Household

by Stevenson, Florence

  “But it’s all you need to know, old man.” Bertie stepped close to him, and Swithin, seeing his face in the light from a three-quarter moon, was taken aback. Bertie did not look at all well. There were deep circles under his eyes, and surely he was much thinner than when he had attended Harvard. In fact he looked as if he were suffering from consumption... consumption! Swithin suddenly recalled what he had heard about Bertie.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed and saw Bertie take a quick step back. “Do you know what I thought? It shows you that you can never credit rumor!”

  “What manner of rumor would that be, old man?”

  “I heard that you had contracted some manner of pernicious anemia and... and...”

  “And died from it?” Bertie inquired.

  “Yes.” Swithin nodded. “That’s what I heard.”

  “It was true, old man.” Bertie smiled widely. “You were asking me about vampires, I think?”

  Swithin, staring at Bertie’s gleaming fangs, was filled with a horror that lived up to all the descriptions he had ever heard of it, turning him icy cold. Coupled with that was a terror which invaded every pore of his body. He wanted to turn and run, but he could not move. He was, as it were, rooted to the spot. In that moment, Bertie’s hand fastened on his arm. His grip was strong and hurtful. Swithin tried to pull away but the hand that held him could have been fashioned from iron. “You...” he mouthed. “You are...”

  “Quite, old man. I do not know why you were wandering through this graveyard, but for me, your presence is most fortuitous. The search for sustenance is often wearying and can take the better part of a night. Of course, I would prefer a female.” To Swithin’s increased horror, Bertie licked his lips with the tip of a pale tongue. “But on the other hand,” he continued blithely, “the idea of having you among our ranks is quite to my taste. You were always so tediously industrious at the university. Several of my professors pointed you out as the ideal student, calm, rational and brilliant. I hardly think that any of these qualities will sustain you at this moment which, I fear, will be your last. But I expect you will employ them to even better...”

  “Bertie, darling, good evening! And Swithin! I wasn’t aware that you knew each other.” Juliet, in a white gown worn over one of her largest crinolines, stepped up to them. She was followed by Colin who was in evening dress.

  “Bertie,” he exclaimed. “Swithin, good to see you again. My father told me I might find you here.”

  Swithin found his voice. “Good evening,” he managed to say.

  Despite the friendliness of their greetings, Bertie Lowndes did not appear to welcome the sight of either. Still grasping Swithin’s arm so tightly that the circulation felt as if it were shut off, he said coldly, “What are you doing here?”

  “Darling, Bertie, is that the way to speak to us? Why are you being such an old grouch?” Juliet laid her hand lightly on Swithin’s other arm.

  “Go away!” Bertie said shrilly. “You have no right here. This man is mine!”

  “Unless I am deeply mistaken about his proclivities, I hardly think Swithin will agree with you,” Juliet quipped.

  “You have no right to interfere,” Bertie retorted menacingly.

  Colin stepped closer. “This man is practically a member of our family, Bertie.”

  “Curse your damned family!” Bertie finally loosened his hold on Swithin’s arm.

  “You are too late, my dear, by some seventy-five years. That has already been accomplished, and now you really must go. It’s damp out here, and I am sure Swithin’s not feeling at all well.” Juliet smiled sweetly.

  “There are rules,” Bertie said chokingly.

  “Darling, don’t be tiresome. We are two to your one. Get along with you, there’s a good boy,” Juliet spoke dismissively.

  “If you taste one drop of his blood...”

  “We won’t,” Colin assured him. “He is very nearly our nephew. As my sister has mentioned, it is time you were off.”

  Bertie glared at them, and then to Swithin’s increased horror he seemed to dwindle and collapse. In less than a minute, a large grey bat flew off, awkwardly grazing a tree as he went and uttering a disgusted squeak as he vanished amidst its leaves.

  “He’s really very clumsy,” Juliet observed.

  “He doesn’t have the hang of it,” Colin agreed. “You really need a breeze. If he weren’t such an unpleasant creature, I would give him a few pointers, but I really do dislike him. We’re here through no fault of our own—at least that’s true of you, my dearest Juliet—but it was his evil ways that did for him. Now, Swithin, we will escort you to the gates, and if you wish to see Lucy...” He broke off in consternation as Swithin suddenly fell at his feet. “Well,” he said, looking at Juliet, who had dropped to her knees beside Swithin, “I hope it wasn’t his heart.”

  “He has only fainted,” she said. “He has been through quite an ordeal. Shall we take him to Lucy or bring him back to his house?”

  “I think Lucy must care for him,” Colin said judiciously. “Besides I hardly think he’s ready to answer any of the inevitable questions that his mother might put to him at this time.”

  “Oh, of course, I was forgetting about her. ’Tis so long since we have had a mother, I had not remembered how they do carry on.”

  ❖

  Summoned from her bedchamber by Juliet, Lucy stared down at Swithin, who lay unconscious on the sofa in the back parlor. He was very pale and slightly blue about the lips. Listening, as Juliet recounted the circumstances in which they had found him in the graveyard, she fixed horrified eyes upon them.

  “He didn’t...”

  “No,” Colin said quickly. “Thanks to father’s warning, we arrived there before Bertie could harm him.”

  “But it was fortunate we arrived when we did,” Juliet stated.

  “Oh, yes.” Lucy knelt beside him. “I wonder what he was doing in the graveyard?” She looked questioningly at Colin.

  “Being a damned fool for not believing you, my own darling.”

  Lucy shifted her gaze quickly and found that Swithin’s eyes were open and that, wonder of wonders, he was smiling at her as tenderly as he had before she had told him about the Household. “And you... do believe me... now?”

  “Implicitly,” he affirmed with a slight smile. He glanced toward Juliet. “I am most grateful to you and your brother.”

  “Please,” she said blithely, “it was the least we could do. You do not feel any ill effects from your encounter, I hope?”

  “You will,” Colin warned as Swithin shook his head. “Your arm will hurt. You’d best soak it in warm water.”

  “With a poppyhead,” Lucy added. “That will take the swelling down.”

  “There is some soreness and stiffness in the limb,” Swithin discovered. “His grasp was very strong, but I should think the effects of it would have gone away by now.”

  “It will take time,” Juliet said. “We have uncommon strength, all of us.”

  “Oh, I’m am so sorry you had so frightening an experience!” Lucy cried.

  “I am not,” he said gently. “For now I know and should have known from the first that you were telling the truth. Still, I must explain that this encounter did not prove the turning point in my belief. I was almost convinced of the truth before I went to the graveyard, but as it is with lawyers, we do look for proof positive. I had hoped to see your aunt and uncle emerging from their tomb. Can you forgive me for doubting you, my own darling?”

  “Can you ask?” she breathed.

  “Oh, Lucy.” He reached out his good arm and drew her closer to him.

  “We must go,” Colin said.

  “Yes, we must.” Juliet nodded and smiled knowingly at her brother, realizing that neither Lucy nor Swithin was attending. “I pray he makes her happy,” she continued as they came outside.

  “I do not think they would need your prayers even if you were in a position to offer them.”

  “No, you’re right,” she agreed
. “Lucy, alone among us, has finally escaped the curse.” She looked up at him, adding anxiously, “I hope you agree.”

  “I think I do,” he said. “There’s a fine breeze tonight.”

  “So there is,” she responded delightedly. “Shall we?”

  A short time later two grey bats lowered themselves upon the wind and glided happily off into the darkness.

  ❖

  She had been so long a pale cypher and semi-invalid, shut into her suite of rooms and moving from bed to sofa and back, endlessly bemoaning his father’s death, that when his mother railed against his marriage, Swithin was as astonished as he was angry.

  He had come to her sitting room bathed in the glow of happiiness that followed his proposal and Lucy’s tremulous but delighted acceptance. He had not expected that, upon bringing her this news, his mother would stare at him in horror. He had not expected that she would wring her hands and muss, if not actually tear, her sparse grey locks.

  “You can’t,” she wailed. “I will not have that wretched girl in this house!”

  “As it happens, Mother, she will not come.” He said between stiff lips.

  “Will not come?” she repeated. “What can you mean?”

  “I have agreed to remain with her—in her house,” he said, relieving himself of the bit of information which, until this moment, he had feared to divulge. Fortunately his mother’s incomprehensible attitude made it wonderfully easy.

  “You have agreed to... to remain in that hovel?” shrilled Mrs. Blake. “What madness is this?”

  Since madness would seem like the most logical explanation were he to give his mother even an inkling of the truth, Swithin said uncomfortably, “She feels that the location is more conducive to her work.”

  “To her work!” repeated his mother in ascending accents. “You mean that she would continue to... to...”

  “For a little while longer,” he clarified. “You see, in three months time she will be the... uh, hostess for a contingent of scientists, lawyers, a newspaper editor, in other words, the most learned men in Boston, Marblehead and Salem. A professor from Harvard will be among those present. Lucy’s reputation as a medium is widespread, Mother.” His explanation sounded plausible because it was the truth. After that, he would have to concoct another excuse as to why he could not bring his bride and her “brother” into his large comfortable mansion. For a moment, he wished he could override Lucy’s well-founded objections. Unfortunately that would not serve. Neither his mother nor the servants would understand Mark’s monthly indisposition. He quelled a reminiscent shudder as he remembered the howls that issued from the cellar just last week. His own cellar was cavernous and echoing, and Mark would sound even more frightening in there.

  “I feel that you are not telling me the entire truth,” his mother observed with a rare perspicacity.

  Swithin winced. He really hated lying to her, but nothing must interfere with his forthcoming nuptials. “I have told you the truth, Mother. Am I in the habit of prevaricating?”

  “I have never believed you to be,” she sniffed. Her sniff became a sniffle, as she continued. “I never thought you would marry behind my back! And to a... a medium!”

  “I am not marrying behind your back,” he said with diminishing patience. “I am in hopes that you will grace our wedding with your presence.”

  “I will not!” she declared in agonized accents. “I will not speak to that wretched girl. Oh God, with all your chances and... and Eliza!”

  He raised his eyes to the heavens which ostensibly lay beyond the molded ceiling. Eliza Bishop had long been his mother’s choice for him. Not only did the girl come from an old Bostonian family which traced its roots back to the founding fathers but she was the daughter of Mrs. Blake’s oldest and dearest friend. Both women had done their best to promote a match between them. He and Eliza, also the best of friends, had often laughed about these abortive efforts, while they went their separate ways. Eliza was always falling in and out of love. His lip curled as he contrasted her with Lucy, whom he loved with all his heart and soul. Lucy was so brave, so staunch, so faithful! There would come a time when he would take her away from that miserable house beside the cemetery, but he would not think of that yet.

  He said, “I am sorry you feel that way, Mother, but I will marry her.”

  “I curse the day that we went there,” she cried.

  “Do not be medieval, Mother,” he said, unconsciously echoing his great-grandfather-in-law to be.

  Mrs. Blake cried vociferously and continuously, but her protests were ineffective.

  Molly and her cat also wailed, but since they had been engaging in this same chorus ever since they had arrived in Boston, no one paid much attention.

  ❖

  The wedding was private, attended only by Mark, reluctantly recruited to give the bride away, and Eliza Bishop who surprisingly enough had offered to be Lucy’s maid-of-honor.

  The ceremony took place in the First Congregational Church, and Lucy, looking exquisitely lovely in a white silk gown and a flowing tulle veil, both furnished by Juliet from sources she would not divulge, exchanged vows with Swithin, handsome and exultant in his dark suit and frilled shirt. Nothing untoward occurred to mar the day. If Mrs. Blake wept in her room and Mark felt as if his heart had been wrenched from his body, the bride and bridegroom were blithely oblivious to those woes as they climbed into the carriage that would bear them to Marblehead where they would have an ecstatic forthnight alone.

  ❖

  “Please, my love, be understanding,” Lucy begged. “You promised, remember?” She raised herself on her elbow and smiled at him tenderly as she encountered her husbands’ concerned gaze. “It will take nothing from me. I will be asleep, remember. Besides, it is late to cancel the séance. They will be here tomorrow.” As he started to speak, she added defensively, “I have cut down on my other sittings these last three months.”

  “I have a feeling...” Swithin began. He was lying next to her in her large bed, and under the covers he ran a gentle hand over her belly, still flat but due to rise over the child she must have conceived as early as their wedding night.

  Though they had been married three whole months, it seemed to Lucy that every time they returned to bed, the ecstasy of their first night together was repeated. She had never known what happiness could be until they had been joined, body and soul, together. And though she would never admit it to him, she, too, looked forward to the end of her séances. To remain a bridge between the living and the dead when life had become so wholly absorbing, so rich and wonderful, seemed wrong. She had discussed the matter with her relations, and the Old Lord agreed that in her delicate condition the séances might well be a strain.

  “Only one last séance, Lucy, and you’ll have made your mark. No more need you do. You’ll have won recognition from the most important men in their respective fields.” That had been Eliza Bishop’s opinion. Eliza had become a real friend since her participation in Swithin’s marriage. Passion was blotting out Lucy’s thoughts, but just before her total surrender to it, she wished that Eliza might share her happiness and was a little sad about that, knowing that Eliza had loved Swithin all of her life.

  “My dearest, my love, my sweetest Lucy...” Swithin murmured between kisses.

  She answered his needs with her own and forgot the world.

  ❖

  On the day of the long-awaited séance, called by a facetious editor from the Boston Globe the “eccentric circle,” Lucy waited in the back parlor until the group assembled. She was excited, and yet she could not help feeling a trifle intimidated by the credentials of the intellectuals who had come to test her veracity. No less a personage than the famous Dr. Samuel Gillette, professor of psychology at Harvard, would head the contingent and moderate the discussion which would follow. Others included Herman J. Riner, editor of the Edgecombe Press, a company which had published many esoteric classics; James T. Mitchell, a prominent Boston physician, equally well-known as
an indefatigable psychic investigator; Origen Hoyt, an equally prominent psychologist; Ward Beauchamp, a controversial young Unitarian Minister; Stephen Hawley, a reporter from The Evening Transcript; Arthur Seymour, a principal of Patrick Henry High School and also known for his investigations of the famous medium Renate Caldino; and Thornton Brace, an astronomer of international repute. Two women would also be present: Mrs. Launcelot Osbourne, whose husband was a judge known for his scepticism, and Dolly Tate, who wrote for Peterson’s Magazine. Eliza had also asked to attend, and Swithin, rather than Mark, would introduce Lucy and oversee the proceedings.

  Lucy felt badly about Mark’s refusal to attend. She had hoped that in three months he might have accustomed himself to the change in her circumstances, but though outwardly compliant, she knew he was still suffering. He had become quiet and withdrawn, and though he was pleasant enough to Swithin, she could feel his animosity. It was a pity she could not bring him together with Eliza, but her conscience forbade that—and fortunately they were not interested in each other.

  She turned her mind back to the séance, wishing that it were over. Despite her faith in the Old Lord’s abilities to produce phenomena of no mean order, she could not help but be concerned over what she feared might be the influx of negative energy that always invaded a circle when there were doubters present. That would affect her directly, and she did not want to feel as tired as she often did after such a meeting, not now when she was expecting a baby. Happiness washed over her at the idea, and her qualms were soon forgotten. Even if she were weary after the sitting, she would have plenty of time to recuperate. She would not have to preside over another one for months. She could rest, relax and knit little garments for their son.

  “Lucy,” Swithin said.

  She looked up at his anxious eyes. “Is it time?” She smiled reassuringly at him.

  “They’re all awaiting you in the front parlor,” he said tensely.

  “You mustn’t worry about me, my dearest.” She moved to him and reached up her hand to caress his cheek. “I’m used to this sort of thing—and you too should be, by now. It’s the last I shall be holding for a long time.”