8
I had to go back for dinner; it was vital that I sit at the dinner table with Constance and Uncle Julian and Charles. It was unthinkable that they should sit there, eating their dinner and talking and passing food to one another, and see my place empty. As Jonas and I came along the path and through the garden in the gathering darkness I looked at the house with all the richness of love I contained; it was a good house, and soon it would be cleaned and fair again. I stopped for a minute, looking, and Jonas brushed my leg and spoke softly, in curiosity.
“I’m looking at our house,” I told him and he stood quietly beside me, looking up with me. The roof pointed firmly against the sky, and the walls met one another compactly, and the windows shone darkly; it was a good house, and nearly clean. There was light from the kitchen window and from the windows of the dining room; it was time for their dinner and I must be there. I wanted to be inside the house, with the door shut behind me.
When I opened the kitchen door to go inside I could feel at once that the house still held anger, and I wondered that anyone could keep one emotion so long; I could hear his voice clearly from the kitchen, going on and on.
“—must be done about her,” he was saying, “things simply cannot continue like this.”
Poor Constance, I thought, having to listen and listen and watch the food getting cold. Jonas ran ahead of me into the dining room, and Constance said, “Here she is.”
I sood in the dining-room doorway and looked carefully for a minute. Constance was wearing pink, and her hair was combed back nicely; she smiled at me when I looked at her, and I knew she was tired of listening. Uncle Julian’s wheel chair was pushed up tight against the table and I was sorry to see that Constance had tucked his napkin under his chin; it was too bad that Uncle Julian should not be allowed to eat freely. He was eating meat loaf, and peas which
Constance had preserved one fragrant summer day; Constance had cut the meat loaf into small pieces and Uncle Julian mashed meat loaf and peas with the back of his spoon and stirred them before trying to get them into his mouth. He was not listening, but the voice went on and on.
“So you decided to come back again, did you? And high time, too, young lady; your sister and I have been trying to decide how to teach you a lesson.”
“Wash your face, Merricat,” Constance said gently. “And comb your hair; we do not want you untidy at table, and your Cousin Charles is already angry with you.”
Charles pointed his fork at me. “I may as well tell you, Mary, that your tricks are over for good. Your sister and I have decided that we have had just exactly enough of hiding and destroying and temper.”
I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.
“Run along, Merricat,” Constance said, “your dinner will be cold.”
She knew I would not eat dinner sitting at that table and she would bring me my dinner in the kitchen afterwards, but I thought that she did not want to remind Charles of that and so give him one more thing to talk about. I smiled at her and went into the hall, with the voice still talking behind me. There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out. I walked heavily going up the stairs so they could hear that I was surely going up, but when I reached the top I went as softly as Jonas behind me.
Constance had cleaned the room where he was living. It looked very empty, because all she had done was take things out; she had nothing to put back because I had carried all of it to the attic. I knew the dresser drawers were empty, and the closet, and the bookshelves. There was no mirror, and a broken watch and a smashed chain lay alone on the dresser top. Constance had taken away the wet bedding, and I supposed she had dried and turned the mattress, because the bed was made up again. The long curtains were gone, perhaps to be washed. He had been lying on the bed, because it was disarranged, and his pipe, still burning, lay on the
table beside the bed; I supposed that he had been lying here when Constance called him to dinner, and I wondered if he had looked around and around the altered room, trying to find something familiar, hoping that perhaps the angle of the closet door or the light on the ceiling would bring everything back to him again. I was sorry that Constance had to turn the mattress alone; usually I helped her but perhaps he had come and offered to do it for her. She had even brought him a clean saucer for his pipe; our house did not have ashtrays and when he kept trying to find places to put down his pipe Constance had brought a set of chipped saucers from the pantry shelf and given them to him to hold his pipe. The saucers were pink, with gold leaves around the rim; they were from a set older than any I remembered.
“Who used them?” I asked Constance, when she brought them into the kitchen. “Where are their cups?”
“I’ve never seen them used; they come from a time before I was in the kitchen. Some great-grandmother brought them with her dowry and they were used and broken and replaced and finally put away on the top shelf of the pantry; there are only these saucers and three dinner plates.”
“They belong in the pantry,” I said. “Not put around the house.”
Constance had given them to Charles and now they were scattered, instead of spending their little time decently put away on a shelf. There was one in the drawing room and one in the dining room and one, I supposed, in the study. They were not fragile, because the one now in the bedroom had not cracked although the pipe on it was burning. I had known all day that I would find something here; I brushed the saucer and the pipe off the table into the wastebasket and they fell softly onto the newspapers he had brought into the house.
I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes—the left—saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented. I had reached the staircase to go downstairs before I remembered and had to go back to wash, and
comb my hair. “What took you so long?” he asked when I sat down at the table. “What have you been doing up there?”
“Will you make me a cake with pink frosting?” I asked Constance.
“With little gold leaves around the edge? Jonas and I are going to
have a party.”
“Perhaps tomorrow,” Constance said.
“We are going to have a long talk after dinner,” Charles said.
“Solanum dulcamara,” I told him.
“What?” he said.
“Deadly nightshade,” Constance said. “Charles, please let it wait.”
“I’ve had enough,” he said.
“Constance?”
“Yes, Uncle Julian?”
“I have cleaned my plate.” Uncle Julian found a morsel of meat loaf on his napkin and put it into his mouth. “What do I have now?”
“Perhaps a little more, Uncle Julian? It is a pleasure to see you so hungry.”
“I feel considerably better tonight. I have not felt so hearty for days.”
I was pleased that Uncle Julian was well and I knew he was happy because he had been so discourteous to Charles. While Constance was cutting up another small piece of meat loaf Uncle Julian looked at Charles with an evil shine in his old eyes, and I knew he was going to say something wicked. “Young man,” he began at last, but Charles turned his head suddenly to look into the hall.
“I smell smoke,” Charles said.
Constance paused and lifted her head and turned to the kitchen door. “The stove?” she said and got up quickly to go into the kitchen.
“Young man—”
“There is certainly smoke.” Charles went to look into the hall. “I smell it out here,” he said. I wondered whom he thought he was talking to; Constance was in the kitchen and Uncle Julian was thinking about what he was going to say, and I had stopped listening.
“There is smoke,” Charles said.
“It’s not the stove.” Constance stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at Charles.
Charles turned and came closer to me. “If this is anything you’ve done . . .” he said.
I laughed because it was clear that Charles was afraid to go upstairs and follow the smoke; then Constance said, “Charles—your pipe—” and he turned and ran up the stairs. “I’ve asked him and asked him,” Constance said.
“Would it start a fire?” I asked her, and then Charles screamed from upstairs, screamed, I thought, with the exact sound of a bluejay in the woods. “That’s Charles,” I said politely to Constance, and she hurried to go into the hall and look up. “What is it?” she asked, “Charles, what is it?”
“Fire,” Charles said, crashing down the stairs, “Run, run; the whole damn house is on fire,” he screamed into Constance’s face, “and you haven’t got a phone.”
“My papers,” Uncle Julian said. “I shall collect my papers and remove them to a place of safety.” He pushed against the edge of the table to move his chair away. “Constance?”
“Run,” Charles said, at the front door now, wrenching at the lock, “run, you fool.”
“I have not done much running in the past few years, young man. I see no cause for this hysteria; there is time to gather my papers.”
Charles had the front door open now, and turned on the doorsill to call to Constance. “Don’t try to carry the safe,” he said, “put the money in a bag. I’ll be back as fast as I can get help. Don’t panic.”
He ran, and we could hear him screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” as he ran toward the village.
“Good heavens,” Constance said, almost amused. Then she took Uncle Julian’s chair to help him into his room and I went into the hall and looked upstairs. Charles had left the door to our father’s room standing open and I could see the movement of fire inside. Fire burns upward, I thought; it will burn their things in the attic. Charles had left the front door open too, and a line of smoke reached down the stairs and drifted outside. I did not see any need to move quickly or to run shrieking around the house because the fire did not seem to be hurrying itself. I wondered if I could go up the stairs and shut the door to our father’s room and keep the fire inside, belonging entirely to Charles, but when I started up the stairs I saw a finger of
flame reach out to touch the hall carpet and some heavy object fell crashing in our father’s room. There would be nothing of Charles in there now; even his pipe must have been consumed.
“Uncle Julian is gathering his papers,” Constance said, coming into the hall to stand beside me. She had Uncle Julian’s shawl over her arm.
“We will have to go outside,” I said. I knew that she was frightened, so I said, “We can stay on the porch, behind the vines, in the darkness.”
“We neatened it just the other day,” she said. “It has no right to burn.” She began to shiver as though she were angry, and I took her by the hand and brought her through the open front door and just as we turned back for another look the lights came into the driveway with the disgusting noise of sirens and we were held in the doorway in the light. Constance put her face against me to hide, and then there was Jim Donell, the first one to leap from the fire engine and run up the steps. “Out of the way,” he said, and pushed past us and into our house. I took Constance along the porch to the corner where the vines grew thick, and she moved into the corner and pressed against the vines. I held her hand tight, and together we watched the great feet of the men stepping across our doorsill, dragging their hoses, bringing filth and confusion and danger into our house. More lights moved into the driveway and up to the steps, and the front of the house was white and pale and uncomfortable at being so clearly visible; it had never been lighted before. The noise was too much for me to hear all together, but somewhere in the noise was Charles’ voice, still going on and on. “Get the safe in the study,” he said a thousand times.
Smoke squeezed out the front door, coming between the big men pushing in. “Constance,” I whispered, “Constance, don’t watch them.”
“Can they see me?” she whispered back. “Is anyone looking?”
“They’re all watching the fire. Be very quiet.”
I looked carefully out between the vines. There was a long row of cars, and the village fire engine, all parked as close to the house as they could get, and everyone in the village was there, looking up and watching. I saw faces laughing, and faces that looked frightened,
and then someone called out, very near to us, “What about the women, and the old man? Anyone see them?”
“They had plenty of warning,” Charles shouted from somewhere, “they’re all right.”
Uncle Julian could manage his chair well enough to get out the back door, I thought, but it did not seem that the fire was going near the kitchen or Uncle Julian’s room; I could see the hoses and hear the men shouting, and they were all on the stairs and in the front bedrooms upstairs. I could not get through the front door, and even if I could leave Constance there was no way to go around to the back door without going down the steps in the light with all of them watching. “Was Uncle Julian frightened?” I whispered to Constance.
“I think he was annoyed,” she said. A few minutes later she said, “It will take a great deal of scrubbing to get that hall clean again,” and sighed. I was pleased that she thought of the house and forgot the
people outside.
“Jonas?” I said to her; “where is he?”
I could see her smile a little in the darkness of the vines. “He was annoyed, too,” she said. “He went out the back door when I took Uncle Julian in to get his papers.”
We were all right. Uncle Julian might very well forget that there was a fire at all if he became interested in his papers, and Jonas was almost certainly watching from the shadow of the trees. When they had finished putting out Charles’ fire I would take Constance back inside and we could start to clean our house again. Constance was quieter, although more and more cars came down the driveway and the unending patter of feet went back and forth across our doorsill.
Except for Jim Donell, who wore a hat proclaiming him “Chief,” it was impossible to identify any one person, any more than it was possible to put a name to any of the faces out in front of our house, looking up and laughing at the fire.
I tried to think clearly. The house was burning; there was fire inside our house, but Jim Donell and the other, anonymous, men in hats and raincoats were curiously able to destroy the fire which was running through the bones of our house. It was Charles’ fire. When I listened particularly for the fire I could hear it, a singing hot noise upstairs, but over and around it, smothering it, were the voices of the
men inside and the voices of the people watching outside and the distant sound of cars on the driveway. Next to me Constance was standing quietly, sometimes looking at the men going into the house, but more often covering her eyes with her hands; she was excited, I thought, but not in any danger. Every now and then it was possible to hear one voice raised above the others; Jim Donell shouted some word of instruction, or someone in the crowd called out. “Why not let it burn?” a woman’s voice came loudly, laughing, and “Get the safe out of the study downstairs”; that was Charles, safely in the crowd out front.
“Why not let it burn?” the woman called insistently, and one of the dark men going in and out of our front door turned and waved and grinned. “We’re the firemen,” he called back, “we got to put it out.”
“Let it burn,” the woman called.
Smoke was everywhere, thick and ugly. Sometimes when I looked out the faces of the people were clouded with smoke, and it came out the front door in frightening waves. Once there was a crash from inside the house and voices speaking quickly and urgently, and the faces outside turned up happily in the smoke, mouths open. “Get the safe,” Charles called out wildly, “two or three of you men get the safe out of the study; the whole house is going.”
“Let it burn,” the woman called.
I was hungry and I wanted my dinner, and I wondered how long they could make the fire last before they put it out and went away and Constance and I could go back inside. One or two of the village boys had edged onto the porch dangerously close to where we stood, but they only looked inside, not at the porch, and tried to stand on their toes and see past the firemen and the hoses. I was tired and I wished it would all be over. I realized then that the light was lessening, the faces on the lawn less distinct, and a new tone came into the noise; the voices inside were surer, less sharp, almost pleased, and the voices outside were lower, and disappointed.
“It’s going out,” someone said.
“Under control,” another voice added.
“Did a lot of damage, though.” There was laughter. “Sure made a
mess of the old place.”
“Should of burned it down years ago.”
“And them in it.”
They mean us, I thought, Constance and me.
“Say—anybody seen them?”
“No such luck. Firemen threw them out.”
“Too bad.”
The light was almost gone. The people outside stood now in shadows, their faces narrowed and dark, with only the headlights of the cars to light them; I saw the flash of a smile, and somewhere else a hand raised to wave, and the voices went on regretfully.
“Just about over.”
“Pretty good fire.”
Jim Donell came through the front door. Everyone knew him because of his size and his hat saying CHIEF. “Say, Jim,” someone called, “why don’t you let it burn?”
He lifted both his hands to make everyone be quiet. “Fire’s all out, folks,” he said.
Very carefully he put up his hands and took off his hat saying CHIEF and while everyone watched he walked slowly down the steps and over to the fire engine and set his hat down on the front seat. Then he bent down, searching thoughtfully, and finally, while everyone watched, he took up a rock. In complete silence he turned slowly and then raised his arm and smashed the rock through one of the great tall windows of our mother’s drawing room. A wall of laughter rose and grew behind him and then, first the boys on the steps and then the other men and at last the women and the smaller children, they moved like a wave at our house.
“Constance,” I said, “Constance,” but she had her hands over her eyes.
The other of the drawing-room windows crashed, this time from inside, and I saw that it had been shattered by the lamp which always stood by Constance’s chair in the drawing room.
Above it all, most horrible, was the laughter. I saw one of the Dresden figurines thrown and break against the porch rail, and the other fell unbroken and rolled along the grass. I heard Constance’s harp go over with a musical cry, and a sound which I knew was a chair being smashed against the wall.
“Listen,” said Charles from somewhere, “will a couple of you guys help me with this safe?”
Then, through the laughter, someone began, “Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?” It was rhythmic and insistent. I am on the moon, I thought, please let me be on the moon.
Then I heard the sound of dishes smashing and at that minute realized that we stood outside the tall windows of the dining room
and they were coming very close.
“Constance,” I said, “we have to run.”
She shook her head, her hands over her face.
“They’ll find us in a minute. Please, Constance dearest; run with me.”
“I can’t,” she said, and from just inside the dining-room window a shout went up: “Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?” and I pulled Constance away a second before the window went; I thought a chair had been thrown through it, perhaps the dining-room chair where our father used to sit and Charles used to sit. “Hurry,” I said, no longer able to be quiet in all that noise, and pulling Constance by the hand I ran toward the steps. As we came into the light she threw Uncle Julian’s shawl across her face to hide it.
A little girl ran out of the front door carrying something, and her mother, behind her, caught her by the back of the dress and slapped her hands. “Don’t you put that stuff in your mouth,” the mother screamed, and the little girl dropped a handful of Constance’s spice cookies.
“Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?”
“Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?”
“Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.”
We had to get down the steps and into the woods to be safe; it was not far but the headlights of the cars shone across the lawn. I wondered if Constance would slip and fall, running through the light, but we had to get to the woods and there was no other way. We hesitated near the steps, neither one of us quite daring to go farther, but the windows were broken and inside they were throwing our dishes and our glasses and our silverware and even the pots Constance used in cooking; I wondered if my stool in the corner of
the kitchen had been smashed yet. While we stood still for a last minute, a car came up the driveway, and another behind it; they swung to a stop in front of the house, sending more light onto the lawn. “What the holy devil is going on here?” Jim Clarke said, rolling out of the first car, and Helen Clarke, on the other side, opened her mouth and stared. Shouting and pushing, and not seeing us at all, Jim Clarke made his way through our door and into our house, “What the holy goddam devil is going on here?” he kept saying and outside Helen Clarke never saw us, but only stared at our house.
“Crazy fools,” Jim Clarke yelled inside, “crazy drunken fools.” Dr.
Levy came out of the second car and hurried toward the house. “Has everyone gone crazy in here?” Jim Clarke was saying from inside, and there was a shout of laughter. “Would you like a cup of tea?” someone inside screamed, and they laughed. “Ought to bring it down brick by brick,” someone said inside.
The doctor came up the steps running, and pushed us aside without looking. “Where is Julian Blackwood?” he asked a woman in the doorway, and the woman said, “Down in the boneyard ten feet deep.”
It was time; I took Constance tightly by the hand, and we started carefully down the steps. I would not run yet because I was afraid that Constance might fall, so I brought her slowly down the steps; no one could see us yet except Helen Clarke and she stared at the house. Behind us I heard Jim Clarke shouting; he was trying to make the people leave our house, and before we reached the bottom step there were voices behind us.
“There they are,” someone shouted and I think it was Stella.
“There they are, there they are, there they are,” and I started to run but Constance stumbled and then they were all around us, pushing and laughing and trying to get close to see. Constance held Uncle Julian’s shawl across her face so they could not look at her, and for a minute we stood very still, pressed together by the feeling of people all around us.
“Put them back in the house and start the fire all over again.”
“We fixed things up nice for you girls, just like you always wanted it.”
“Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?”
For one terrible minute I thought that they were going to join hands and dance around us, singing. I saw Helen Clarke far away, pressed hard against the side of her car; she was crying and saying something and even though I could not hear her through the noise I knew she was saying “I want to go home, please, I want to go home.”
“Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?”
They were trying not to touch us; whenever I turned they fell back a little; once, between two shoulders I saw Harler of the junk yard wandering across the porch of our house, picking up things and setting them to one side in a pile. I moved a little, holding Constance’s hand tight, and as they fell back we ran suddenly, going toward the trees, but Jim Donell’s wife and Mrs. Mueller came in front of us, laughing and holding out their arms, and we stopped. I turned, and gave Constance a little pull, and we ran, but Stella and the Harris boys crossed in front of us, laughing, and the Harris boys shouting “Down in the boneyard ten feet deep,” and we stopped.
Then I turned toward the house, running again with Constance pulled behind me, and Elbert the grocer and his greedy wife were there, holding their hands to halt us, almost dancing together, and we stopped. I went then to the side, and Jim Donell stepped in front of us, and we stopped.
“Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me,” Jim Donell said politely, and they came around us again, circling and keeping carefully out of reach. “Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?”
Over it all was the laughter, almost drowning the singing and the shouting and the howling of the Harris boys.
“Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?”
Constance held to me with one hand and with the other hand she kept Uncle Julian’s shawl across her face. I saw an opening in the circle around us, and ran again for the trees, but all the Harris boys were there, one on the ground with laughter, and we stopped. I turned again and ran for the house but Stella came forward and we stopped. Constance was stumbling, and I wondered if we were going to fall onto the ground in front of them, lying there where they might step on us in their dancing, and I stood still; I could not possibly let Constance fall in front of them.
“That’s all now,” Jim Clarke said from the porch. His voice was not loud, but they all heard. “That’s enough,” he said. There was a small polite silence, and then someone said, “Down in the boneyard ten feet deep,” and the laughter rose.
“Listen to me,” Jim Clarke said, raising his voice, “listen to me.
Julian Blackwood is dead.”
Then they were quiet at last. After a minute Charles Blackwood said from the crowd around us, “Did she kill him?” They went back from us, moving slowly in small steps, withdrawing, until there was a wide clear space around us and Constance standing clearly with Uncle Julian’s shawl across her face. “Did she kill him?” Charles Blackwood asked again.
“She did not,” said the doctor, standing in the doorway of our house. “Julian died as I have always known he would; he has been waiting a long time.”
“Now go quietly,” Jim Clarke said. He began to take people by the shoulders, pushing a little at their backs, turning them toward their cars and the driveway. “Go quickly,” he said, “There has been a death in this house.”
It was so quiet, in spite of many people moving across the grass and going away, that I heard Helen Clarke say, “Poor Julian.”
I took a cautious step toward the darkness, pulling Constance a little so that she followed me. “Heart,” the doctor said on the porch, and I went another step. No one turned to look at us. Car doors slammed softly and motors started. I looked back once. A little group was standing around the doctor on the steps. Most of the lights were turned away, heading down the driveway. When I felt the shadows of the trees fall on us, I moved quickly; one last step and we were inside. Pulling Constance, I hurried under the trees, in the darkness; when I felt my feet leave the grass of the lawn and touch the soft mossy ground of the path through the woods and knew that the trees had closed in around us I stopped and put my arms around Constance. “It’s all over,” I told her, and held her tight. “It’s all right,” I said, “all right now.”
I knew my way in the darkness or in the light. I thought once how good it was that I had straightened my hiding place and freshened it,
so it would now be pleasant for Constance. I would cover her with leaves, like children in a story, and keep her safe and warm. Perhaps I would sing to her or tell her stories; I would bring her bright fruits and berries and water in a leaf cup. Someday we would go to the moon. I found the entrance to my hiding place and led Constance in and took her to the corner where there was a fresh pile of leaves and a blanket. I pushed her gently until she sat down and I took Uncle Julian’s shawl away from her and covered her with it. A little purr came from the corner and I knew that Jonas had been waiting here for me.
I put branches across the entrance; even if they came with lights they would not see us. It was not entirely dark; I could see the shadow that was Constance and when I put my head back I saw two or three stars, shining from far away between the leaves and the branches and down onto my head.
One of our mother’s Dresden figurines is broken, I thought, and I said aloud to Constance, “I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die.”
Constance stirred, and the leaves rustled. “The way you did before?” she asked.
It had never been spoken of between us, not once in six years.
“Yes,” I said after a minute, “the way I did before.”
