King Devil

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Her own impression was that she was less ill than everybody was trying to pretend, because really sick people had no appetites and she was beginning to feel ravenous as well as thirsty. That salty broth hadn’t helped a bit.

  After a while, Tetsy came back, lurching against the bed and sending skyrockets shooting through Lavinia’s injured head.

  “Do you think you could swallow a little more broth?”

  “I could eat a stuffed porcupine.”

  She thought she’d spoken distinctly, but the only part that came out was “stuffed porcupine.”

  “Now Lav, you mustn’t excite yourself.”

  Tetsy hurried out, either to tell the other lady that their patient was raving mad or else to find out whether Miss Fanny Farmer had a recipe for stuffed porcupine.

  Mrs. Smith was the next visitor.

  “Do you need the chamber again?”

  Lavinia wanted to say no, but was forced to admit she did. It was a difficult situation to carry off with aplomb. She tried to mask over what was happening with a little polite conversation.

  “Peter was—”

  “Peter wasn’t doing anything, so don’t you dare try to lay it on to him!”

  The words came out so fierce that they burned away one thin layer of Lavinia’s confusion.

  “No, I won’t. Peter is a good boy. He was only … I think we were.… Oh, dear, I thought I had it all straight. Where were we?”

  “Peter and I found you over in the mill,” said Mrs. Smith. “What were you doing there?”

  Lavinia racked what was left of her brain. “I was—washing my hair, I believe.”

  “Washing your hair?”

  The tone told her she’d got it wrong.

  “Perhaps not, but it was something about hair. I was—I can’t remember!”

  “Sh-h! Lie down. Don’t talk any more. You’ll only upset yourself.”

  Mrs. Smith thrust her under the blankets and took the pot away again. Lavinia couldn’t understand what she’d done to make the woman so cross. She shut her eyes to think it over. Tetsy came back with the broth, thought she’d gone to sleep, and almost left without giving her even that meager nourishment.

  By desperate entreaty, Lavinia managed to get a cup of weak tea and a soda cracker along with the thin soup. Having a little something in her stomach made her feel enough better to start feeling bored at having to lie there alone. Weren’t people supposed to visit the afflicted? Why would nobody stay with her any longer than the time it took to say, “Sh-h”?

  She had Tetsy and Zilpha and the ferocious woman with the chamber pot all straight in her mind now. She had been able to identify the good-looking young man who appeared in her bedroom door just long enough to cast an apprehensive glance at her bandages. He was Roland somebody, and he was not the man she wanted to see, although the two older women seemed pleased that he had come.

  Every so often, one of the three would pop a head into the sickroom, make some remark, and disappear before she had a chance to reply. Lavinia at last got it figured out that they were playing bridge, and that whoever was dummy had to take a turn checking on the patient. Was Mrs. Smith playing, too? That seemed unlikely, for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on. If not, whom had they got for a fourth? If it was the man she wanted to see, why didn’t he come to her?

  The question preyed on her mind so strongly that the next time someone came to the door she managed to ask, “Who’s your fourth?”

  Her caller happened to be Tetsy, who only replied, “Lie still, Lav. Don’t excite yourself.”

  A moment later, she heard the woman outside the door, growling to somebody else that Lav was straight off her head.

  The conviction grew on Lavinia that she did not like Tetsy and that this showed a wanton lack of taste on her part, like not caring for porridge or Humperdinck. How could she be so naughty? Was it because the woman growled? She strained her ears, but the growling had moved away toward the other room. Now there was a new sound, like rushing water, like the sound she could now remember having heard last night up at the spillway. Why was it coming so suddenly, and so loud? And why was the water pouring in over her windowsill?

  Forgetting she was supposed to lie still, Lavinia jumped out of bed and ran to the parlor in her nightgown.

  “Lavvy, get back to your room this instant!”

  “Lav, are you crazy?”

  They were all shouting, fussing, pecking at her like a flock of hens with one errant chicken. She had to scream to make them listen.

  “My room is full of water.”

  “Lavvy, dearest, come with me.”

  She couldn’t blame them for not believing her. Lavinia meekly allowed herself to be led back through the dining room, down the two steps to the kitchen, down another step into the back hallway, across the floor until those who were hustling her along could feel the wet under their feet and knew she wasn’t raving, after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What is it?” Zilpha kept moaning. “What is it?”

  “The sluice gates up at the millpond must have let go,” said Roland, “but I don’t see how.” He studied the spreading pool of water with an expression of thoughtful concern.

  “Never mind how,” roared Tetsy. “What are we going to do?”

  Oddly enough, it was Lavinia who was able to use her wits. “Get hold of Central on the telephone. Tell her to round up a work crew and warn the village.”

  “They’ll never get here in time! We’ll all drown.”

  “My beautiful things!” Zilpha was fluttering her hands, making little rushes toward special treasures.

  Forgetting her own alarms, Tetsy shouldered the heavy ormulu clock. “Where can I take it?”

  “Up to the drafting room,” said Lavinia. “The water won’t rise that high.”

  “That’s right,” said Roland, greatly relieved at not having to make a decision. “You ladies go on ahead. I’ll ring Central.”

  He put the call through, then joined Tetsy and Zilpha in frenziedly lugging rugs and bric-a-brac up the hill. None of them paid any attention to the invalid. Lavinia managed to pick up a knitted afghan from a sofa, fumble it around her shoulders, and make her way out of the house alone. Barefoot, she padded up the slope, away from the rushing stream until she began to stumble from weakness and had to sit down.

  She couldn’t have chosen a more favorable spot to collapse. Sheltered by a big rock, snug inside her afghan, she had a ringside seat for the show. The spectacle was thrilling and horrifying at the same time. The tiny rivulet that an hour ago had been running so demurely between its prim, straight banks had all of a sudden gone raving mad, surging over new-planted flower beds, washing out fresh-cut lawns, tearing away shrubs and rosebushes, turning that stodgy dooryard into a miniature Atlantic. The water was rising fast. Already rescuers were splashing up to their boot tops as they rushed back and forth, lugging objects of all descriptions out of the house, up the hill to safety. A small outhouse floated downstream. The mill was already sagging into the water. How long would those champing white teeth take to chew Zilpha’s new home off its foundations?

  As the flood deepened, the commotion increased. More figures came dashing over the hillside, to wallow in the mud and water. More voices shrilled above the roar of the torrent. People kept passing Lavinia’s aerie without noticing her, having to watch their footing because the path was fast turning into a slippery slide. She watched their anxious faces in the moonlight, looking for one that was not among them. Where was he? Why wasn’t the right man here, where he was needed?

  She wasn’t the only one who wanted to know. A man stumbling toward her, carrying the front end of Zilpha’s carved mahogany sideboard, with Roland steadying the massive piece from the rear.

  “For cripes’ sake,” the man was yelling, “why are we piddlin’ around with this foolishness? Why ain’t we up there doin’ something to stop the flood? Where the heck is Hay?”

  “He went to see his folks,” Roland p
anted.

  “Yes, but he came back. I seen him down to the barber shop about ha’ past five, gettin’ the fifty-cent special. He said his brothers was over from Berwick helpin’ the old man an’ he got a chance at a lift with some neighbors that was comin’ to market, so he took it. He was in a big swivet about that new girl of his, said he come up here to do some work an’ found her hurt out back somewheres. He was aimin’ to come up an see how she’s makin’ out soon as he’d got duded up an’ et his supper. He says he wouldn’t trust them two old besoms she lives with to take care of a sick duck. Godfrey, you don’t think the flood’s got him?”

  “Oh, no, that wouldn’t happen to Hay.”

  Roland sounded very positive. “Isn’t that his bicycle now, coming over the rise?”

  “That’s him, all right, hell-bent for election! Cripes, I never seen nobody pedal so fast. By Jehu, I knew he’d be the one to do it. Look what he’s got strapped to his carrier.”

  “Some kind of a box, isn’t it?”

  “Box, hell! Don’t you know a charge of dynamite when you see it? He’s goin’ to blow the bank and send the water over into Jenks’s Hole. That’s usin’ his brains. Hay! Hay, over here!”

  The man started yelling and waving his arms, leaving Roland to support the sideboard unaided. Lavinia tried to yell, too. Now she knew who it was she had been looking for. That girl of his was herself, and he was Hayward, and she must let him know she was all right because he had other things to worry about now.

  “Hayward! Hayward!”

  He didn’t hear. Nobody could have heard. Even the roar of the water was drowned out by a deafening crash of falling timbers. The ruinous mill, undermined by the flood, had collapsed into the canal.

  Blocked of its one natural outlet, the water started backing up around the house at an even more terrifying rate.

  “Oh, why don’t they do something?” Zilpha’s voice was no silvery tinkle now. “My carpets will be ruined. Look, my beautiful sideboard, sitting out here in the mud!”

  Her ward was sitting out in the mud, too, but Zilpha didn’t seem to mind about that. Hayward was right about the sick duck. Lavinia would have liked to go and tell him so. She strained her eyes in the moonlight for another glimpse of the wildly pedaling bicycle, couldn’t find it, then caught a glimpse of a man running straight into the worst of the flood, heading for the black jumble that was the ruined mill, holding something high above his head.

  Now everybody was yelling, “Get back! Get down!” There was a great flash and a mighty boom and bits of rotten lumber falling everywhere. Then the water was sucking away through its new escape hole and Tetsy was shouting.

  “It’s all right, Zilpha. The house is safe. It’s just the old mill that’s gone, just that nasty, ugly old mill. You mustn’t mind. There was nothing in it worth saving.”

  But there was. Lavinia was quite convinced of that. She was beginning to remember. She had been exploring inside the mill and found—something. Was it something she wanted, or something she did not want but knew was important, like that other thing she’d found in the graveyard and then lost again?

  Ah, she was remembering about the graveyard, too. That was also something that must be remembered, although she didn’t know why. Never mind, it would come. It was hard to concentrate with so many people milling about. She huddled closer to the rock for fear of being stepped on.

  “Well, boys, it’s all over but the shouting now,” said the man who, like herself, had been anxious for Hayward to come. She knew him now. It was Mr. Thurgood, the foreman. “Guess you’ll sleep dry tonight after all, Miss Tabard.”

  “Hay did it!” Roland’s light baritone was choked with exhaustion and excitement. “Hay blew up the mill.”

  “I just hope he didn’t break all our windows in the bargain.”

  Life was back to normal. Tetsy was already finding fault with somebody who might have interfered with Zilpha’s comfort in the process of saving her property. Incredibly, in the mud and the turmoil, Lavinia dozed off again.

  She could not have slept long. When she woke, people were still about, carrying rescued furnishings back to the house, doing things with picks and shovels down by the crater where the mill had stood. Mrs. Smith, gaunt in the light of a kerosene lantern she was carrying, was trying to get Peter to leave.

  “Come along home, child. It’s all over now, thank the Lord.”

  “But, Ma, where did the mill go?”

  “Downstream, and good riddance. Come home to bed. We’ll both sleep without rocking tonight, I’ll be bound.”

  Lavinia watched them go, wondering if the woman really did still rock that enormous boy to sleep. She would need a giant’s cradle. She herself must return to the house and find out whether she still had a place to sleep. It took a surprising effort to pull herself out of her hidey-hole and get her feet headed back down the hill.

  Almost as soon as she got properly started, she fell down. Her legs didn’t want to support her. That didn’t much matter. The whole hill was so slick with mud that all she had to do was let go and coast. It was shockingly hoydenish, but rather fun. Lavinia was almost to the bulkhead before she managed to brake her slide.

  The big hanging lamp in the kitchen was still aglow. Through the window, she could see Zilpha and Tetsy bustling about. They were, of all things, making sandwiches. But why so many? They must be intending to offer refreshments to the men who had been helping to stem the flood. They’d better hurry. Already some had left and others were drifting toward the wagons left standing helter-skelter up at the top of the rise. How like Miss Tabard and Miss Mull to be trimming crusts while life passed them by.

  It was odd to look across from the back door and not see the mill. Lavinia could recall a little bit of what had happened now. She had been poking around looking for something—furniture, that was it—and she had gone upstairs. The stairway had something to do with what was bothering her. She’d fallen down it, they said, but there was more than that. If she could only get another look at the place, it might come back to her, only of course she never would.

  The men were shouldering their tools, congregating in one big knot, shouting jokes at one another in loud, exhausted voices. They were going, and Zilpha would never get to serve her sandwiches. That would be one tragedy too many. She must do something.

  “Please,” she called out to them, “don’t leave yet. Miss Tabard would like to give you some refreshment.”

  “Lavinia!”

  Hayward Clinton rushed over to her, smelling of swamp water and gunpowder. “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  She knew the answer to that question.

  “Because they wouldn’t know how to take care of a sick duck.”

  Her knees gave way again, and she had to sit down on the bulkhead, clutching the soggy but still warm afghan around her. “Hayward, what happened? Why did the gates let go?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  He slumped beside her and leaned his head against the wet knitting. It seemed only civil for her to stroke the damp, thick fur, although she couldn’t feel it through her bandages. She wished she could.

  “Poor old ginger kitty! You’ve had an awful night of it, haven’t you?”

  “A lot you care.”

  He twisted his face up to look at her, not lifting his chin from the afghan. Lavinia felt like tickling him behind the ears to see if she could make him purr. It was perhaps as well she wasn’t able. One must go slowly when taming a wild animal. And something positively had to be done about those sandwiches.

  “Please,” she begged him, “make those men go into the house. Miss Tabard will be shattered forever if they all go off and leave her with the sandwiches.”

  “Cripes, that’s all you people think about.”

  He bounded to his feet and stumped over to the men beside the again demure millstream. Lavinia could see him pointing toward the kitchen door. Diffidently, the workers began straggling past her.

  “Do go s
traight in,” she kept urging. “Miss Tabard has hot coffee ready for you.”

  More lamps were lighted. Looking in at the window, Lavinia could watch filthy, sodden laborers milling about, holding Zilpha’s dainty cups in clammy, puckered hands, peering suspiciously at the delicate sandwiches before popping them whole into their mouths, catching each other’s eyes and asking silently, “How soon will it be decent for us to get out of here?”

  Miss Tabard and Miss Mull were bustling around with trays, serene in the mistaken notion that they were doing exactly the right thing, not realizing their party was a fiasco. Roland was prominent among those present, soaked like everyone else, but carrying it off more gracefully. He was saying something to Zilpha, who was looking charmingly gratified. Hayward was nowhere to be seen. Why wasn’t that silly woman out here thanking him for risking his life to save her house?”

  Somehow, Lavinia found strength to hoist herself off the bulkhead and climb the hill again. Luckily, Hayward had dropped one of his bicycle clips. He was pawing around in the dirt, cursing to himself. She got to him just as he was at last snapping it around his trouser leg and mounting his wheel.

  “Hayward, don’t go! It wasn’t polite for you to go rushing off just because I’m s-stupid.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he took his foot off the pedal. She tried to grasp the handlebars in her padded hands and to say what ought to be said.

  “I wanted to—”

  No, that was the wrong way to start.

  “Zilpha and Tetsy—”

  That wasn’t going to work, either, and her hands were slipping off the handlebars.

  “Lavinia, stop trying to talk. You can’t even stand up.”

  He tried to take her hands away from the bicycle.

  “No, Hayward! I’ll fall.”

  “I won’t let you fall. I just have to get us both untangled from this blasted wheel. Here, sling your arm around my neck. That’s a good girl. Now take it slow, one step at a time. Come on, you can do it.”

  He was leading her back to the house, letting her use his strong body as a crutch, not seeming to mind that she had to lean her head against his ginger fur because her neck refused to hold it up any longer. How lucky that he was just that tiny bit shorter than she.