by V. J. Banis
“What nonsense. Why, you’ve only got to see the two of them together to realize Alicia’s devoted to Jennifer.”
Her own fears continued to nag at Helen, though. It was certainly true that Jennifer was pretty. She was more than that, she was exquisitely beautiful, with her pale skin like fresh cream and her dark hair that hung in ringlets about her shoulders, and those wide green eyes that seemed sometimes to look right through you. Yes, she was beautiful.
And Walter...God knows, Helen thought, Alicia hasn’t been a wife to him in two years or more. How long can a man stand that without his flesh rebelling?
Susan was right about one thing: if Alicia ever even suspected that Walter was so much as attracted to the new governess, she would stop at nothing for revenge.
CHAPTER SIX
When the peace was broken by another of Alicia’s outbursts, however, it was Liza who was the target of her anger and not Jennifer.
It came about partly because of Jennifer’s attempts to placate Alicia’s hatred of the young girl. After giving the riding crop to Jennifer and instructing her to use it to discipline Liza, Alicia did not mention it for several days. Jennifer assumed that she had spoken in anger and either regretted her instructions, or had even forgotten them.
Certainly Jennifer had no wish to remind her, and she avoided mentioning any difficulty with Liza. In fact, she had no real problems with the girl aside from her withdrawn attitude. Liza had no interest in anyone or anything except Walter, and pleasing him.
Nearly a week after Alicia had given her the riding crop, Jennifer came into her bedroom to find Alicia in a worked up state that she sensed was a prelude to a real outburst.
“Well,” Alicia said, “what about Liza?”
“What about her?” Jennifer repeated, her uneasiness increasing.
“Have you used the crop on her yet?” Alicia leaned forward with a look of utter cruelty on her once pretty face.
“I....” Jennifer hesitated to tell an outright lie and yet she knew Alicia would give her no peace until she had been reassured on this subject. “I have disciplined Liza as it was necessary,” she concluded lamely. It was close to the truth. She had had to rebuke Liza on two occasions for inattention, although she had resorted to nothing more than a mild scolding.
“So,” Alicia said, breathing heavily as if the mere thought of Liza’s punishment excited her. “So she is not the goody-goody after all, but does need some punishment. I’ve tried and tried to convince the others, but they have always insisted she was a good girl.”
Alarmed that Alicia’s mood seemed to be getting out of hand, Jennifer said, “I don’t think I would say she was a bad girl.”
Alicia gave her a venomous look. “Bad? She’s a witch, like her mother. You’ve only got to look at her to see how evil she is. What do you think is making me so sick? The doctor can’t find anything wrong with me physically, he told me that himself. It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is. Look at me, so sick I can’t stand up, and what else could it be, I ask you?”
Alicia had worked herself into a veritable frenzy, shaking her head to and fro and thumping the bed with her fist. Alarmed, Jennifer tried to calm her.
“Perhaps if you were just outside occasionally,” she suggested, “in the sunshine and the fresh air. I don’t think it could be good for anyone to confine herself indefinitely. Even my mother....”
Alicia seemed not to have heard her at all but rather appeared to be contemplating some dark inner voices of her own. Suddenly, without so much as an apology, she interrupted Jennifer.
“Call Walter.” Alicia screamed, turning livid. “Now, at once. I want to see him.”
Jennifer’s face burned at being treated so rudely but she was too well disciplined herself to argue further or to ignore a command given so peremptorily. Without a further word she went to the library, where she had seen Walter a short time before.
“Your wife wishes to speak to you,” she informed him curtly.
He gave her a surprised look, studying her face for a moment, which only served to heighten her color and further disconcert her, although she did not know why it should have that effect.
He did not question her, but rose from his chair and went swiftly along the hall to his wife’s bedroom, his long strides easily leaving Jennifer behind, so that by the time she arrived at the bedroom and went in, Alicia was already unleashing an angry torrent of words aimed at her husband.
“She has got to leave,” Alicia was saying, her voice rising hysterically until she was all but screaming. “She must go.”
Walter’s normal speaking voice sounded like a whisper in contrast to Alicia’s shouting. “I can’t just turn her out,” he said.
“I won’t have her here.”
“You’re working yourself up over nothing.” Despite the softness of his voice, Walter spoke with firm determination.
“I tell you, she’s killing me. She’s a witch, like her mother, and she’s killing me with her tricks. And you don’t even care. No one cares if I die or not.”
“That’s not true.” Walter went to the bed and knelt, trying to take her in his arms and comfort her.
“Leave me alone,” she shrieked, slapping his hands away. “I believe you want her to kill me. You want me dead. That’s why you brought that witch into the house.”
She gave a sharp gasp, clutching at her breast and threw her head back with a grimace of pain.
To Jennifer, standing helping just inside the door, it certainly looked as if Alicia’s pain was real—or was this just more of her acting? She went swiftly to her. She had to fight an increasing dislike for this cruel, grasping woman who could be so venomous toward a mere child and so heartless toward a patient and gentle husband, but she could not let this scene continue, and not for Alicia’s sake alone.
“Mrs. Dere, let me help you,” she said, putting an arm around the woman’s stiff shoulders. Alicia did not resist, but sank weakly into Jennifer’s arms. Jennifer looked past her, directly at Walter. Their eyes met and for a moment it seemed as if they shared some secret knowledge, as if in some odd way the two of them were united in purpose against his wife.
She was suddenly angry, angry that she should be thrust into that position between them, angry that she should share his thoughts regarding his wife. Angry that his wife should join them together in understanding.
“Perhaps you should leave us,” she said to him coldly, because she was angry, and frightened, too, but she did not watch him go. She gave her attention instead to the woman in her arms. Alicia was weeping softly now, as helpless as a kitten. It was hard to believe that a moment before she had shown the savagery of a jungle cat.
* * * * * * *
For just a moment before he left, Walter paused, looking down at the two women—at his wife, so shrill, so hard and demanding, who had brought so much unhappiness into his life—and at Jennifer, so unbelievably lovely, so soft and gentle.
He knew then what had been eating at him these last few days. He had felt distracted, unable to eat right or sleep right, and forgetting things. At the same time, though, he had felt all charged up, recklessly alive. He had caught himself laughing. Caught himself, because it was something he did so rarely anymore, and he had more energy and strength than a child.
Always, something seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, hanging around the corners of his mind. He would be reading and he would think of her, and he would come to the doorway to look at her, not really thinking anything, not consciously, only looking as if at some marvel, as if at a miracle. Each time she had seemed new and wonderful and mysterious to him, and something within him had quickened and stirred, and he had come away more puzzled than before, and more alive too.
Now he knew. He was in love.
From the first she had frightened him, with those wide, vulnerable eyes of hers and that tremulous smile that tried so hard to be brave. That first day, he had looked at her standing in the door of the station, and he had known that she dared not c
ome to Darkwater, not only because of what Alicia would say.
He knew his wife would be furious, but instinct had warned him of some greater threat and he had not been wise enough to understand the warning. Now it was too late. He was like a man who, so long as no food was put before him, was not hungry, but now there was a banquet set within his sight and hunger gnawed at his innards.
He went out of the bedroom, angry with himself to discover that his hand was shaking as he pulled the door closed. His mother was in the hall. Alicia’s screaming had been audible all over the house.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Miss Hale is with her and she seems to be quieting down.”
His mother’s eyes searched his face and she had a look of alarm in her eyes that was not entirely for Alicia’s outburst. They knew each other well, mother and son, and just as she had glanced at his face and divined his inner turmoil, so now he understood at once the reason for the concern he saw on her face.
“Is it so obvious, then?” he asked.
She did not answer him, but studied his face for a moment. When finally she did speak, it had nothing to do with that.
“I’ll see if Miss Hale needs help,” she said.
“Yes, please do that.”
He went to the library and closed the door and sank into one of the big chairs there as if in a fit of exhaustion. He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands, and rubbed his eyes but however he rubbed, he still saw her.
How had he come to this? He was not a philanderer by nature. He did not love his wife. He was honest enough with himself to admit that, but he had always been as good a husband as he knew how to be. Despite all of her jealous ravings, he had never given her any reason to distrust him. Always he had honored the marriage vows, to the best of his abilities, even when she had not. Had she not promised to love? And to honor?
It had been intended once that Walter would become a Baptist preacher like his father. That had been his father’s fervent wish and if his mother did not share the fervor, she happily acquiesced in the plans.
Walter, too, seemed to agree, and he even began study for the ministry. Everyone “knew” that Walter would be the finest preacher in the South. It did not matter that it was not so lucrative a calling. Melvin Dere, Walter’s father, had married Helen Oglethorpe, and she had come to him a woman of considerable wealth. Melvin’s zeal for his calling had not prevented his wise husbandry of her wealth. Walter would never need to worry about making a decent living.
It was not that which worried Walter. What bothered him was something else, something far more fundamental. It was the quickening of his spirits when he heard a song, or saw a flower, or when he read the poems of Shakespeare. It was the throbbing of his pulse that bothered him when a pretty girl went by, and the delight he took the first time he kissed one of those pretty girls and knew he would have to do more than kiss.
A wonderful joy of life ran in his veins. He loved the things of the earth, loved them surely too much, he thought. When he listened to the mockingbird and smelled the sweet aroma of the honeysuckle, he knew he could never excoriate others for their sins without his being a hypocrite, and he had informed his father that he was going to run the plantation instead of becoming a preacher.
A violent quarrel had ensued, through which Walter had remained firm in his purpose, but the disappointment had been a grave shock to his father, who was already ill, and he had taken to his bed.
That stern old Puritan had looked around for some means of bringing his son back to the religion he feared Walter had abandoned. He had long thought of a marriage between Walter and Alicia Longstreet. She was fiercely religious already at her young age, a few years older than Walter, and one of the pillars of the church.
Walter was plagued with guilt that he had caused his father’s illness. When his father asked him to promise to marry Alicia Longstreet, he had agreed gladly. Why should he not? She was young and pretty, everyone said she was an angel. He was virile, a young man ready for a wife, prepared to be a good husband. They were married and only a few days afterward, assured that he had saved his son’s soul, Melvin Dere died.
He died without ever knowing what a tragic mistake the wedding had been for his son. Alicia was indeed a “good” woman, too good to be a real wife. She clung tenaciously to everything in the church doctrine that was harsh and repressive and rejected anything that was soft. Love, in her vocabulary, referred to her feelings for the Lord, not to any feeling for her husband. As for him, she had married him to save his soul, and she meant to do that if she had to make his life a hell in order to prepare him for heaven.
Walter knew on their wedding night that he had made a mistake. He, whose blood ran hot in his splendid young body, clasped a woman of ice in his arms and was unable to melt her.
“You are behaving like an animal,” she complained.
“I am your husband,” he argued.
But for all her coldness, Alicia knew of a woman’s obligations to her husband and her marriage. With the sanctity of a martyr, she permitted her husband to perform his duties. In due time, little Mary was born. Peter was born almost three years later.
When, not so much later this time, Alicia informed her husband that she would once again permit his attentions, it was she who was disappointed. Disappointed because somehow in performing her “obligation,” and despite her frigid nature, she had discovered some source of passion within her that responded to her husband’s attention.
Now, however, it was Walter who denied, who informed her that he would make no further demands upon her of that nature. He said it was out of consideration for her health. In fact, it disgusted him to hold that coldness in his arms and to be made to feel guilty for responding to the natural urge within him.
Passion was like a seed that had been planted within her, that grew and grew and sent out tendrils, seeking a sun that could no longer shine for her. In time, those vines and tendrils began to strangle her...and their marriage.
If she had been able to manage it, they would have strangled Walter as well.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jennifer woke with a strange sense of unfamiliarity. She did not know where she was or why, and it gave her an eerie sensation of disjointedness.
As sleep fell away from her and she sat up looking around, she realized she was in Alicia’s room. Alicia’s “spell” had lasted well into the night. Each time Jennifer made as if to go, thinking that Alicia was at last asleep, the older woman sat up, crying and begging Jennifer not to leave her.
“You don’t know what nightmares I have,” she sobbed. “It’s that girl, she sends them, I know she does. I just know it. I used to sleep like an angel and now I dare not close my eyes or the demons are here tormenting me.”
So Jennifer had stayed, sitting in the chair by the bed, and at last they had both slept. Now it was morning, the pale sunlight filtering through the curtains, making motes of dust dance in the golden stream.
Jennifer stood and stretched. She felt stiff from sleeping in the unaccustomed position, in the hard chair. She looked down at Alicia, now deep asleep. In repose she looked so much younger, so gentle and...yes, even angelic. It was hard to imagine that face, which looked pretty when still, could become so ugly and twisted with anger and violent passion.
Suddenly Jennifer felt the need to be away from here, away from this emotion charged room, away from this troubled woman, away from her own troubled thoughts, even. She let herself quietly out of the room, moving noiselessly along the hall, to the back door.
Outside it was cool with the night’s lingering coolness. The day’s heat was just beginning to descend, like a warm blanket. The grass was still damp with dew and she lifted her skirt slightly to spare the hem. The magnolia trees dripped with their fragrant blossoms and a lark greeted the day with joyous song.
The house and the entire plantation, with the sweeping green lawns and the wide, carefully cultivated fields of cotton and cane, looked as if they had been dropped from above,
into the very heart of the bayou. They had been wrested from the swamp and the swamp stood vigilantly nearby, as if waiting to reclaim them.
“Hello,” a voice said behind her. She turned to find Liza standing nearby.
“What are you doing out so early?” Jennifer asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. I always get up early. There’s no one to yell at me and tell me I’m doing everything wrong.”
Jennifer felt a wave of sympathy for this girl, a mere child, actually, who had somehow become the object of an emotional tug-of-war between a man and his wife. If only she had been able to establish a friendship with the girl—but Liza had steadfastly held her at arm’s length, although there was no open antagonism between them. The fact was, Liza had no interest in anyone but Walter. For Liza none of the others, herself included, really existed.
Jennifer’s brow wrinkled with thought. “Yes, I can understand the need to be alone sometimes,” she said. “I feel that myself. That’s what I am doing out so early.”
“When I want to be by myself, I go into the bayou.”
Jennifer glanced past her, at the swamp forest that here edged its way almost up to the house. The thick trees with their lush growth provided a green wall that blocked any view of the swamp. She had an impression of vividly colored flowers and exotic blossoms, of hanging moss and thick vines like snakes, and tall marsh grass. It looked dark and luxuriant and mysterious.
“Isn’t it dangerous to wander into the swamp?”
“Not if you stay on the paths. If you follow that path right there,” Liza pointed to a worn trail that went past the outbuildings, “and when it forks, stay to the right, it will bring you back here directly. It’s a very pretty walk.”
Jennifer suddenly felt the desire to surrender herself to that green darkness. “Would you like to walk with me?”
