Part 13 (2/2)

”If you know what I mean,” Great-Aunt Merrion added.

Annimae protested tearfully, and gave her aunts many examples of Daniel's liveliness. Aunt Pugh wept like a spigot, rocking to and fro and moaning about the shame of it all, until Great-Aunt Merrion told her to cease acting like a fool.

”Now, you listen to me, child,” she said to Annimae. ”There's only one reason that woman would concoct such a c.o.c.k-and-bull story. I'll tell you why you can't look on the face of that son of hers! He is a mulatto.”

”That's not true!” said Annimae. ”I saw his baby picture.”

”You saw a picture of the baby that died, I expect,” said Aunt Pugh, blowing her nose. ”Oh, Annimae!”

”There used to be plenty of old families got themselves a little foundling to replace a dead boy, when the estate was entailed,” said Great-Aunt Merrion. ”So long as there was a male heir, decent folk held their tongues about it. Money kept the nursemaids from telling the truth.

”Well, hasn't she plenty of money? And didn't she move clear out here to the West so there'd be n.o.body around who knew the truth? And who'll see the color of her sin, if he's kept out of sight?”

”What's his hair like, child? Oh, Annimae, how you have been fooled!” said Aunt Pugh.

”Likely enough he's her son” sneered Great-Aunt Merrion. ”But he's not the one who ought to have inherited.”

Annimae was so horrified and angry she nearly stood up to her aunts, and as it was she told them they had better leave. The old women rose up to go; but Great-Aunt Merrion got in a parting shot.

”Ghosts and goblins, my foot,” she said. ”If you're not a fool, child, you'll sneak a penny candle and a match into that bedroom, next time you go in there, just you get yourself a good look at that Daniel Nightengale, once he's asleep. You'd better be sure than be a lasting disgrace to your father.”

Annimae fled to the darkness to weep, that none might see her. Two hours she fought with her heart.

All the fond embraces, all the words of love, all the undoubted wisdom of the Spiritualists and her own wedding vows were on her heart's side. But the little quailing child who lived within her breast too thought of the aunts' grim faces as they had spoken, backed up by the dead certainties of all grandmothers and aunts from the beginning of time.

In the end she decided that their dark suspicions were utterly base and unfounded. But she would slip a candle and a match in her ap.r.o.n pocket, all the same, so as to prove them wrong.

And when she came in to Daniel at last, when his glad voice greeted her and his warm hands reached out, she knew her heart was right, and silenced all doubt. Sam came in and served them supper, and she listened and compared the two voices, straining for any similarity of accent. Surely there was none!

And when the supper dishes had been taken away and Daniel took her in his arms and kissed her, she ran her hands through his thick hair. Surely it was golden!

And when they lay together in bed, there was none of the drum-driven madness of the night before, no animal hunger; only Daniel gentle and chivalrous, sane and reasonable, teasing her about what they'd do when he could go to Paris or Rome at last. Surely he was a gentleman!

But she had slipped the candle and the match under her pillow, and they lay there like wise serpents, who wheedled: Wouldn't you like just a glimpse of his face?

At last, when he had fallen asleep and lay dreaming beside her, she reached under the pillow- and brought out the match. No need to light the candle, she had decided; all she wanted was one look at his dear face. One look only, in a flash no evil ghost would have time to notice. And who would dare harm her darling, if she lay beside him to keep him safe? One look only, to bear in her mind down all the long years they'd have together, one tiny secret for her to keep like a pressed flower Annimae touched his face, ran her fingers over his stubbly cheek, and set her hand on his brow to shade his eves from the light . He sighed and murmured something in his sleep. With her other hand, she reached up and struck the match against the bedpost.

The light bloomed yellow.

Daniel was not there. n.o.body was there. Annimae was alone in the bed.

Unbelieving, she felt with her hand that had been touching his cheek, his brow, that very second.

There was nothing there.

That was when Annimae dropped the match, and the room was gone in darkness, and she could feel her throat contracting for a scream. But there was a high shriek beginning already, an inhuman whine as though the whole room were lamenting, and that was Daniel's voice rising now in a wail of grief, somewhere far above, as though he were being puked away from her, receding and receding through the darkness.

ANNIEMAE!”.

The bed began to shudder. The room itself, the very house began to shake. She heard a ringing impact from the bathroom, as the silver pitchers were thrown to the tiled floor. The table by the bed fell with a crash. A rending crack, a boom, the sound of plaster falling; a rectangle full of hectic blue-white light , and she realized that the secret panel had been forced open.

Annimae's mind, numb-shocked as it was, registered Earthquake with a certain calm. She grabbed her robe and fled over the tilting floor, squeezed through the doorway and ran down the long corridor.

Tiny globes of ball lightning crackled, spat, skittered before her, lighting her way at least. But she could see the walls cracking too, she could see the plaster dropping away and the bare laths. The carpet flexed under her feet like an animal's back. The shaking would not stop.

She rounded a corner and saw Mrs. Nightengale flying toward her, hair streaming back and disheveled, hands out as though to claw the slow air. Her face was like a Greek mask of horror and rage, her mouth wide in a cry that Annimae could not hear over the roar of the failing house. She sped past Annimae without so much as a glance, vanis.h.i.+ng in the direction of Daniel's rooms.

Annimae ran on, half-falling down a flight of stairs that was beginning to fold up even as she reached the bottom, and then there was a noise louder than any she'd heard yet, loud as an explosion, louder than the cannons must have been at Gettysburg. To her left there was an avalanche of bricks, mortar, splinters and wire, as a tower came down through three floors and carried all before it. It knocked out a wall and Annimae saw flowers glimmering pale through the plaster-dust, and dim stars above them.

She staggered forth into the night and fled, sobbing now, for her heart was beginning to go like the house. On bleeding feet she ran; when she could run no further she fell, and lay still, and wept and knew there was no possible consolation.

Some while later Annimae raised her head, and saw that the sky was just beginning to get light in the east. She looked around. She was lying in a drift of yellow leaves. All around her were the black trunks and arching branches of the orchard, in a silence so profound she might have gone deaf. Turning her head uncertainly, looking for the house, she saw them coming for her.

A throng of shadows, empty-eyed but not expressionless, and at their head walked the dancers from the fire: the black man with his stick, the red- headed hoyden. Beyond them, dust still rising against the dawn, was the nightmare mountain of rubble that had been the home of true love.

Annimae lay whimpering at their approach. With each step they took the figures altered, changed, aged. They became Sam and Bridget Lacroix. The sullen shades in their train began to mutter threateningly, seemed about to surge forward at Annimae; but Sam stopped, and raised his cane in a gesture that halted them. His sad stern face seemed chiseled from black stone.

”Shame on you, girl,” he said. ”Love and Suspicion can't live together in the same house, no matter how many rooms it has.”

Annimae scrambled to her feet and ran again. They did not follow her.

She forgot who she was, or why she was traveling, and she had no destination in mind. By day she huddled in barns or empty sheds, for the sunlight hurt her eyes unbearably. By night she walked on, ducking out of sight when a horseman or a carriage would come along her road. For some days she wandered up a bay sh.o.r.e, following the tideline. The mud felt cool on her cut feet.

At length she came to a great city, that whirred and clattered and towered to the sky. She regarded it in wonder, hiding among the reeds until nightfall, hoping to pa.s.s through in the dark. Alas! It was lit bright even after midnight. Annimae edged as close as she dared, creeping through the shadows, and then turned to stare; for she found herself outside a lovely garden, planted all in roses, shaded by high dark cypresses, and the wrought-iron gate was unlocked. It seemed as though it would be a comforting place to rest.

She slipped in, and stretched out on one of the cool white marble beds. Angels mourned, all around her.

When the pastor at Mission Dolores found her, she was unable to speak. He had his housekeeper feed her, bathe her, and tend to her feet; he sent out inquiries. No one came forward to claim Annimae, however, and the sisters at the Sacred Heart convent agreed to take her in.

In the peace, in the silence punctuated only by matins and evensong, gently bulked by well-meaning maternal women, still she remained mute; but her memory, if not her voice, began to come back to her.

There was still too much horror and confusion to absorb, though one fact rose clear and bleak above the rest: she had lost her true love.

He had been dead. He had been imaginary He had been real, but she had betrayed him. She would never hear his voice again.

She would be alone the rest of her life.

And it seemed a grimly appropriate fate that she should come full circle to end up here, a child in a house full of aunts, confined to the nursery where she clearly belonged, having failed so badly at being a grown woman. Perhaps she would take the veil, though she had always been told to distrust Catholics as minions of the Pope. Perhaps she would take Jesus as her new husband.

But one morning Annimae woke to a welling nausea, and barely made it to the little bathroom at the end of the dormitory hall before vomiting. Afterward she bolted the door, and ran water for a bath.

Stepping into the water, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

She stared, and stared unbelieving at her swollen body

Merry Christmas from Navarro Lodge, 1928.

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