorities. The young men involved had been expelled, Bertie among them. Excitedly, he brushed that recollection aside. He could not believe his luck! Bertie had been interested in the occult—that was definite—and he might be able to sound him out about Lucy’s strange story.

  He looked toward his guide, who was several feet ahead of him, standing near a little stone mausoleum. Swithin stifled a sigh, remembering his mission, but it was much darker now. He joined Bertie, saying, “I have a rather foolish question to ask you.”

  “Foolish, Swifty? In what way?”

  “I have been hearing some rather fantastic tales of late. It seems that there are people who really think that...” He paused, embarrassed, wondering if it would not be better to dismiss the subject. Undoubtedly Bertie would consider him quite mad, for certainly he could no longer believe in the devils and demons he and his followers unsuccessfully had t
ried to rise. This, he remembered now, was what the furor had been all about.

  “Think what, old man?” Bertie prompted.

  “Well, that... ghosts and vampires really exist.”

  “Vampires, too? That’s most unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate?” Swithin flushed. “Well, I expect it is—to be so superstitious in this day and age.”

  “Exactly. I would prefer that everyone be as enlightened as... well, you, for instance. I am quite sure that you don’t believe in that sort of thing, old man.”

  Swithin was even more embarrassed. “You’re no longer interested in the occult, I see.”

  “I shouldn’t say that.” Bertie laughed. “But my interest has taken a different turn.”

  “That means that you are no longer so deeply involved?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Bertie said musingly. “Why are you so interested in ghosts and vampires? We were never very closely allied at Harvard, but I do seem to recall that you were more inclined toward scientific rather than psychic research.”

  “That’s true,” Swithin agreed uncomfortably.

  “As I said before, I wish, old man, that everyone were like you.”

  “You have changed.”

  “Oh, yes, I have changed. Indeed, I have changed.” Bertie laughed.

  “Well, I suppose that’s all to the good. Disregard my question, please.” Swithin looked around him at a vista of old trees. Near them were moon-illumined gravestones, and a short distance away he saw another mausoleum. It seemed to him that they had penetrated deeper into the cemetery. It was very quiet here, preternaturally quiet. He did not even hear the usual chorus of crickets and frogs, which was odd. Generally they were everywhere. He wondered if Bertie were as knowledgeable about the lay of the cemetery as he had professed. “Where are we?” he inquired.

  “To quote the late Mr. Poe, we have arrived upon the ‘nightly shore’,” Bertie laughed.

  Swithin also laughed. “That’s not quite an answer.”