“See, it’s just a little scratch!” Lucille said, but that was only to calm the child. To her it was not a little scratch. It was a terrible thing to happen the first afternoon she was in charge, a catastrophe she had failed to prevent. She wished over and over that the hurt might be on her own hand, twice as severe.
Heloise smiled as she let the bandage be tied. “Don’t punish Nicky,” she said. “He didn’t mean to do it. He just plays rough.”
But Lucille had no idea of punishing Nicky. She wanted only to punish herself, to seize a stick and thrust it into her own palm.
“Why do you make your teeth like that?”
“I—I thought it might be hurting you.”
“It doesn’t hurt any more.” And Heloise went skipping out of the bathroom. She leaped onto her bed and lay on the tan cover that fitted the corners and came all the way to the floor. Her bandaged finger showed startlingly white against the brown of her arm. We have to take a nap now,” she told Lucille, and closed her eyes. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” Lucille answered, and tried to smile.
She went down to get Nicky and when they came up the stairs Mrs. Christiansen was at the nursery door.
Lucille blanched. “I don’t think it’s bad, ma’am. It—It’s a scratch from the sandbox.”
“Heloise’s finger? Oh, no, don’t worry, my dear. They’re always getting little scratches. It does them good. Makes them more careful.”
Mrs. Christiansen went in and sat on the edge of Nicky’s bed. “Nicky, dear, you must learn to be more gentle. Just see how you frightened Lucille!” She laughed and ruffled his hair.
Lucille watched from the doorway. Again she felt herself an outsider, but this time because of her incompetence. Yet how different this was from the scenes she had watched in the parks!
Mrs. Christiansen patted Lucille’s shoulder as she went out. “They’ll forget all about it by nightfall.”
“Nightfall,” Lucille whispered as she went back into the nursery. “What a beautiful word!”
While the children slept, Lucille looked through an illustrated book of Pinocchio. She was avid for stories, any kind of stories, but most of all adventure stories and fairy tales. And at her elbow on the children’s shelf there were scores of them. It would take her months to read them all. It did not matter that they were for children. In fact, she found that kind more to her liking, because such stories were illustrated with pictures of animals dressed up, and tables and houses and all sorts of things come to life.
Now she turned the pages of Pinocchio with a sense of contentment and happiness so strong that it intruded upon the story she was reading. The doctor at the sanatorium had encouraged her reading, she remembered, and had told her to go to movies, too. “Be with normal people and forget all about your mother’s difficulties. . . .” (Difficulties, he had called it then, but all other times he had said strain. Strain it was, like a thread, running through the generations. She had thought, through her.) Lucille could still see the psychiatrist’s face, his head turned a little to one side, his glasses in his hand as he spoke, just as she had thought a psychiatrist should look. “Just because your mother had a strain, there’s no reason why you should not be as normal as your father was. I have every reason to believe you are. You are an intelligent girl, Lucille. . . . Get yourself a job out of the city . . . relax . . . enjoy life. . . . I want you to forget even the house your family lived in. . . . After a year in the country . . .”
That, too, was three weeks ago, just after her mother had died in the ward. And what the doctor had said was true. In this house where there were peace and love, beauty and children, she could feel the moils of the city sloughing off her like a snake’s outworn skin. Already, in this one half day! In a week she would forget for ever her mother’s face.
With a little gasp of joy that was almost ecstasy she turned to the bookshelf and chose at random six or seven tall, slender, brightly colored books. One she laid open, face down, in her lap. Another she opened and leaned against her breast. Still holding the rest in one hand, she pressed her face into Pinocchio’s pages, her eyes half closed. Slowly she rocked back and forth in the chair, conscious of nothing but her own happiness and gratitude. The chimes downstairs struck three times, but she did not hear them.
“What are you doing?” Nicky asked, his voice politely curious.
Lucille brought the book down from her face. When the meaning of his question struck her, she flushed and smiled like a happy but guilty child. “Reading!” she laughed.
Nicky laughed, too. “You read awful close.”
“Ya-yuss,” said Heloise, who had also sat up.
Nicky came over and examined the books in her lap. “We get up at three o’clock. Would you read to us now? Catherine always read to us until dinner.”
“Shall I read to you out of Pinocchio?” Lucille suggested, happy that she might possibly share with them the happiness she had gained from the first pages of its story. She sat down on the floor so they could see the pictures as she read.
Nicky and Heloise pushed their eager faces over the pictures, and sometimes Lucille could hardly see to read. She did not realize that she read with a tense interest that communicated itself to the two children, and that this was why they enjoyed it so much. For two hours she read, and the time slipped by almost like so many minutes.
Just after five Lisabeth brought in the tray with their dinner, and when the meal was over Nicky and Heloise demanded more reading until their bedtime at seven. Lucille gladly began another book, but when Lisabeth returned to remove the tray, she told Lucille that it was time for the children’s bath, and that Mrs. Christiansen would be up to say good night in a little while.
Mrs. Christiansen was up at seven, but the two children by that time were in their robes, freshly bathed, and deep in another story with Lucille on the floor.
“You know,” Nicky said to his mother, “we’ve read all these books before with Catherine, but when Lucille reads them they seem like new books!”
Lucille flushed with pleasure. When the children were in bed, she went downstairs with Mrs. Christiansen.
“Is everything fine, Lucille? . . . I thought there might be something you’d like to ask me about the running of things.”
“No, ma’am, except . . . might I come up once in the night to see how the children are doing?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to break your sleep, Lucille. That’s very thoughtful, but it’s really unnecessary.”
Lucille was silent.
“And I’m afraid the evenings are going to seem long to you. If you’d ever like to go to a picture in town, Alfred, that’s the chauffeur, he’ll be glad to take you in the car.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Then good night, Lucille.”
“Good night, ma’am.”
She went out the back way, across the garden where the fountain was still playing. And when she put her hand on the knob of her door, she wished that it were the nursery door, that it were eight o’clock in the morning and time to begin another day.
Still she was tired, pleasantly tired. How very pleasant it was, she thought, as she turned out the light, to feel properly tired in the evening (although it was only nine o’clock) instead of bursting with energy, instead of being unable to sleep for thinking of her mother or worrying about herself. . . . She remembered one day not so long ago when for fifteen minutes she had been unable to think of her name. She had run in panic to the doctor. . . .
That was past! She might even ask Alfred to buy her a pack of cigarettes in town—a luxury she had denied herself for months.
She took a last look at the house from her window. The curtains in the nursery billowed out now and then and were swept back again. The wind spoke in the nodding tops of the poplars like friendly voices, like the high-pitched, ever-rippling voices of children. . . .
The second day was like the first, except that there was no mishap, no scraped hand—and the third and the fo
urth. Regular and identical like the row of Nicky’s lead soldiers on the playtable in the nursery. The only thing that changed was Lucille’s love for the family and the children—a blind and passionate devotion which seemed to redouble each morning. She noticed and loved many things: the way Heloise drank her milk in little gulps at the back of her throat, how the blond down on their backs swirled up to meet the hair on the napes of their necks, and when she bathed them the painful vulnerability of their bodies.
Saturday evening she found an envelope addressed to herself in the mailbox at the door of the servants’ house. Inside was a blank sheet of paper and inside that a couple of new twenty-dollar bills. Lucille held one of them by its crisp edges. Its value meant nothing to her. To use it she would have to go to stores where other people were. What use had she for money if she were never to leave the Christiansen home? It would simply pile up, forty dollars each week. In a year’s time she would have two thousand and eighty dollars, and in two years’ time twice that. Eventually she might have as much as the Christiansens themselves and that would not be right.
Would they think it very strange if she asked to work for nothing? Or for ten dollars perhaps?
She had to speak to Mrs. Christiansen, and she went to her the next morning. It was an inopportune time. Mrs. Christiansen was making up a menu for a dinner.
“It’s about my salary, ma’am,” Lucille began.
“Yes?” Mrs. Christiansen said in her pleasant voice.
Lucille watched the yellow pencil in her hand moving swiftly over the paper. “It’s too much for me, ma’am.”
The pencil stopped. Mrs. Christiansen’s lips parted slightly in surprise. “You are such a funny girl, Lucille!”
“How do you mean—funny?” Lucille asked curiously.
“Well, first you want to be practically day and night with the children. You never even want your afternoon off. You’re always talking about doing something “important” for us, though what that could be I can’t imagine. . . . And now your salary’s too much! We’ve never had a girl like you, Lucille. I can assure you, you’re different!” She laughed, and the laugh was full of ease and relaxation that contrasted with the tension of the girl who stood before her.
Lucille was rapt by the conversation. “How do you mean different, ma’am?”
“Why, I’ve just told you, my dear. And I refuse to lower your salary because that would be sheer exploitation. In fact, if you ever change your mind and want a raise—”
“Oh, no, ma’am. . . . but I just wish there was something more I could do for you . . . all of you. . . .”
“Lucille! You’re working for us, aren’t you? Taking care of our children. What could be more important than that?”
“But I mean something bigger—I mean more—”
“Nonsense, Lucille,” Mrs. Christiansen interrupted. “Just because the people you were with before were not so—friendly as we are doesn’t mean you have to work your fingers to the bone for us.” She waited for the girl to make some move to go, but she still stood by the desk, her face puzzled. “Mr. Christiansen and I are very well pleased with you, Lucille.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She went back to the nursery where the children were playing. She had not made Mrs. Christiansen understand. If she could just go back and explain what she felt, tell her about her mother and her fear of herself for so many months, how she had never dared take a drink or even a cigarette . . . and how just being with the family in this beautiful house had made her well again . . . telling her all that might relieve her. She turned toward the door, but the thought of disturbing her or boring her with the story, a servant girl’s story, made her stop. So during the rest of the day she carried her unexpressed gratitude like a great weight in her breast.
That night she sat in her room with the light on until after twelve o’clock. She had her cigarettes now, and she allowed herself three in the evening, but even those were sufficient to set her blood tingling, to relax her mind, to make her dream heroic dreams. And when the three cigarettes were smoked, and she would have liked another, she rose very light in the head and put the cigarette pack in her top drawer to close away temptation. Just as she slid the drawer she noticed on her handkerchief box the two twenty-dollar bills the Christiansens had given her. She took them now, and sat down again in her chair.
From the book of matches she took a match, struck it, and leaned it, burning end down, against the side of her ashtray. Slowly she struck matches one after another and laid them strategically to make a tiny, flickering, well-controlled fire. When the matches were gone, she tore the pasteboard cover into little bits and dropped them in slowly. Finally she took the twenty-dollar bills and with some effort tore bits from them of the same size. These, too, she meted to the fire.
Mrs. Christiansen did not understand, but if she saw this, she might. Still this was not enough. Mere faithful service was not enough either. Anyone would give that, for money. She was different. Had not Mrs. Christiansen herself told her that? Then she remembered what else she had said: “Mr. Christiansen and I are very well pleased with you, Lucille.”
The memory of those words brought her up from her chair with an enchanted smile upon her lips. She felt wonderfully strong and secure in her own strength of mind and her position in the household. Mr. Christiansen and I are very well pleased with you, Lucille. There was really only one thing lacking in her happiness. She had to prove herself in crisis.
If only a plague like those she had read of in the Bible . . . “And it came to pass that there was a great plague over all the land.” That was how the Bible would say it. She imagined waters lapping higher against the big house, until they swept almost into the nursery. She would rescue the children and swim with them to safety, wherever that might be.
She moved restlessly about the room.
Or if there came an earthquake. . . . She would rush in among falling walls and drag the children out. Perhaps she would go back for some trifle, like Nicky’s lead soldiers or Heloise’s paint set, and be crushed to death. Then the Christiansens would know her devotion.
Or if there might be a fire. Anyone might have a fire. Fires were common things and needed no wrathful visitations from the upper world. There might be a terrible fire just with the gasoline in the garage and a match.
She went downstairs, through the inside door that opened to the garage. The tank was three feet high and entirely full, so that unless she had been inspired with the necessity and importance of her deed, she would not have been able to lift the thing over the threshold of the garage and of the servants’ house, too. She rolled the tank across the yard in the same manner as she had seen men roll beer barrels and ashcans. It made no noise on the grass and only a brief bump and rumble over one of the flagstone paths, lost in the night.
No lights shone at any of the windows, but if they had, Lucille would not have been deterred. She would not have been deterred had Mr. Christiansen himself been standing there by the fountain, for probably she would not have seen him. And if she had, was she not about to do a noble thing? No, she would have seen only the house and the children’s faces in the room upstairs.
She unscrewed the cap and poured some gasoline on a corner of the house, rolled the tank farther, poured more against the white shingles, and so on until she reached the far corner. Then she struck her match and walked back the way she had come, touching off the wet places. Without a backward glance she went to stand at the door of the servants’ house and watch.
The flames were first pale and eager, then they became yellow with touches of red. As Lucille watched, all the tension that was left in her, in body or mind, flowed evenly upward and was lifted from her forever, leaving her muscles and brain free for the voluntary tension of an athlete before a starting gun. She would let the flames leap tall, even to the nursery window, before she rushed in, so that the danger might be at its highest. A smile like that of a saint settled on her mouth, and anyone seeing her there in the doorw
ay, her face glowing in the lambent light, would certainly have thought her a beautiful young woman.
She had lit the fire at five places, and these now crept up the house like the fingers of a hand, warm and flickering, gentle and caressing. Lucille smiled and held herself in check. Then suddenly the gasoline tank, having grown too warm, exploded with a sound like a cannon and lighted the entire scene for an instant.
As though this had been the signal for which she waited, Lucille went confidently forward.
ANOTHER BRIDGE TO CROSS
The top of the car was down, and Merrick saw the man on the bridge from a good mile away. The car in which Merrick rode was speeding toward him, and Merrick thought: “It’s like something in a Bergman film. The man has a gun in his hand now, and when the car gets so near the bridge he can’t miss, he’ll fire it at me, I’ll be hit through the chest, and that’s probably just as well.” Merrick kept looking at the hunched figure on the bridge—the man was leaning on his forearms on the rail—both because he expected catastrophe, and because the man on the bridge was the only human figure in the landscape to look at. They were in Italy on the southern Riviera. The Mediterranean’s serene blueness lay on their left, and on the right powdery green olive fields, that looked in need of water, straggled up the hills until stopped by the rocky feet of mountains. The bridge spanned the road, carried a crossroad, and was at least three stories high.
But the man did not move as Merrick’s car reached the bridge. Merrick saw a breeze stir his dark hair. The danger was over.
Then above the roar of an oncoming truck, Merrick heard a faint thud, as if a sandbag had fallen off the back of the car. He turned around, raising himself slightly. “Stop!” he shouted to his driver.
A dark blob lay on the road under the bridge, and Merrick looked around just in time to see the truck pass over it with the left pairs of its enormous double tires. The truck then screeched to a halt. The driver was getting out. Merrick pulled his hand down his forehead, over his eyes.