Читать книгу The Second House - V. J. Banis - Страница 6

Chapter Two

Aunt Gwyneth was more than a little surprised to see me in my present condition. She listened in silence while I explained; afterward, she made up for the silence with a very long narrative concerning primarily my foolishness and the question of how she could be expected to keep a house clean if it was to be filled with cats.

“Not cats,” I corrected her, “Cat. Only one poor little frightened kitten. Hepzibah, meet Aunt Gwyneth.” Not all of Aunt’s scolding could lessen my good spirits.

“We’ll have hairs everywhere, in the upholstery, in the food—they never stop shedding, that’s what I know about cats. You’d better go up and change, I expect it will be back to the hospital next week; you’d better take your temperature while you’re up there. What did you say that young man’s name was?”

“Forrest.”

“I don’t remember any Forrests about here.” Had there been any, Aunt Gwyneth would certainly have remembered.

“He’s from New York,” I said, starting up the stairs. “New York State.”

“I suppose we ought to be grateful to him, of course. Still, it seems to me that you ought to have brought him in for me to meet, him being a stranger and all.”

I had reached the landing. Just as I went around the turn in the stairs, so that she would have no opportunity to reply, I called down to her, “You’ll meet him tomorrow, he’s coming to call.”

As soon as I was changed into dry clothes (my temperature was surprisingly normal), I looked after Hepzibah. My first consideration was food, and I brought some warm milk up from the kitchen. She was so very young that it was necessary to show her how to drink it, but after a few tastes of a milk-dipped finger, she got the idea, and greedily cleaned the dish, purring loudly all the time. In the meantime, I found a box and some old rags, and made up a bed for her; another box with sand provided for her needs, and she was soon quite at home.

I was in the habit of taking an afternoon nap, and this particular afternoon I felt I needed it more than usual. No sooner had I stretched out over my bed when Hepzibah began crying, and nothing would quiet her but that she be brought up onto the bed with me. Still purring happily, she curled up on the pillow beside me and gave evidence of her own exhaustion. I fell asleep with her happy rumbling in my ear.

The addition of that tiny creature made a vast change in my life. For the first time I knew what it was like to love and be loved; true, it was a far cry from the romantic dream that a young woman ordinarily entertains when she thinks of love. But my life had not been ordinary; it had been singularly lacking in any sort of affection. Now, quite suddenly, I had a living thing that idolized me, that followed me everywhere, that rubbed against me and purred for me and licked my face when I held her close. I was not only loved, I was needed. And how I adored this helpless little ball of fluff. We were two creatures who had hitherto been unwanted, had nearly died together, and now lived together. In my heart I was actually grateful to that horrid man who had abandoned that litter, although I grieved too that I had not been able to save them all.

Of course, Hepzibah was not my sole reason for being happy. Jeffrey Forrest came exactly on time that following day. I had to introduce him to Aunt Gwyneth. She was coolly observant. He was shy but quite pleasant. I think I was a little relieved that they did not especially like one another. After a civil time, Jeffrey and I went out. He had asked after Hepzibah immediately upon his arrival, and on departing he suggested we take her along. I was delighted, and she seemed equally so when I made a place for her in an old wicker basket and set her on the seat beside us.

Virtually all of my time outside of hospitals had been spent in the few miles surrounding our home, so that I knew almost every rock and tree by heart. I had said the day before that there were some sights worth seeing, and it was true. We had no skyscrapers nor massive peaks nor breathtaking gorges; ours was only a small farming community. But within an area of a few miles there were the remains of an old Indian fort, and a still working water mill. In the very heart of town was one of the state’s oldest buildings, used for nearly two hundred years as a newspaper office.

“And this,” I said at our last stop, “Has nothing to recommend it except that it’s one of the loveliest spots I know.” We had parked by a hill, and mounting this had before us a view of a rambling slope that led downward to a clear fresh stream. Beyond that were green pastures, and in the distance a farm so picturesque as to seem unreal. The lettering on the side of the barn still advised us to chew Mail Pouch.

“You’re quite right, it is lovely,” he said, putting down a robe he had brought from the car. We sat on this, and Hepzibah was quite delighted to be let out of her basket. She had no difficulty in remembering Mr. Forrest, and divided her attention between the two of us as we talked.

“You have a distinct advantage over me,” I said, chewing on a blade of grass I had plucked from the ground. “You now know virtually everything there is to know about me, my home, my life, and I know nothing about you.”

“Have you never been to upstate New York?”

“No. I’ve done very little travelling. To and from hospitals, that’s about all.”

“It’s quite a lovely area. Our home is called La Deuxième. If you were a history buff, you’d have run across the name in a book or two.”

“La Deuxième. The second?”

“The second house, in our case.”

I propped myself up on an elbow. An orange and black butterfly hovered nearby as if preparing to listen too. “It sounds intriguing,” I said. “Do go on, tell me about this history. Is it romantic?”

“Very,” he said. He seemed happy to speak of his home, and perhaps a little embarrassed by his own pride. I thought as he talked that this story was very old to him; he had heard it first when he was far too young to understand, and a hundred times since then, and when he held a child of his own on his knee, this was the story he would tell him.

“Before the second house,” he said, “There was a first house—a convent. A band of French nuns built it before this country was a country. They had set out from the coast thinking they would find a place in the West where they were most needed. Heaven knows how they survived their journey through what was then truly a wilderness. They had no guide with them, not a single man to assist them.”

“But somehow they came to a small settlement. The settlers living there were French; they had decided to make their homes in this vast fertile valley bordered with rich forests. There were numerous French settlements in the state. It was still a tossup, you recall, whether the country would end up French or English.”

“The sisters felt at home among this band of countrymen, and they felt that they had come to the place where they were needed. Of course it was a long way from what we consider the West, but they had no comprehension of the size of the country, and by their reckoning they had come a very long way, and they decided this was where they would stay.

He paused briefly before going on. “So, while the settlers built their homes the sisters built their convent. Don’t ask how they did it. That’s been a mystery all these years. Perhaps they had more help from the townsmen than tradition records. At any rate, for its time and location it was a handsome building. Parts of it still stand. Some of it was wood, and some of it stone, and it was complete with arches and naves and everything one would expect from a prosperous French convent in the old country.

“And the sisters did prosper, as well as the village. It grew quite rapidly. The largest family among the settlers was a silversmithing family, and this became the chief trade for the settlement. These people wrote to relatives and friends at home, who in turn made the difficult journey to the settlement. The convent served as a school for the town, and as a hospital, in addition to being a home for the sisters. And in a short time it just wasn’t big enough. Only a few years after the sisters first arrived, they were faced with the necessity of building a second house.

“After some discussion with the townsfolk, it was decided that the first building would become a community building; initially it had been outside the town, but the town had now crept around it. This time the townsmen took charge of the construction, and in a short while the new building was nearly finished. The old building was still referred to as the couvent, and the new one simply as La Deuxième.

“But it was never finished, at least not for the sisters. Tragedy struck. The plague suddenly entered the village. For all the progress, conditions were still primitive. The location was remote. There were neither doctors nor medicine in the village to cope with anything of this sort, and none less than a week’s travel away at the very least. The disease spread like wildfire. Entire families were wiped out. The sisters did all they could, but that was all too little. Their convent was filled completely with the dead and the dying; there were not even enough able-bodied men to keep up with the task of burying the dead. A doctor arrived, summoned by a pair of brave sisters who had risked the wilderness alone to bring him. But he had far underestimated the seriousness of the situation; the medicine he brought was literally a drop in the bucket.

“The rest of the story is quite horrible. You must remember that nearly all these people were simple peasants, volatile and as superstitious as everybody else of that time. By now it was known that the disease arrived with a Nun who had just come from the old country. And because the Sisters took many of the ailing into their convent, it was literally a breeding ground for the plague. Resentment against the place began to grow. People began to say that the sisters were being punished for some wickedness, and the townspeople were suffering as well. One of the villagers in particular, half mad with grief because he had lost his wife and three children, harangued the townspeople, turning them against the sisters. Nearly two hundred people, all but a handful of the town’s population, had died within a matter of weeks. Finally, the remaining villagers drew up a sort of petition, asking the sisters to leave in order to lift the curse that had descended upon the village. The sisters refused.

“A short time afterward a handful of men—either with or without the blessings of the rest of the village—set fire to the convent. It was during the night. The timbers were blazing fiercely before the sisters even woke from their slumber. Probably the sisters were meant to escape, but the fire seems to have burned faster than anyone expected. It is not known if any of them escaped alive; if they did so, they fled and never returned. The ruins were filled with the ashes of the sick and the Nuns alike.”

He paused for a long moment. “How horrible,” I said. I shuddered as I envisioned the flames reaching to the sky. I could almost hear the cries of the terrified sisters as they found themselves trapped in the inferno.

Jeffrey too seemed completely absorbed in his story. For a time he stared thoughtfully before him as though weighing the crime that had been committed.

“Afterward,” he went on, but less somberly, “the people were ashamed of what they had done. They met and concluded that there were too few of them left, and the town too haunted with tragedy, to make a home there. They gathered together the few who were unafflicted by the disease, and moved west. As they left, they fired the village, burning it completely to the ground. Only La Deuxième, unfinished, was left standing. No one had the heart to set the torch to it.

“A few years later one of my ancestors, in reward for some service to the British throne, was given a vast land grant in this country, including the area of La Deuxième, which was by then under English domination. My family found the unfinished house, and because it was quite a handsome structure, finished it. It’s been our family home ever since.”

“What a strange story,” I said when he had finished. “Those poor creatures, to die so horribly, for no fault of their own.”

“Yes, it’s said they haunt the ruins of the convent, and even wander the halls of La Deuxième. Tradition is filled with tales of their visits.”

“Are you afraid?” I asked it as a joke, in a teasing tone of voice, trying to restore the lighter mood that had prevailed before. But as I asked it, I glanced at Mr. Forrest’s face, and I was surprised to see it darken. It was very brief, as though a cloud had passed momentarily between him and the sun, but it gave me a peculiar sensation of foreboding.

“No,” he said, “not of the sisters.”

But the way he said it left me with a curious knowledge: he was not afraid of the ghostly Nuns. But he was afraid of something else.

“Good Heavens,” he said suddenly, breaking the somber mood that had settled over us. “It’s nearly three. Your Aunt will be after my scalp, or yours.” He jumped up and helped me to my feet. Then he put a squealing Hepzibah back into her basket.

“I’m not at all afraid of my Aunt,” I assured him. “Or her temper.”

“I have a feeling that you aren’t afraid of anything,” he said, folding up the robe we had been seated on.

Again I had that curious knowledge of more than was being said. There was in his voice an envy of my fearlessness. And yet I knew that this man was no coward; certainly he had risked his own life to save mine, hardly the act of a fearful man.

“I don’t suppose I am,” I replied aloud.

“Not even death?”

“Least of all death,” I said. I did not add that familiarity breeds contempt, that I had lived so much of my life in the shadow of death that that specter frightened me not at all.

As we started up the hill I laughed out loud. “Heavens, aren’t we morbid though. Tell me, what brings you here? You said business, I believe.”

“Yes, there’s a small silver shop near here; a very fine craftsman has had it for years, and for years we’ve been trying to induce him to join up with us. The Forrest family is in silver—good and bad, but the money’s all been made on plate, at least the last few years.”

“Oh.” I stopped short. “Silver plate. Of course, how stupid of me. La Deuxième. The second service, as your ads put it.”

He bowed before me with a gallant wave of his hand. “At your service.”

We both laughed, and once more we were at ease and slightly silly with one another. But I had been given a glimpse of how much La Deuxième meant to Jeffrey Forrest; more, surely, than I could fully grasp from that simple glimpse his story had given me. That tale had been more than a traditional legend to him; it had come from deep within him. The sense of horror that the tale created was in part, and in a way that I could not understand, his horror. In time it would become my horror as well, but I did not foresee this on this sunny afternoon as we drove gaily back to Aunt Gwyneth’s.

Jeffrey—he insisted on first names before the day was out—came again the next day, and the next after that. I was very happy that he did so. It was the first I had ever had a close acquaintance. I vaguely felt that I meant more than that to Jeffrey; and in a sense, he meant more to me as well. In the first flush of our meeting, I had wondered if this were to be my grand amour, my knight in shining armor.

I quickly realized that I was not in love with Jeffrey, at least not in the sense that I understood romantic love; but I did love him, with an affection that was nearly shocking for having been so quickly established. I felt closer to him than to anyone else I had ever known. I felt so close in fact that, although I knew we would never be lovers in that true sense of the word, I did not stop myself from wondering what a future with Jeffrey would be like.

I knew that he was handsome, sensitive, more inclined toward the arts than toward business. Enjoying his visit, but producing no success in his business mission, he had nevertheless sent off telegrams to his father that gave every reasonable excuse for staying on. I knew too that Jeffrey was wealthy and would be vastly more so at the death of his father. I had a notion that he was somewhat spoiled; he himself said that he was essentially a coward and lazy.

“But you risked your neck to save me,” I protested.

“An impulse,” he said. “It was so romantic, the lovely young woman drowning to save a sackful of kittens, I couldn’t help flinging myself into it. I don’t mind telling you now that when we were fighting that current I was sorry I hadn’t let you float downstream.”

I didn’t believe him at all. I told him of my illness, and he was surprised. “Yet you went right into the river after those kittens, knowing you had been sick?”

“Impulse,” I told him. He grinned and grabbed me impulsively, hugging me. That was the first time we had ever embraced. We both knew when it stopped being a silly gesture and became something quite a bit different. It was I who ended it finally, freeing myself gently but firmly from his arms.

We said nothing about it, but when I saw into his eyes, I had a shock. I had never seen it before, and except for the books I had read, I was quite ignorant of the subject. But I was suddenly aware that Jeffrey Forrest was in love with me.

Although it startled me, the full impact of this emotion, I could not honestly say that I was sorry about it. I still did not love him, not in the romantic sense; I had to be honest with myself about that. But I had lived my entire life alone and unhappy. Now, for the first time, I was happy. I had someone whose companionship I enjoyed, someone I liked and with whom I could share simple pleasures, and laughter, and interesting conversation.

I found myself wondering if Jeffrey would propose. In my fancy, I thought ahead to what that life might be like—the wife of Jeffrey, handsome, kind, witty, living in a luxurious mansion haunted with legends of the past. I compared that vision to what my life was and had been. And it would be lonelier still when once Jeffrey went away. Having shared a little of my life with someone, it would be worse still to go back to being alone.

I think he meant to ask me that day to marry him; and I would have accepted. But the moment was shattered for us—shot away, as it were.

We were by the river, at a spot that was a mutual favorite of ours. Hepzibah, out of her basket, was engrossed in the pursuit of a grasshopper. I was leaning against the trunk of a large elm tree. Jeffrey had been lying beside me but he had gotten to his knees to embrace me.

That embrace had just ended, and we were still close, still gazing uncertainly into one another’s eyes. So absorbed was I that at first I did not realize the significance of the loud cracking sound I heard, or the ping of something striking the tree trunk in the short space between our faces.

There was a second crack, and this time a piece of bark jumped from the tree, striking Jeffrey’s cheek. Suddenly I realized that the reports were gunshots, and that the bullets had struck the tree within inches of us.

“Get down,” I cried, throwing myself to the ground. Jeffrey fell too, covering me with his body. For a long moment there was silence.

“Some stupid hunter,” I said breathlessly, shaking with anger. We were at the edge of the woods, and hunting, even out of season, was not very unusual.

“Hallo!” Jeffrey called. “Watch out for us.”

There was no answer. After another long moment we got shakily to our feet. “I wish I had gotten a look at him,” I said, staring in the direction from which the shots seemed to have come. “He’d hear about this before I was finished.”

Jeffrey managed a faint laugh, but when I looked at him I was quite shocked. He was far more shaken than I. He had gone absolutely white.

He said, “It’s lucky for him you didn’t, I guess.” He got Hepzibah and put her into her basket. Taking my arm, he started me quickly along toward the road. “Come on, I suppose we had better get away before he spies another rabbit or whatever he was after.”

In the car, and on the way home, we both tried to make jokes about the incident. For all his attempts at humor, however, I could see that Jeffrey remained very upset by what had happened. He scarcely took time to say goodbye before driving away from Aunt Gwyneth’s house.