“Two trunks coming—” murmured Aunt Twice.
“Two?” The same thin eyebrow rose a trifle higher. “All filled with the same frivolous garments, I venture. Well, we’ll have to attend to that, just as we shall have to attend to the hair. Long golden braids take entirely too much attention, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Luccock?”
If Aunt Twice agreed to this observation, it was hard to tell it from the small sound that escaped her throat.
“I collect,” continued Mrs. Meeching smoothly, “that we might encounter some difficulty in having this matter attended to. Alas!” The alas came out sounding as far from what was originally intended for the word as anything imaginable. “Mrs. Plumly, the scissors, please!”
“Oh no!” breathed Aunt Twice. “Not her beautiful hair!”
“The scissors!” repeated Mrs. Meeching. Her eyes still fastened on Emily, she uncoiled a white, boneless hand in the direction of the plump lady with the knitting needles.
The knitting was arrested for a moment as Mrs. Plumly dipped into a capacious rose-embroidered knitting bag and handed Mrs. Meeching a pair of gleaming silver scissors, long as a dagger. With a flick of a pointed finger, Mrs. Meeching directed Emily to turn around. Then the scissors hissed open, and with a solid crunch, the silver jaws snapped together over one of her golden braids. Hiss! Crunch! Snap! went the scissors again, and she felt a sunny braid part from her head with a faint, farewell sigh and fall to the floor with a thump.
From the moment that Emily had walked through the doors of Sugar Hill Hall into its spectral parlor, she had half believed that she had stepped into a nightmare and would soon wake from it. But the sound and the feel of the silver jaws biting through her hair were all too real. Her heart was still pumping with fear, but with the loss of her braid, somewhere deep inside a large amount of terror was suddenly replaced by an equally large amount of anger.
How dared this wicked woman remove from her something she had owned most of her life and which had been so precious to Mama and Papa! One of her happiest memories would always be the one of skipping in to say good night to them in her pink nightdress. And how Papa had loved her hair, unplaited for the night, floating about her shoulders like a golden cloud! Now half of it was already lying lifelessly on the floor, and the rest soon to follow.
Why was Aunt Twice allowing this to happen? Why did she not put a stop to it at once? But when Emily looked at her aunt, she knew why. Though Aunt Twice’s eyes were brimming with tears, her face was ashen with fear. So Emily stood still as a stone statue, without making a sound.
Thin as a thread, strong as wire! Papa had said that once about her, she remembered, and everyone had laughed. But now she intended to prove Papa’s words true. She would not cry and make a scene, for Aunt Twice’s sake. This monstrous person wielding the scissors would not bring tears to her eyes.
Hiss! Crunch! Snap! Hiss! Crunch! Snap! A second braid lay beside the first, its bright red ribbon trembling like a butterfly on a dead branch. Emily dug her fingernails into her hand in a tight fist, but her eyes remained dry.
“There now, Mrs. Luccock, I believe she is ready to go to work. She will be expected to serve in the dining room this evening and to help Tilly so that you may be relieved for your other duties. And on the matter of dinner, I presume it will be served on time? You were very late returning, were you not, Mrs. Luccock?”
“I had to wait such a long time for the cablecar, you know, Mrs. Meeching. The fog must have held it up.” Aunt Twice twisted her fingers together nervously.
“But I noticed that you arrived in a cab. Cabs are for the very rich.” Mrs. Meeching’s voice suddenly took on a sly quality. “We must be paying you too well, eh, Mrs. Luccock?”
“I didn’t want to be late. It took all the money I had,” said Aunt Twice faintly.
“Well, we shall see!” The scissors still in Mrs. Meeching’s hand hissed open and snapped shut. “You may go now, and take the orphan brat with you.”
Aunt Twice started to reach for Emily’s travelling bag, but a warning hiss from Mrs. Meeching made her draw back her hand as if it had been bitten.
“There will be no pampering, Mrs. Luccock. Let her carry her own bag!”
Quickly, Emily wrapped both her small hands around the handle of her travelling bag and stumbled forward. To her dismay, she found that Mrs. Plumly stood directly in her path. She hesitated for a moment, and in that moment Mrs. Plumly finally looked up from her needles to present a round, blossom-pink face as harmless as an apple dumpling and to give Emily a secret, sympathetic smile. Emily nearly dropped her bag in surprise. Curiously, this unexpected friendliness from someone as warm and cozy as a story-book grandmother came close to making her cry at last. But under Mrs. Meeching’s icy stare, she kept back the tears and steered around Mrs. Plumly as best and as rapidly as she could manage.
Now, for the first time, she could study the parlor that had once so delighted her. Although her bag thump-thumped painfully against her knees, she managed to peek upward. There they were, the same plaster cupids gamboling in the corners and all around the edges of the endlessly high ceiling. On either side, the walls were still graced with the same huge mirrors. And directly ahead the same broad oak staircase curved up to a high mirrored wall, and then up and up to a second and yet a third story. Emily remembered how she had loved to run up those stairs to her little room on the second floor. She hoped that Aunt Twice, if she could do nothing else, had arranged for Emily to have that very same room again.
Of course, everything she now saw in the parlor provided only a memory of an elegance long since past. The carpet under her feet was worn to the threads. The gold frames around the mirrors were tarnished and peeling. And cobwebs dangled like small ghosts from the cupids overhead. She could tell all this despite the shadows that shrouded the room.
Shadows seemed to be lurking everywhere. Shadows in the stairwell. Shadows hovering in the corners of the ceiling. Shadows even seemed to be huddling in every chair that lined the walls of the room. And then Emily made a horrifying discovery. In the dim, flickering light what had appeared to be shadows in the chairs were not shadows at all. They were very old people sitting and staring silently ahead with pale, wrinkled faces as empty of expression as unmarked gravestones!
Who were they? Why were they there? Had they been sitting in the room all along, watching the terrible scene at the front door without so much as a murmur? If Emily had not seen one of them shuffle an old, shabby carpet slipper just then, she might have wondered if they were even alive. But the worst thing was that they all seemed to be looking right through her as if she were not even there, as if she had become a shadow too!
She had no more than made this new, startling, and frightening discovery, however, than she made another one of an entirely different nature. Directly ahead of her, at the foot of the staircase, sat a round table laid with a magnificent, full-skirted red velvet cloth. Its heavy gold fringe barely brushed against the worn carpet, as if it were afraid to touch such a shabby relic. On this splendid setting rested a large bowl of cut crystal, so brilliant it twinkled like a star in the dusky parlor. And in the bowl lay a neatly arranged miniature mound of her favorite Christmas treat—puffy, tempting, tantalizing, delicious pink-and-white-striped peppermint drops! It almost seemed that they had been placed there just for Emily. Forgetting everything, she set down her travelling bag and reached out her hand.
Snap! Another hand, thin and cold as six feet under, flicked around her wrist. “Those are not placed there for the benefit of charity brats!” hissed Mrs. Meeching. Behind her, Aunt Twice gave a fainting gasp.
With wide eyes still fastened on the peppermint drops, Emily picked up her bag and numbly followed after Aunt Twice.
THREE
Tilly
They did not go up the broad oak stairway at all, so it seemed that not only was Emily not to have her old room again, but she was not even to have a room near it. Where then? she wondered. Aunt Twice had made a direct turn
to the left instead, and they had now entered the dining room.
But how changed it was from the last time Emily had seen it! No longer did a cut glass chandelier twinkle over a dining set of the finest polished, carved mahogany. Now a single lamp threw a dim, trembling light over two rows of unpainted wooden chairs standing like stiff sentries around a long table that looked as if it had seen endless service in a pauper’s kitchen. Each chair guarded a thick crockery bowl and plate, a tin cup and spoon set on an unwholesome brown oilcloth cover. Aunt Twice hurried past them without a glance, and Emily scurried after her. She could still feel Mrs. Meeching’s eyes piercing her back as she followed Aunt Twice through a heavy swinging door into an enormous, bleak kitchen.
Of course, in Emily’s earlier position of pampered visitor, she had never entered this kitchen, but she could not believe it had ever looked as it did now, as if everything in it had been dipped in a bucket of grey paint. A gas lamp glared at her coldly from across a grey iron sink. Two grey iceboxes, one large as a wardrobe and secured by a grim padlock, loomed in a corner. On the stove, a thin, grey, watery soup bubbled in an ugly grey enamel cauldron. It was, without doubt, the dreariest kitchen Emily had ever seen.
But all the while she was taking in the kitchen, another pair of eyes was taking her in. The eyes, a washed-out blue, looked as if they had been sunk in dishwater for a very long time. They belonged to a lankhaired girl thirteen or fourteen years of age, whose sallow complexion somehow reflected the dismal color of the kitchen. She was sitting at one of two unpainted pine tables, polishing her fingernails on a dirty rag.
As Aunt Twice threw off her coat and hat, quickly lifting down a long muslin apron from a nail on the wall, the girl stood up and produced a wide yawn. Casting curious sideways glances in Emily’s direction, she sidled over to the stove and began to stir the soup with a large iron spoon.
“Soup’s done,” she said dully, gazing into the pot.
“Thank you, Tilly,” replied Aunt Twice. She finished tying on her apron with fumbling, distraught fingers. “I’ll manage now.”
Emily was beginning to wonder if her aunt had forgotten all about her as she stood waiting with her travelling bag at her feet. But apron now on, Aunt Twice hurried back to her. She had an arm out as if to put it around Emily, but a glance over her shoulder showed her that Tilly’s eyes were locked on them in an inquisitive stare. With a strange tightening of the lips, Aunt Twice quickly dropped her arm.
“Tilly,” she said, “this is my niece, Emily. Emily, this is Tilly, who helps with the cooking and cleaning and lives here as well.”
Emily immediately dropped a polite curtsy. “How do you do, Tilly.”
Tilly, looking somewhat surprised that anyone should be addressing her in this manner, herself dropped a muttered “How do” into the soup. A blink of an eye later, however, she was once again examining Emily with a sly look of appraisal.
“Tilly, I haven’t time, so will you please show Emily to her room? It will be the small one next to mine. Then show her where she may wash. You may go with Tilly, Emily.” Even as she was speaking, the harried, frightened look Emily was now coming to expect had returned to Aunt Twice’s face. She pulled out a ring of keys, which hung by a chain to the belt of her dress. Selecting one key with nervous fingers, she hastened to the large icebox and inserted the key into the heavy padlock.
A moment later, Emily found herself looking into the most magnificent display of food she had ever seen, even at Mama’s and Papa’s grandest parties. There was a large ham, a golden roasted turkey, fresh green salads, a bowl of plump red strawberries, a vanilla cream cake all decorated with pale green flutings and flowers, orange and lemon jellies, a chocolate custard, small cakes and cookies of all descriptions—almost everything imaginable. So that unappetizing soup on the stove was not the only food served for dinner after all, Emily decided with relief. She could hardly pull her eyes away from the icebox.
Tilly laid her spoon on the stove. “Quits y’r gawping and come with me!” She darted a cunning look sideways to see how this command would sit with Aunt Twice. But if Aunt Twice, who was busy pulling a spun-sugar confection from the ice box, heard Tilly, she gave no sign of it.
Though nearly twice Emily’s size, Tilly made no offer to help her with the travelling bag, so once again she picked it up herself. She had no idea yet where she was to go, but even though Aunt Twice had not taken her upstairs, she still supposed there must be a room somewhere in the house for her. She turned toward the dining room door.
“Servants’ quarters ain’t that way,” Tilly said. She sauntered to another door directly across from the one to the dining room, flung it open, and stood waiting for Emily with a strange glint in her eyes.
Servants’ quarters! Well, if she had to scrub sinks, scour pots, and empty slop jars, wasn’t that what Emily had become now, a servant? And didn’t that mean a room in the cellar? Her heart felt as if it were sinking right down to the toes of her white, high-button shoes as she made her journey across the kitchen toward Tilly.
“You mights as well get y’r peepers off the big icebox what’s got a lock on it,” Tilly said as soon as they had entered a dark, dank entry, thickly perfumed by the contents of an open garbage pail. “It ain’t for you!”
Emily swallowed the dry lump that had risen in her throat. “J-j-just like the peppermints,” she whispered.
“You knows ’bout them things already?” Tilly asked. She giggled into her hand as if she found this thought enormously amusing.
By now they had started down a long, steep flight of stone steps, feebly lit by a tiny speck of gaslight at the bottom. Down, down went Tilly without a backward glance, and bump, bump went Emily, following behind. All she could think of right then was saving herself from hurtling downward and breaking every bone in her body.
She reached the bottom step at last and found they were in a room much larger than the entry above, but equally dark and dank. And though not reeking with the scent of garbage, it was heavy with the must and mold of a quarter of a century. From this room, dark passages branched off in two directions. Tilly turned to the left. She had gone only a few feet, however, when a slight scratching sound overhead caused her to hesitate and look up.
“Rat,” she said matter-of-factly. “You either gets used to ’em”—she looked back at Emily with lips compressed into a wicked grin—“or you doesn’t!”
Emily clutched her travelling bag more tightly. On they went, passing one door after another, all firmly closed. Except for the hollow sounds made by their footsteps on the stone floor and the bumping of the bag against Emily’s knees, there was a deep underground silence all around them. But as Tilly started to turn at last through the open door of a very tiny room, a faint sound, as if something or someone were sighing, came from behind another closed door at the far end of the passageway. This particular door, unlike all the others, had a small square window in the center. The sound so startled and terrified Emily that she let go her bag, and it fell to the floor with a jarring crash.
Tilly whirled on her. “What was that for?” she said crossly. “You scairt me out o’ my wits!”
“Th-th-that room,” Emily stammered. “I heard a sound come from there, I think.”
Tilly shrugged. “No doubts you did. That’s the Remembrance Room. Someone in there remembering what it done wrong.”
“Remembrance Room?” Emily repeated dimly. There was a chilling sound about the words. “It did wrong? Who did wrong?”
“One o’ the old ones, o’ course. Who did you thinks?” Tilly’s flat nose wrinkled with disgust at Emily’s stupidity.
The old ones, those sad shadows huddled in the chairs in the parlor! What new horrors was she still to discover at Sugar Hill Hall?
“Took a peppermint most likely,” Tilly went on in a dreamy kind of voice. “That’s what they always does. Hmmm, wonder which one? Most o’ them ain’t got the nerve.”
“C-c-couldn’t you knock and find out?” Emily’s vo
ice was quavering. “Perhaps you could let the person out.”
“And has myself tossed in?” Tilly shrivelled her with a pale blue stare. “Not likely! Mrs. Meeching puts ’em in. Mrs. Meeching puts ’em out. I ain’t got the key anyways. Us’ll most likely find out at dinner who it is, not as how I cares all that much. Now you hurries and drops off your gear. Us can’t take all night.”
The gaslight Tilly lit as they entered the small room was so weak, the wonder was it gave any light at all. But as Emily took off her coat and tam-o’-shanter, she could see all she needed to of the room that was to be hers.
It was so tiny that, except for a sliver of a window high in the wall, it might well have been intended for nothing more than a storage room. And if the future inhabitant did not gather this, further notice was given by the lack of furnishings. The stone floor was bare and so were the walls, but for a row of thin nails that jutted out like bones from a fish skeleton, intended for use as clothes hangers. All the room provided by way of comfort was an iron cot, a small brown chest of drawers with gaping wounds that revealed at least half a dozen coats of paint below, and over this last a small oval mirror as full of cracks as a dropped egg.
After the one quick glance needed to explore this cubicle, Emily folded her coat and laid it neatly on the cot with her tam-o’-shanter. She had decided that no matter what the condition of her new life, or how ugly her room, she would follow the rules set down by Mama and Mrs. Leslie, including not only politeness and good manners, but neatness and cleanliness as well. She had no sooner put the tam-o’-shanter down, however, than Tilly, without even asking leave, snatched it up again and jammed it on her own head at a rakish forward angle. Then she began to pose before the mirror, so taken with her cracked image that she seemed to have forgotten all about the need to hurry.
Peppermints in the Parlor Page 2