Part 10 (1/2)
”Dear, you mustn't say such a thing! It may be He sends us our little aches and pains to remind us we ought to be ready at all times to come before Him, but-”
”I prayed the boys would die,” Aunt Caroline told her. ”I thought of having them suffocated in their cradles. G.o.d forgive me, forgive me! And it wasn't a week after that the pains began.”
Aunt Elizabeth had drawn away from her. Her face was a study in stupefied horror.
”Never!” she said at last. ”Those dear, sweet little lambs? Oh, Caroline, you never! Oh, how could you? Oh, and to think-”
Aunt Caroline had begun to sob hoa.r.s.ely, rocking herself to and fro in her agony. Aunt Elizabeth watched her a moment, struggling to find words, and at last found them.
”Well,” she said, ”It's-Henry would say, this is proof of the infinite mercy of the Almighty, you know7. For, only think, if you had followed such a wicked thought with a deed, what worse torments would await you eternally! As it is, the sin is hideous but not so bad as it might be, and these timely pangs have made you reflect on the peril to your eternal soul, and you have surely repented! Therefore all may vet be well-”
Aunt Caroline toppled forward. Aunt Elizabeth leaped up, screaming, and the men stopped work at once and ran to be of a.s.sistance. Upon examination, Aunt Caroline was found not to have died, but merely fainted from her pain, and when revived she begged feebly to be taken to her chamber. Aunt Elizabeth, rising to the occasion, directed the men to improvise a stretcher from the ladder. She paced alongside as they bore Aunt Caroline away, entreating her to call on her Savior for comfort.
The little girl watched all this with round eyes.
”There's one secret out,” remarked the tyger. ”I wonder whether any others will show themselves?”
The east wind was blowing. It swayed the cloths on the long tables, it swayed the paper lanterns the servants had hung up on lines strung through the trees in the garden. The tyger lashed his tail as he paced.
The little girl was walking from lantern to lantern, peering up at them and wondering how they would light when evening fell.
”Your Uncle Randall asked your Mamma to marry him today,” said the tyger.
”He did it in front of Uncle Henry and Aunt Elizabeth,” said the child.
”Because he thought she wouldn't like to say no, if they were present,” said the tyger. The child nodded.
”But Mamma said no,” she concluded. ”Then Uncle Randall had a gla.s.s of wine.”
The tyger put his face close to the bars.
”Something bad is going to happen,” he said. ”Think very hard, quickly: are you a rabbit, or do you have teeth and claws?”
”What the h.e.l.l's it doing?” said a hoa.r.s.e voice from the other end of the courtyard. The child. looked up to see Uncle Randall advancing on her swiftly. He had a strange blank look in his eyes, a strange fixed smile.
”Hasn't it ever been told not to go so near a wild brute? Naughty, naughty little thing!” he said, and grabbed her arm tightly. ”We'll have to punish it.”
He began to drag her away in the direction of the potting shed. She screamed, kicking him as hard as she could, but he laughed and swung her up off her feet. He marched on toward the thicket behind the shed, groping under her skirts.
”We'll have to punish its little soft b.u.m, that's what we'll have to do,” he said wildly, ”Because a dutiful uncle must do such things, after all, ungrateful little harlot-”
She screamed again, and suddenly he had stopped dead in his tracks and let her fall, because Cousin Louise was standing right before them and staring at Uncle Randall. She was chalk-white. She seemed as though she were choking a long minute, unable to make a sound, as the little girl whimpered and scrambled away on hands and knees.
Uncle Randall, momentarily disconcerted, regained his smile.
”What?” he demanded. ”None of your business if we were only playing.”
Cousin Louise threw herself at him. Being, as she was, a tall girl, she bore him over so he fell to the pavement with a crash. His wig came off. She beat him in the face with her fists, and found her voice at last, harsh as a crow's: ”What were you going to tell her? Were you going to tell her you'd cut her tongue out if she ever told what you did? Were you? Were you?”
Uncle Randall snarled and attempted to throw her off.
”Ow! Who'd believe you, stupid b.i.t.c.h? The guests'll be arriving, I'll say you've gone mad-”
The child climbed to her feet and ran, sobbing, and got behind the menagerie wall. There she cried in silence, hiding her face in her skirts.
When she ventured out again at last, neither Uncle Randall nor Cousin Louise were anywhere in sight. The tiger was looking at her steadily.
”That's another secret come to light,” he said. ”Now, I'll tell you still another.”
Rubbing her eyes with her fist, she listened as he told her the secret.
Mamma and Aunt Elizabeth carried the babies into the chapel, so the nurserymaid was able to spare her a moment.
”Lord, lord, how did your face get so dirty? As if I ain't got enough to see to!” she grumbled, dipping a corner of her ap.r.o.n in the horse-trough and was.h.i.+ng the little girl's face. ”Now, hold my hand and be a good child when we go in. No noise!”
She was a good child through the solemn ceremony. Mamma watched the little boys tenderly, anxiously, and Uncle Henry and Aunt Elizabeth smiled when first John, and then James, screamed and went red-faced at having Satan driven out with cold water. Uncle Thomas was watching Mamma. Aunt Caroline was tranquilly distant: she'd taken laudanum for her pain. Beside her, Cousin Louise watched Uncle Randall with a basilisk glare. Uncle Randall was holding himself upright and defiant, smiling, though his face was puffy with bruises.
Afterward they all processed from the chapel and up the long stairs, to arrange themselves in ranks before Grandpapa, that he might give them his blessing. He stared from his high white bed and had to be reminded who they all were. At last he moved his wasted hand on the counterpane, granting an abbreviated benediction on posterity, and they were able to file from the sickroom into the clean-smelling twilight.
The wind had dropped a little but still moved the lanterns, that had candles inside them now and looked like golden moons glowing in the trees. It brought the sweet smell of wood smoke from an early bonfire. The dusk was lavender, so lambent even-thing looked slightly transparent, and the milling guests in the garden might have been ghosts. The child wandered among them, unseen as a ghost herself, watching.
There were stout old gentlemen with iron-gray wigs and wide-brimmed hats, who spoke at length with Uncle Henry about harvests and horse fairs. In high white wigs were young men and young ladies, lace-trimmed mincers of both s.e.xes, who wondered why there were no musicians, and were quite put out to be told that there would be no dancing because of mourning for Papa.
Admiring gentlemen in silk stockings, slithery as eels, crowded around Mamma to pay her complements, and Uncle Thomas held her arm possessively and smiled at them all. Aunt Caroline, on a couch that had been brought out for her, looked on dreamily Uncle Randall edged through the crowd, telling first one inquirer and then another how his bruises had come at the hands of a low s.l.u.t of a chambermaid, d.a.m.n her eyes for a scheming hussy, wanted a guinea for favors as though she were the Queen of Sheba, screamed like a harpy when he'd paid her out in the coin she deserved! Ha-ha.
John and James lay in the arms of the nurserymaid and Aunt Elizabeth, who was glad to get off her feet, and the little boys stared in wide-awake astonishment at the glowing lanterns and ignored all their well-wishers, who moved on speedily to the collation table for cider and ham anyway. Some guests vanished in pairs into shadowy corners. There were perfumes of civet- musk strong in the air, there was wine flowing free. Someone got drunk remarkably quickly and tripped, and his wig went flying. It hit Uncle Henry in the face with a poof and a cloud of powder. People t.i.ttered with laughter.
The little girl walked through the shadows to the keeper's shed. She found the ring of keys where he had hung it up before hurrying off to the somewhat lesser collation for the servants. n.o.body but the tyger saw her as she came and tried the big bra.s.s keys, one after another, in the padlock that secured the door of his pen. At last it clicked open.
She slipped it off. The bolt was a simple one, just like the bolt on the nursery door. Sliding it back, she opened the door of the pen.
The tiger paced swiftly forward, his green eves gleaming. He looked much bigger out of his prison.
He turned and gazed at her a moment; put out his warm rough tongue and slicked it along the pulse of her wrist, the palm of her hand. She felt a shock go through her body, an electric thrill of pleasure. She parted her lips but could find no words, only staring back at him in wonderment. He turned his head to regard the party in the sunken garden.
”Now,” said the tyger, ”We'll see, won't we?”
He stretched his magnificent length, gave a slight wriggle of his shoulders, and bounded across the courtyard. Standing beside the empty cage, she folded her little hands and watched.
He charged the party, vaulting from the top step into the sunken garden. Horrified guests looked up to see him land in the midst of them all, and gilt chairs were knocked over as people scrambled to get away from him, screaming in their panic. Some staggered on their high heels, some kicked off their shoes and ran in their slippery stockinged feet. Aunt Elizabeth went over backward in her chair, clutching young James, and both began to shriek. The servants fled for their lives. Aunt Caroline watched all from her couch, too drugged to care.
But the tyger leapt straight through the garden like a thunderbolt, overtaking Uncle Thomas, whom it felled with a sidelong rake of one paw. Uncle Thomas went down, howling and clutching himself, and blood ran red all down his white silk hose. The tiger didn't even pause, however, it sprang clean over him and continued forward, and the only person left before it now was Uncle Randall, who had broken a heel on the topmost of the opposite steps and was still there, frantically attempting to yank off his tight shoe.
Uncle Randall looked up into the tyger's eyes, but had no time to do more than bleat before it struck him. He broke like a doll, and rolled over with it into the darkness.
There was a second's hush, cries cut off abruptly in those who still crouched or lay sprawled in the sunken garden. Uncle Henry, who had crawled to Aunt Elizabeth's side, rose on his elbow to look and said, ”O Lord G.o.d!”