The familiar magic held. I read on, forgetting my uneasy qualms. But before I went to bed I left the hall door slightly ajar. Having been reared in a household where bedrooms were seldom closed, I found it claustrophobia to be shut in.
There was a dim radiance in the hall from the head of the stairs, but most of, the corridor was dark. I drifted into that hazy state which is neither sleep nor full consciousness. Then, I do not know how much later, I was sitting up in bed, my covers clutched to me, straining my ears for a repetition of that sound which had jolted me into heart-hammering wakefulness.
4
I pulled my robe about me and went to the door of my room. Peering out warily, I could see the faint glow of light from the stairwell. Between that and me were blots formed by two chairs back to the wall. Had a phone ring, sounding through the quiet house, awakened me? Or the closing of a door, the murmur of a voice?
Shivering, I stood listening. The silence was a little frightening. I could not guess how late it was—my watch lay on the bedside table behind me. All the doors along the hall were closed. This was like being left alone in an empty house—no, not an empty house—rather, one inhabited by someone, or something, I would rather not meet. My hand was on the knob of my own door, ready to close it against that silence which lay like a breath between two sighs.
Footsteps on the stairs—but with an oddly long pause between each. Against my will, I was drawn down the shadowed corridor to the head of the stairway. Shock pushed me into quick action.
Miss Elizabeth was dragging herself up, plainly by great effort. Both her hands pulled at the rail. Her body sagged as if only a determined will kept her on her feet at all.
She did not speak as I reached her. Only she turned her head, so even in this faint light, I saw a face which might be the death mask of the self-confident woman I knew. Fear chilled me even as I managed to half-support her up the last few steps. Once on the level floor of the hall, she swayed and might have fallen had I not taken a good portion of her weight.
“Room—” Her voice was a husky whisper. “Last room—”
Somehow she stayed on her feet, kept moving, as I steered her to the last door along the corridor. Doctor? I must get a doctor! Mrs. Anne Frimsbee—any help—I glanced at each door we passed, wishing I knew on which to knock.
Our wavering progress halted. Miss Elizabeth fumbled with a small, jet-beaded purse clipped to her belt. Her shaking fingers could not master the catch and I caught her murmur. “Key—”
I found the key while she leaned against the wall, her breath coming in heavy gasps as if she could not get enough air into her laboring luungs. The lock clicked and I groped along the wall within to locate the light switch.
Miss Elizabeth eluded my grasp and tottered ahead, to fall, rather than seat herself, in a rocking chair. Under the light, her haggard face had such a ghastly color my alarm grew. Was she going to die, perhaps of a heart attack, before I could get help? Yet dared I leave her to summon that? Irene’s room was the only one I was certain of, and I was about to go for her when Miss Elizabeth sat up a little straighter.
Perhaps reaching the sanctuary of her own room worked as a restorative. Although she still rested her head against the comb back of the chair, a faint color was back in her gray-white cheeks. Now I dared to pick up one of her paper-white, blue-veined hands, enclosing the cold and clammy flesh between my palms as I asked:
“You are ill, Miss Austin. May I call your doctor?”
Her hand jerked in my hold. When she answered her voice was stronger:
“I shall be all right now, thank you. Just tired, so very tired. Let me just sit here and rest a while—”
It was true she seemed stronger, but I was not satisfied. Surely this collapse was caused by more than ordinary fatigue. A heart attack—even a light stroke? My life with Aunt Otilda during the last couple of years had made me conscious of the ills of the elderly, and how quickly some weakness might strike. Perhaps delayed shock from Miss Elizabeth’s sister’s death was responsible. I could not just leave her so.
“Would you like me to call Mrs. Frimsbee—or Irene?”
Her eyes were half-closed and her breath still came in small gasps.
“There is no need to disturb anyone, I assure you.” Some of the old firmness had returned to her voice, even though her body still slumped in the chair. “I am much better. I merely was foolish enough to become overtired. Good of you to be concerned, but, yes, I am much better.” She spoke as one willing that her words become the truth.
Now she drew her hand out of my grasp, pulled herself up in the rocker. Her expression was one of dismissal. Still, I hesitated to leave her. A soft chime sounded. The hands on the face of the delicate porcelain clock in the center of the mantel pointed to two. What had she been doing up at this hour? She was fully dressed. And, though her bed had been turned down for the night, she had not rested on it.
“Much, much better,” she repeated, this time with an emphasis I could not disregard.
“Won’t you let me call someone of your family?” I dared to persist, as my conscience (so well trained in Aunt Otilda’s school) would not let me just leave her.
“Most kind of you. But I shall do very well now. I am sorry that I disturbed you. I did awaken you, did I not?” Her last question was a bit sharper in tone, her dark eyes probed mine as if my answer was of importance.
“I heard you on the stairs. It was so late, I was afraid something was wrong—” I said. It was not perhaps the truth (for I did not know just what had awakened me), but it was the best I could offer.
“Most kind—” she repeated. Her eyelids drooped. “Sounds in a house as large and old as this one can be misleading. I hope you have not taken a chill. You had best be back to bed before you do.”
The flat dismissal of that I could not disregard. I went out, closing the door behind me. But still I lingered in the chill hall for a moment or two. The faint light below the stairs still shown. Was the light there left on because of what rested in the parlor? I shivered at the thought more than the cold. This house had lost its feeling of stuffy warmth, of overcrowded, antique luxury.
As I slipped along I tried to imagine what could have so shaken my landlady’s whalebone-stiffened competence. Also I listened, for what I did not know. But when I gained my own room I tunneled quickly under the bed covers.
It was long before I was able to get back to sleep. So, when I awoke into winter sunlight, my head aching, I saw by my watch that I had overslept.
My throat felt scratchy, an ominous foreshadowing of one of the colds I had come to dread. That warning meant I had better stay in today, in spite of my wish to be elsewhere at the time of the funeral. I checked my bag, laid out cold pills, the inhaler, those preparations winters in this climate had taught me to carry.
What I wanted was a hot breakfast—a leisurely one, where one might linger at the table for a second or even a third cup of coffee and a reading of the morning paper. Yet under the present circumstances I supposed I would have to go out to eat, thus insuring my cold. With sniffling self-pity, I put on my warmest pants suit, and I was just tying a scarf, which was far too cheerful for my morning mood, when there was a perfunctory knock at the door, and the maid who had admitted me four days earlier entered.
“Oh—I am sorry. I thought you had gone out—” She looked startled.
“I overslept. And I think I have caught a cold. I’ll go out for breakfast and be back later. I don’t want the flu—”
She set down her burden of dustcloths and vacuum.
“You don’t have to go out for breakfast, miss, unless you want to. It’s laid in the little breakfast room this morning.” She skirted the reason for a change in household routine.
Another glance out of the window promised cold and bad walking, while the maid appeared to think that breakfasting here was correct. I went downstairs self-consciously, hoping I would not have to face Miss Elizabeth across what could in no circumstances be termed a festive
board.
Only one person was seated at the round table. Preston Donner arose to greet me, one corner of a linen napkin tucked into the opening of his knitted wool waistcoat. He put aside a marmalade-spread square of toast to pull out my chair.
I wished I could think of something bright to add to “Good morning.” But any such remarks eluded me.
“You had good weather for your trip with Mrs. Cantrell. Luckily you returned before this closed in.” He gestured to the nearest window, which gave a depressing view of bushes hung with accumulations of wet snow. He was taking on the duties of host, pouring me a cup of coffee from a waiting electric pot, pushing a covered bun holder a few inches in my direction. “May I suggest Reena’s cinnamon rolls? They are delicious enough to brighten even such a dreary day as this.”
Weather—I followed his cue and assured him we had had a pleasant trip, easing thus into a discussion of Theodosia’s research. So occupied, I not only made a hearty breakfast, but my feeling of depression lifted. Then Preston Donner, as if he sensed my better mood, changed to a subject nearer home.
“Miss Jansen, I am very glad you decided to come here. Miss Elizabeth gives one the impression that she is armored against all emotional shocks. But that seeming imperviousness is purely a facade. Miss Emma was her sister and, while their lives were in no way similar, and their natures very different, yet there remained a strong family tie. Miss Emma’s sudden death—we had all believed that she was recovering very well from her accident—has been a hard blow. Why, Miss Elizabeth and Miss Irene had only visited her only on Sunday and she seemed much better.” He made a business of fussily brushing crumbs across the tablecloth. “Now there are few to give Miss Elizabeth any real thought. Miss Irene is very occupied with her husband and her child. Maud and Reena, of course, do all they can to lighten the burden of household care. They have been a part of this house for many years. But neither of them—they are old—can entirely support Miss Elizabeth. Am I—” he asked as he paused and now looked directly at me, “right in believing that you have had experience in dealing with older people?”
“I lived most of my life with an aunt, yes, and of course, she was of another generation.” I was puzzled—did the remaining bits of Aunt Otilda’s onetime dominance still show?
“Just so. I thought that your attitude when you met Miss Elizabeth for the first time suggested you were not unfamiliar with her—her little eccentricities. Her dress, for example, sometimes astonishes younger women. In this day and age many young people might find her odd. But—more to the point—if Miss Elizabeth should—the number of the family doctor is on a pad by the phone. And my office phone is listed there also. Miss Elizabeth rightly wishes the service this afternoon to be private. But if afterwards she seems to need assistance—” He rolled his napkin to put in a waiting ring.
“I will not be going out today,” I answered unhappily. Why had he called upon that morbid feeling of duty to elders, which I had been trying to rid myself of these past months? It was like being jerked back into a box I wanted no more to see. But habit answered for me now: “If Miss Elizabeth needs me, I will be here.”
“Thank you!” His voice was too hearty, I decided, as if he had shifted some burden to me. And he went out Of the room quickly as if he feared I might recant. But why had he omitted any reference to Sister Anne? Wondering at that, I reached for the paper he had left folded beside his marmalade-smeared plate.
Reena did not cough, shuffle her feet, or display any open impatience, but she made her presence felt, and I knew that I was delaying matters for the kitchen. So I went back upstairs to lay out my notes, though my headache continued in a dull way, and I sniffled. Then I suddenly struck one of those times so rewarding to a writer, when not only sentences but whole paragraphs flashed into mind. My fingers began to race on the keyboard of my portable, straining to keep up with the spurt of creativity. When my back ached and my neck felt as if it were on fire, I was belatedly aware of time. My watch said half-past twelve—and I remembered now nothing had been said about any lunch.
I sniffed experimentally, decided the nose drops had helped, and got into my coat, inwardly content and still mind-bound on my morning’s work. As I went out, Maud came down the hall with a tray. Seeing that brought to my mind Miss Elizabeth’s ordeal in the night.
I asked Maud a question.
“No, miss, Miss Elizabeth ain’t exactly sick. She’s bearing up just wonderful—like she always does when there’s trouble. But I’m just taking her a little something to keep up her strength. She has to have that Miss Anne, she’s gone out, and Miss Irene—she eats with the little boy.”
“What time is the service?”
“Half-past two, miss. But there ain’t going to be many people. Just the family—and Dr. Burton from St. Anthony’s to say the words. Miss Emma always said she wanted it that way when she went.”
I would have liked to have stayed away from the house until nightfall. But an odd tweak of conscience, triggered by my unwary promise to Preston Donner, made me go straight back after lunch. The old feeling of guilt and worry made me angry with myself—Miss Elizabeth’s state of health was no matter to me. I suppose I was still conditioned by Aunt Otilda so that all elderly ladies with that air of command could pull me directly into their service once I came into their orbits.
I was only seven when I had come under Aunt Otilda’s domination. Though she had not chosen to wear the dress of the past as Miss Elizabeth did, her mind and emotions were as tightly corseted as Miss Elizabeth’s rigid body. So I had been raised by the standards and customs of a period two generations behind my own. Which, of course, had given me an excellent insight to the period I used as a writer, but it had crippled me effectively in my emotional reaction to my own peers. I did not hate Aunt Otilda—at least not consciously. But, though she was dead and I had a feeling of relief which in turn had produced a guilt, I still found it hard to break out of the pattern into which I had been so effectively fitted. So my present uneasy sense of responsibility, Aunt Otilda—Miss Elizabeth—my conditioning still held.
There was a murmur from the parlor as I entered, and the door was half ajar, so that the scent of wilting flowers was doubly strong. I hurried past to the stairs. Still, that sense of duty took me now, not back to my own room and safe removal from the Austin tribe, but down the hall to rap on Miss Elizabeth’s door.
At an answering “Come”—I was still farther back in the past.
I opened the door. “It is Erica Jansen, Miss Austin. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Was that moment of silence a rebuke to presumption? I wanted to turn and go. But I was not to escape so easily.
“Do come in.”
Miss Elizabeth stood before the old-fashioned bureau. As usual she was dressed in black, this time without any time-yellowed lace. On the tufted spread of the bed rested a toque with pinned-on black veiling, the formal mourning of the generation she had chosen as her own. She did not look around as she spoke.
“Miss Jansen.” The tone of her voice cast me back a good fifteen years into my own past. “I have, as you see, completely recovered from my—my fatigue. Completely recovered,” she repeated emphatically. “I trust you have not mentioned last night to my sister or my niece?”
So she was afraid of that?
“I have spoken to no one, Miss Austin. Nor shall I—without your wish,” I responded.
Her face was reflected in the mirror and there I saw her eyes close for an instant, her mouth tighten. Her shoulders were braced as if she faced some coming trial.
“Most kind,” she murmured.
Before I could go, there came a demanding rap on the door and, without waiting for any invitation, Anne Frimsbee entered. Her black crepe dress had been designed to help conceal too plump a hipline, minimize a waist far from willowy. But because of the wearer’s poor posture, it did not do its duty. Her blue-tinted hair was arranged to give length to her stocky neck. However, nothing could be done to disguise the wa
ttle of loose flesh under her chin, nor lighten the lines of discontent about her painted mouth.
She frowned at me but, since she remained between me and the door, I could not yet leave. And it was clear she was very angry.
“Elizabeth!” She made her sister’s name a challenge. “The coffin is closed!”
Miss Elizabeth’s right hand went to her temple as if to arrange the fringe on her forehead. I had not missed that change in her mirrored eyes, however. To her credit, her voice did not betray her agitation.
“It was Emma’s wish that that be done, Anne.”
“Nonsense! I know Emma’s wishes as well as you do. Nothing could be farther from them. She always wanted to be the center of attention. Well, let her—for the last time! I’ve made it plain to the men that it is to be opened during the ceremony. The director was most impertinent. I don’t see why you selected a man like that to take charge. He actually argued with me! But I made it plain and he understands now. I am going down and make sure that he did do as he was told.”
I saw Miss Elizabeth’s armor crack. In the few seconds she had listened to that tirade she withered back into the old and helpless woman of the night before. Either Anne Frimsbee did not notice, or she did not care. For she had flounced out of the room.
Miss Elizabeth clung to the edge of the bureau with both hands, staring at her reflection with such stricken eyes that I hurried to her. She was repeating over and over, hardly above a whisper, but in plain panic:
“No, no, no!”
When I would have guided her to a chair, she twisted free of my grasp with a force I did not expect.
“Must—stop—stop—them!” The words came in panting gasps as she lurched towards the door. There was no way I could halt her, I could only go along, give what support she would allow me. She stumbled toward the stairs as if her very life depended upon overtaking Anne.
The murmur of voices below grew louder, as if Anne Frimsbee was still meeting opposition. That sound appeared to goad Miss Elizabeth to a spurt of desperate energy, carrying her down the last few steps and for the moment out of my reach.