Mother Aegypt and Other Stories Part 12

"How did she do that?" Anniemae exclaimed.

"It was a mechanism concealed in the floor, Ma'am," Sam told her, retrieving Mrs. Nightengale's napkin. "Triggered counterweights behind the paneling. There's secret pa.s.sages all over this house! She designed them herself, you know. my mistress is a most ingenious lady."

"What happens now?" asked Annimae, looking about herself forlornly.

"Why I'll serve you the rest of your luncheon, Ma'am," said Sam. "And then I'll just clear away the mistress's place, and take myself off to the kitchen. You want anything, you just ring."

"Please-" said Annimae, suddenly afraid to be left alone in this glittering room full of unseen presences. "Won't you stay and talk to me? I need to know things-" And she almost caked him boy, but it did seem to her ridiculous, as august and white-haired as he was. And, mindful of his bent back, she added: "You can sit down while we speak, if you like. And you can have some dinner, too. I mean-luncheon!"

He smiled at her, and the white flash from his teeth winked in every mirrored surface in the room.

"Thank you , Ma'am, I surely will."

He served out filet of sole to her, then drew up a chair and helped himself to a cup of coffee. Settling back with a sigh, he explained the complex system by which the house ran.

On no account must any room ever be approached in the same way twice. There were a dozen different ways to reach any single destination in the house, and until she memorized them all, either he or another of the servants would guide her. There was no map, lest the dead see it and find their way where they weren't wanted; in any case no map would remain accurate for long, because rooms were continuously being remodeled in order to confuse the dead. Doors and windows were put in and taken out at the direction of the good spirits. Chambers were sealed off and reopened. Some doors opened on blank walls, or into s.p.a.ce, even three stories up, so she must be careful; stairs might lead nowhere, or take a dozen turns and landings to go up only one floor.

"I never knew there were such things," said Annimae, feeling as though her head were spinning.

"Oh, folk have always protected themselves from haunts, Ma'am," said Sam, leaning over to serve her a slice of coconut pie. He took a slice of bread for himself. "Horseshoes over the door for good luck, eh? And the red thread, and the witchball, and the clover with the four leaves? They keep away all harm, so people say. Mistress just has the money to do it on a big scale, all modern and scientific too."

"Scientific," Annimae repeated, impressed.

He looked at her a long moment, over his smoked spectacles.

"Don't you be afraid," he said at last. "Just you do like you been told, and it will all fall out pretty as any fairy tale. Romance and a happy ending, yes indeed."

"Can you tell me more about Daniel?" asked Annimae. "Is he handsome?"

Sam shrugged.

"I reckon he is, Ma'am. I haven't laid eves on the master since he was a baby. But he has a beautiful voice, now. How he sings for love of you!"

"When may I go see-that is, when may I meet him?" Annimae set down her napkin. "Can you take me there now7?"

Sam coughed slightly, and rose to his feet. "That would be my old woman's business, Ma'am. You wait; I'll send her."

He left the room, and Annimae shivered. She looked about and met her own timid gaze everywhere.

For the first time, she noticed the motif that was repeated on the fine china, in the carpet pattern, in the mosaic arrangement of the mirrored bits and even in the panes of gla.s.s that made up the skylight: spiderwebs, perfect geometric cells radiating out from an empty center.

She scarce had time to contemplate the meaning of all this before a door opened and a woman all in black strode in briskly, upright though she too was very old. Her hair must have been red as fire when she'd been a girl, for a few strands of that color trailed still through the rest, which was white as smoke; and her eyes behind their dark spectacles were the hot blue of candle flames.

"I'm to take you to himself, now, Ma'am, am I?" she inquired, politely enough; but her eyes flashed dangerously when Annimae put her hands to her mouth in horror.

"You're Sam's wife? But-!"

The old woman looked scornful as she curtsied. "Bridget Lacroix. Bless you, Ma'am, you needn't be surprised. There's no scandal at all in me marrying Sam Lacroix. Don't you know how many of us Irish came to Ameri-kay as slaves? White chimpanzees, that's all we are; or so that fine Mr. Kingsley said.

And if the mistress don't mind it, I'm sure you shouldn't."

"I am so sorry!" said Annimae, much distressed. "I never meant offense."

Bridget looked her over shrewdly. "No, I don't suppose you did. Sam told me you was innocent as a little baby. But it's time you grew up, me dear." She grinned. "Especially as it's your wedding day."

She led Annimae out of the dining room and through another, where jets of flame burned brilliantly in wall-mounted gla.s.s globes. The globes were all colors, hung with prisms that threw swaying rainbows everywhere. And there were more windows set in the walls, stained gla.s.s repeating the spiderweb pattern Annimae had noticed before. They, too, were lit from behind by the strange cold light she had wondered at in the chapel. Annimae, who had only ever seen candles and kerosene lamps after dark, exclaimed: "What is this place?"

"O, this is just the Room of Eternal Day," said Bridget. "The dead don't like pa.s.sing through a place so bright, and it shows up that they haven't any shadows besides, and that embarra.s.ses 'em, don't you know. All very up-to- date in here! That's gaslight, of course, but for the windows she's laid on that new electrical light. Clever, isn't it?"

They went on through that room, and came to another that was lined floor to ceiling with clocks, and nothing else. Great inlaid grandfather clocks stood in the corners and ticked solemnly; French bisque clocks sat on shelves and ticked elegantly, as painted Harlequins and Columbines revolved atop them; old wooden regulator clocks thumped along wearily; and little cheap bra.s.s clocks beat away the seconds brightly. But no two clocks were set to the same time.

"How strange!" cried Annimae, and Bridget chuckled and said: "O, this is the Room of All Time and None. It's just to confound the dead. They work very particular shifts, what with midnight being the witching hour and all. If one of 'em strays in to see what o'clock it is, he'll be stuck here guessing with all his might and main."

They left that room and soon came to another, no less curious. There was no spiderweb motif here; rather the recurring image was of a tiny white moth or b.u.t.terfly but it was repeated everywhere. It figured in the wallpaper pattern like so many snowflakes, it was woven into the design of the carpet, and into the brocade of the chairs and the inlay of the tables and cabinets, and etched into the very window gla.s.s. The curio cabinets held nothing but pressed specimens of white moths, displayed against a blue velvet background.

"What on earth are all these b.u.t.terflies for?" asked Annimae.

"O, it's only the Soul Trap," said Bridget. "Because, you see, the nasty dead are a bit stupid, and they have a compulsion to count things. Any haunt comes through here, here he must stay until he's numbered every blessed one of the little creatures. Generally by then the ghost will have forgot whatever wickedness he was up to."

"What a good idea," said Annimae, because she could not imagine what else to say.

They proceeded deeper into the house, and as they did it grew dimmer and dimmer, for there were no windows nor light fixtures here, and the corridors turned and turned again ever inward. At last Bridget was only a shadow beside her, that cleared its throat and said: "Now then, Sam told me you might want a little learning. You know, don't you, what it is a bride does with her husband?"

"Well," said Annimae, "As nearly as I recollect, we're supposed to fall on each other with kisses of pa.s.sion."

"Hm. Yes, me dear, that's how it starts."

As far as Annimae had been aware, there was nothing more; and in some panic, she racked her brains for what else happened in books and poems.

"I believe that then I'm supposed to swoon away in a transport of love," she said.

"So you must," said Bridget, sounding exasperated. "But there's a great deal goes on between the kissing and swooning, sure. Think of what the stallion does with the mare."

"Oh," said Annimae, who had seen that many a time. She walked on in thoughtful silence, drawing certain conclusions, so intent that she scarcely noticed when it became pitch dark at last. Bridget had to take her hand and lead her through the fathomless gloom.

Soon they heard glorious music, close by but m.u.f.fled. Someone was playing a Spanish guitar with great virtuosity, each note chiming like a bell even through the wall's thickness.

"Why, who's that?" asked Annimae.

"O, the jewel, the darling! He's serenading his bride," Bridget exclaimed with great tenderness. There was a sound suggesting that she had put out her hand and was sliding it along the wall as they walked.

Presently she stopped, and rapped twice.

The music halted at once. An eager voice said: "Annimae?"

"She's here, charming boy," said Bridget. "Hurry now, while it's safe."

There was a click, and then a rush of air that smelted of gentlemen's cologne. Annimae felt herself prodded gently forward, closer to the scent, into a warmer darkness. Something clicked again, behind her now. She fought back a moment of wild terror, realizing she had been locked in; but at once warm hands took her own, and they felt so live and steady that her fear melted away. She touched the wedding ring on his finger.

"I'm here, Daniel Nightengale," she said. "Your own true love-"

"Oh, my own Annimae," said the new voice, breaking on a hoa.r.s.e sob. And Annimae, feeling brave now, leaned forward in the darkness and sought her husband's lips. She encountered his chin instead, for he was a little taker than she was. He bent to her and they kissed, and the kiss was nicer than anything Annimae had ever known in her whole life. The face of the baby angel in the locket came before her mind's eve; in the table of her thoughts it grew, became the face of a handsome man.

She had compiled a list of rapturous phrases to murmur in his ear, but somehow she couldn't stop kissing, nor could he. Their arms went around each other, they grappled and swayed. Annimae felt once again the dizzy happiness she had known high up in the cottonwood tree, when she seemed about to lift free of the dry earth and soar away, into a green paradise.

The whole time, her young fingers were exploring, touching, tracing out the strange new shape of a man. Such broad shoulders, under his linen shirt! And such smooth skin! Such fine regular features! His hands were exploring too, feverish and fast, and fever woke in her own blood. She thought about mares and stallions. He lifted his mouth from hers and gasped, "Please, let's lie on the bed-" and she was making sounds of agreement, though she hadn't any idea where his bed or anything else in the room might be. He half-carried her a few yards, and they collapsed together on what must be the counterpane. She understood what he wanted and, remarkably quickly considering how much effort and care had gone into putting on her wedding dress, she writhed out of it.

Then the smooth counterpane was cool under her and he embraced her so close, and, and, and Long afterward she recollected the rapturous phrases, and duly murmured them in his ear. Now, however, she knew what they meant.

Now she believed them.

So began Annimae's married life. She was as happy as any new bride in any of her books, even with the strange constraints upon her life. There was no question that she loved Daniel Nightengale with her whole heart, and that he loved her.

"You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in all my life," he sighed, as they lay close together in the dark. "The window shining out across the darkness, and you framed there bright as an angel. I loved you so! You were the very image of everything I'd ever wanted, in the life I'd never be allowed to live.

And I thought, I will live it! I will marry that girl!"

"Your Mamma said you threatened to die for love of me," said Annimae.

"I would have," he said, with a trace of sullenness. "Just opened that door and walked out through the house, and I'd have kept walking until I found the sunlight."

"Oh, but that would be a terrible thing!" said Annimae. "With so many folks who love you? You mustn't ever do it, my dearest."

"I never will , now that you're here," he conceded, and kissed her.

"And after all," she said, "It's not really so awfully bad, like this. You're no worse off than a blind man would be. Much better, really! You needn't beg for your dinner on a street corner, like poor old Mr.

Johnson in town. Instead you're my handsome prince, under a spell. And, who knows? Maybe someday we'll find a way to break the spell."

"If only there were a way!" he said. Then, hesitantly, he asked: "Do you think my mother is crazy?"

"Well, I did wonder at first," she admitted. "But I guess she isn't. Spiritualism is a big religion, I hear, and they wouldn't let all those people run around loose if they were crazy, would they? And everything in the house is so modern and scientifical!"

He sighed, and said he guessed she was right.

Their days began around ten o'clock in the morning, when a gentle rap at the panel signified that Sam had brought a wheeled cart with their breakfasts. Annimae would scramble through the heavy velvet curtains that cloaked the bed-only there in case of emergency, for the room was black as ink at all hours-and, finding her dressing gown by touch, slip it on and open the secret panel. Sam would enter along with Gideon, who was Sam's son and Daniel's valet. She became quite skilled at pouring coffee and b.u.t.tering toast in the dark, as Daniel was shaved and dressed sight unseen, and Sam made the bed and collected their linen, all by touch alone.

The four of them often conversed pleasantly together, for Gideon would bring the news culled from the morning's Mercury, and Daniel was eager to hear what was going on in the world. they might have been ordinary people in an ordinary household, Annimae thought; and the rea.s.suring domestic details comforted her, and further convinced her that her life wasn't so strange, after all.

After breakfast she would leave Daniel's suite for a little while, to take the sun. It appeared painfully bright to her now; she saw why all the servants wore smoked spectacles, and begged a pair of her own from Bridget. Then she could wander the gardens, feeding the fish in the reflecting pools, admiring the exotic flowers, picking fruit from the bushes and trees. She brought back bouquets of roses for Daniel, or ap.r.o.n-pockets full of blackberries warm from the sun.

She seldom met the gardeners, the twins G.o.dfrey and G.o.dwin, who were also Sam's sons. Most of the servants had adjusted to a nocturnal schedule over the years, for the mistress of the house kept late hours too. Annimae did wander out now and then to the perimeters of the house, where the workmen were always busy hammering, sawing, extending the vast and gorgeous edifice with raw new redwood that still smelted of the wilderness. They were always too busy to speak, though they doffed their caps to her, blushing.

Sensing that she made them uncomfortable, Annimae stopped coming by to watch their progress.

The house would never be finished anyway; and after a week or so her heart beat to the rhythms of the ceaseless hammers. It was a comforting sound. It meant that Daniel was safe, and all was right with the world.

After her morning walks, she was summoned to luncheon with Mrs. Nightengale, which was like having an audience with a gloomy and severe queen. Mrs. Nightengale questioned her in great detail on Daniel's continuing health, though she refrained from asking about the most intimate matters.

"Daniel seems to be thriving with your companionship," was the closest she came to a compliment.

"Though the good spirits are still concerned for him. You must not grow careless, Daughter-in-Law."

"I do a.s.sure you, Mother Nightengale, his life is as precious to me as it must be to you," said Annimae. Mrs. Nightengale regarded her in a chilly kind of way, and then winced and shut her eves.

"Is it your headache again?" Annimae inquired in sympathy. "Perhaps it's the sun, don't you think? I am sure you would be much more comfortable if you wore dark spectacles too."

"They are not for me," replied Mrs. Nightengale, getting stiffly to her feet. "I gaze into a far brighter light than mortal eves can imagine, when I commune with the spirits. You'll excuse me, now. I am wanted in the thirteenth room."

So saying, she walked through a wall and vanished.

Annimae went also to the mansion's library each day, once she learned the various routes to get there. It was not really such a big room, relative to the rest of the house. It contained a Bible, and the collected works of Shakespeare, though neither one seemed to have been read much. There were several volumes of fairy-stories, for Mrs. Nightengale had used to sit in the corridor outside Daniel's room and read to him, when he had been small. There were many many other books, princ.i.p.ally by one Andrew Jackson Davis, and both they and the books by Emanuel Swedenborg had pride of place, though there were others by a Countess Blavatsky.

These all treated of the mystical world. Annimae made it a point to sit and read a chapter from one of them each day, in order that she might better understand her husband's plight. She tried very hard to make sense of esoteric wisdom, but it bewildered her.

All the books claimed a great universal truth, simple and pure, revealed by spirit messengers from Almighty G.o.d; yet its proponents contradicted one another, sometimes angrily, and not one seemed to be able to state convincingly what the truth was. Every time Annimae thought she was coming to a revelation, so that her heart beat faster and she turned the pages eagerly, the promised answers failed to materialize. The great mysteries remained impenetrable.

So with a sigh she would leave the books, and find a way back through the black labyrinth at the house's heart. The deeper the shadows grew, the lighter was her step dancing home to her beloved. And what great truth was there, after all, but that it was sweet delight to pull off all her clothes and leap into bed with Daniel Nightengale?

And when they'd tumbled, when they'd had so much fun they were tired, Daniel would lie beside her and beg her to relate everything she'd seen that day. It was difficult to tell him of the glories of the garden, for he knew very little of colors. Black and purple, midnight blue and the shades of stars or windows were all he could summon to his mind. Red and pink to him were smells, or tastes.

But she could tell him about the swallows that made their nests under the eaves of the carriage-house, queer daubed things like clay jars stuck up there, with the little sharp faces peering out; she could tell him about the squirrel that had tried to climb the monkey-puzzle tree. He wanted to know everything, was hungry for the least detail.

Afterward they would rise in the dark, answerable to no sun or moon, and find their way together into the splendid bathroom, as magnificent in its appointments as any Roman chamber. The spirits had devised ingenious systems to heat the room with jets of warmed air, piped in from below, and to fill the marble tub with torrents of hot water from a spigot. There were silver vessels of scent for the water; there was scented oil too.

When they had luxuriated together they returned to the central room, where Daniel played the guitar for her, as she sprawled in bed with him. And it seemed to Annimae this must be just the way princes and princesses had lived long ago, perhaps even in the days of the Bible: young flesh oiled and perfumed, a silken nest and endless easeful night in which to make sweet music.

It never occurred to her to wonder what the future might hold. Daniel raged against his confinement, and she comforted him, as she felt it was her duty to do. Sometimes they discussed ways in which he might gain more freedom, in the years to come: perhaps a portable room, or even a leather and canvas suit like a deep-sea diver's, with a sealed helmet fronted in smoked gla.s.s? Perhaps Daniel might walk in the sunlight. Perhaps he might go to Europe and see all the sights to be seen. Whatever he did, Annimae knew she would always be there beside him; for that was how true lovers behaved, in all the stories in the wide world.

There was no fear in the dark for Annimae, now, ever. Only one thing still made her startle, when it woke her twice each night: the tolling of a vast deep-throated bell somewhere high in the house. Mrs.

Nightengale had it struck at midnight, for that was the hour when the good spirits arrived. Mrs.

Nightengale, having retired to the thirteenth room and donned one of thirteen ceremonial robes, would commune there with the spirits for two hours, receiving their advice and instruction. At two o'clock the bell would toll again, the spirits depart.

"And then she comes out with a great sheaf of blueprints for the carpenters, you know," said Bridget, sprinkling starch on one of Daniel's shirts and pa.s.sing it to her daughter, who ironed it briskly. "And whether it's orders to tear out an old room or start a new one, they set to smartly, you may be sure."

"Don't they ever get tired of it?" asked Annimae, gazing about the handsomely appointed washroom-so many modern conveniences!-in wonder. Bridget and Gardenia exchanged amused glances.

"They're paid in gold, Ma'am," Gardenia explained. "And at twice the wage they'd be earning from anybody else. You can bet they just go home at night and fall on their knees to pray old Mrs. Nightengale never finishes her house!"

"Why is it called the thirteenth room?" Annimae asked.

"To confuse the spirits, Ma'am," replied Gardenia. "It's the seventeenth along that corridor, if you count."

"Why does Mother Nightengale spend so much time there?"