by Rice, Anne
“I lifted up some of the mass of clothing so that the items tumbled down into the lower portion of the trunk, and there I unearthed a mass of jewelry—pearls and brooches and cameos—all thrown among the dresses as if no one had cared about them, which was a puzzle to me because I knew when I held them that the pearls were real; and as for the cameos, I lifted them out one by one and saw that they were fine little works, specimens Aunt Queen would like very much, and all of them—all three—had gold frames, and good contrast to them, being made out of dark shell.
“Why were they here, so neglected, so forgotten, I wondered. Who had just heaped them here amid dresses that were molding, and when had such a thing been done?
“The noise came again, a rustling sound, and another soft sound like a footstep that made me pivot and face the attic door.
“There stood Goblin, glaring at me with alarm in his face, and very emphatically he shook his head and mouthed the word No.
“ ‘But I want to know who she was,’ I said to him. He disappeared rather slowly, as though he were weak and frightened, and I felt the air grow cool as it often did after his disappearances, and I wondered why he had been so weak.
“By now, you can guess that I was so used to Goblin that I wasn’t all that interested in him anymore. I felt superior to him. At this moment, I didn’t think much about him at all.
“I set to work laying out the entire contents of the trunk upon the top of another trunk beside it. It was clear that the contents had just been heaped inside, helter-skelter, and all except the cameos and the pearls was a total loss.
“There were beautiful old mutton-sleeve dresses, dresses that went back surely to the days of long skirts, and there were old rotted lace blouses, two or more with fine shell cameos attached at the throat, and what must have been silk gowns. Some items fell apart in my hands. Cameos, all ‘Rebecca at the Well.’
“ ‘So you loved just that one theme,’ I said out loud. ‘Were you named for it?’
“I heard the rustling again, and I felt something brush me, soft, as if a cat had brushed my neck. Then nothing. Nothing but the quiet and the dying afternoon around us, and a kind of dread I had to escape.
“There was nothing better than to explore this trunk.
“There were slippers that were dried up now and gnarled as if they were driftwood. An open box of powder had been tossed into the contents, and it still had a bit of sweet fragrance after all this time. A couple of perfume bottles were broken, and there was a small leather book with lots of pages of writing, but all of the writing had almost faded away. It looked like purple cobwebs.
“The mildew had gotten to everything, ruining all this finery and in some places covering the wool garments with a slimy blackness, making them a total loss.
“ ‘But this is sheer waste,’ I said out loud. I gathered up the pearl necklaces, of which there were three, and all of the five cameos, including two I had to take off the old blouses, and I went downstairs with these treasures and sought out Jasmine, who was washing some bell peppers for supper at the kitchen sink.
“I told her what I’d found and laid out the jewelry on the kitchen table.
“ ‘Well, you shouldn’t have gone up there!’ she declared. Much to my surprise, she got ferocious. ‘You just run wild these days, you know it? Why didn’t you ask me before you went up there, Taw-quin Blackwood?’ And on and on she ranted in that vein.
“I was too busy looking at the cameos. ‘All the same theme,’ I said again, ‘ “Rebecca at the Well,” and all so very pretty. Why did they get thrown up there in a trunk with all those things? Don’t you think Aunt Queen would want these things?’ Of course Aunt Queen had at least ten cameos of ‘Rebecca at the Well,’ I knew that much, though I didn’t know how she had come by the first of them, and if I had known I would have been more engrossed than I already was.
“At supper I told Pops all about it and showed him the loot, but he was no more interested in this than in anything else, and while Jasmine read me the riot act about meddling where I didn’t belong, Pops just said in his dead voice:
“ ‘You can have anything you find up there,’ which made Jasmine quiet down at once.
“At bedtime, I gave the pearls to Big Ramona, but she said she didn’t feel easy taking them, that there was a story to them and all the things that were in that trunk.
“ ‘You save them for some day when you get married,’ she said. ‘And you give those pearls to your new wife. You have them blessed by the priest first. Remember. Don’t you give them away unless they’re blessed by the priest.’
“ ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ I told her. ‘A pearl necklace blessed by the priest?’
“I begged her to tell me the story—I knew she knew things—but she wouldn’t, and she said she didn’t remember it real well anyway, which I knew was a fib, and pretty soon she had me saying our evening prayers.
“It was her bright idea that night that we should say an entire Rosary, and we did it, meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries, and then we made an Act of Contrition as well. All this we offered up for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, and then we said the famous prayer to the Archangel Michael to defend us in battle against the Evil One, and then we went to sleep.
“Next day, I wrote to Aunt Queen about the discovery, and I told her that I had put the cameos with her collection in the parlor showcase, and that the pearls were in her dressing table, if she should want them. I asked if she would please tell me the story that Big Ramona wouldn’t tell. Who was Rebecca Stanford? How did her things get in our house?
“I went back up and searched all of the attic. Of course there were wonderful items—old art deco lamps and tables and overstuffed chairs and couches that were rotting, and even a couple of typewriters of the ancient black species that weigh a ton. Other bundles of old clothes appeared mundane and fit for the rag pile, and there was an ancient vacuum cleaner that ought to have been donated to a museum.
“As for the wicker furniture, I had all of it brought down to be restored, pending Pops’ approval, which was granted with a silent nod. The Shed Men were happy to have a new project, so that went all right.
“I didn’t find anything else that was really interesting. Rebecca Stanford was the mystery of the moment, and when I left the attic for the last time I took the leather-bound book I’d found in her things, and there came again that uneasy and exciting feeling. I saw Goblin in the doorway and again he shook his head.
“That it banished despair, this excited feeling—that’s what I liked.
“The following day, Thursday, was another quiet one, an in-between day, and the panic started in on me, and after lunch I went outside to walk the avenue of the pecan trees and feel the crunch of the pea gravel under my feet.
“The light was golden and I hated it because it was already failing, and the dread was coming on me thick.
“When I reached the front steps I sat down with the leather-bound book I’d found in Rebecca Stanford’s trunk, and tried to make out the writing inside.
“It didn’t take long to decipher the name on the first page, and to my surprise it was Camille Blackwood. As for the rest of the writing, it was pretty near illegible but I could see that it was verse.
“A book of poems by Camille Blackwood! And it was Camille’s ghost that was always seen going up the attic stairs! I ran to tell all this to Jasmine, who was having a cigarette on the back steps. And again, there came the tirade.
“ ‘Tarquin, you leave that stuff alone! You put that book of poems in Miss Queen’s room until she comes home!’
“ ‘Now, listen, Jasmine, what do you think the ghost of Camille has been looking for? And you’ve seen her ghost same as I have. And why are you telling me to leave this book of poems alone? Don’t you see, she lost it, or it got put in the wrong place, and you’re acting like this isn’t momentous when it is.’
“ ‘And for who is this momentous!’ she fired back. ‘For you? Did you see Camille’s ghos
t on the stairs?’
“ ‘Twice I did and you know it,’ I answered.
“ ‘So how are you going to tell her you found the book, I’d like to know. You going to tell your Guardian Angel when you say your night prayers?’
“ ‘Not a half-bad idea,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen that ghost, you know you have.’
“ ‘Now you listen to me,’ she said, ‘I never saw that ghost, I just said I did. I said it for the tourists. I’ve never seen a ghost in my life.’
“ ‘I know that’s not true,’ I declared. ‘I think you’ve even seen Goblin. There are times when you just stare at him, and I know it. You know, Jasmine, you don’t fool me one bit.’
“ ‘You watch your tone with me, boy,’ she said, and I knew that there was nothing more to be got from her.
“She just told me again that I was to put the book away. But I had other plans for it. I knew that if I held up each page to a halogen light I could probably make out a little of the poem on it. But it was not enough. I didn’t have the patience or the stamina for that kind of detail.
“I put the book upstairs on my desk and went back down to sit on the front steps again, hoping some guest would drive up and something would change in the morbid miserable spell of the late afternoon. The panic was coming on strongly, and I said bitterly, ‘Dear God, I would do anything to prevent this! Anything.’ And I closed my eyes.
“ ‘Where are you, Goblin?’ I asked, but he didn’t answer me any more than God had, and then it seemed to me that the heat of the spring day lifted somewhat and a cooling breeze seemed to come from the swamps. Now, cooling breezes never came from that way, or at least not usually, and I turned to look down there to the far right of the house, to the old cemetery and the hulking cypress trees beyond. The swamp looked as dark and as mysterious as ever, hovering over the cemetery and rising up black and featureless against the sky.
“A woman was coming up the sloping lawn from that direction, a petite woman, walking with big deliberate steps while with her right hand she gathered up the edge of her dark skirts.
“ ‘Very pretty,’ I said out loud. ‘I knew you would be.’ And then the strangeness of my words struck me, Who was I talking to, and I felt Goblin pulling on my left hand. When I turned to look at him a sort of shock passed through me, and he flickered, shaking his head violently No, and then he was gone. It was like a lightbulb when it burns out.
“To my right, the pretty young woman was still coming on, and I could see her smiling now, and that she wore a lovely old-fashioned outfit, a high-neck mutton-sleeve lace blouse with a cameo, and a tight-waisted skirt of dark taffeta to the ground. She had high-set breasts and full voluptuous hips, and they swayed as she walked. What a dish she was. Her brown hair was all pulled back from her face, revealing a serene hairline around her temples and forehead, and she had large cheerful dark eyes.
“She finally made it to the level part of the lawn where the house stands, and she gave a little sigh as if the walk all the way up from the edge of the swamp had been hard.
“ ‘But they didn’t bury you down there in that cemetery, did they?’ I asked her. We were the best of friends.
“ ‘No,’ she answered in a soft sweet voice as she came on and sat beside me on the steps. She wore a pair of black-and-white cameo earrings dangling from her pierced lobes, and they shivered with the subtle motion of her head as she smiled.
“ ‘And you’re as handsome as everybody said,’ she told me. ‘You’re a man already. Why are you so worried?’—so gentle—‘You need a pretty girl like me to show you what you can do?’
“ ‘But who told you I was worried?’ I asked her.
“She was just gorgeous, or so it seemed to me, and she wasn’t just endowed by nature with an admirable face and large eyes, she had a pertness to her, a freshness, a quick refinement. Surely there was a corset shaping her little waist, and the ruffles of her blouse were stiffly ironed and flawless. Her taffeta skirt was a rich chocolate brown color that glinted in the sunlight, and she had tiny feet in fancy lace-up boots.
“ ‘I just know you’ve been worried,’ she answered. ‘I know lots of things. You might say I know everything that goes on. Things don’t really go in a straight line the way living people think. Everything is always happening all the time.’ She reached over and clasped my right hand with both of hers, and I felt the shock again, electric, dangerous, and delicious chills ran all over me, and I bent forward and I went to kiss her lips.
“Teasingly, she drew back just a little, and then, with her breast pressed against my arm, she said, ‘But let’s go inside. I want you to light the lamps.’
“That made perfect sense. I hated the long shadows of the afternoon. Light the lamps. Light the world.
“ ‘I hate the shadows too,’ she said.
“We rose together, though I was faintly dizzy and I didn’t want her to know it. We went inside the cool and silence of the house. I could just barely hear the sound of running water in the kitchen. Four p.m. Dinner not for another two hours, and how curious the house looked! What a curious fragrance it had—of leather and crushed flowers, of moth balls and wax.
“The living room was full of different couches and chairs with frames that were somber and black and shiny, real Victorian furniture, I thought, and there stood another antique piano, far older than the one that had been there before. It was a square grand. The draperies were a heavy midnight blue velvet, and the lace panels were full of gracefully drawn peacocks. The windows were open. How pretty, the breeze against the lace peacocks. How perfect, I thought.
“A thrilling ecstasy took hold of me, a certainty of the pure beauty of what I saw and the irrelevance of all else.
“When I looked over at the dining room I realized that it too was altered, that the draperies were a peach silk with gold fringe on them, and that the table was oval, with a vase of flowers in the center. Fresh roses, natural garden roses on short stems, petals lying on the waxed table. Not cold magnificent florist roses. Just roses that could make your hands bleed. Drops of water on the round vase.
“ ‘Oh, but it’s delightful, isn’t it?’ she said to me. ‘I picked that fabric for the draperies myself. I’ve done so many things. Small things. Big things. I cut those roses from the back garden. I laid out the rose garden. There was no rose garden before I came. You want to see the rose garden?’
“A faint protest voiced itself in my mind that there was no rose garden on Blackwood Farm, that the rose garden was long gone for the swimming pool, but this seemed incomprehensible and unimportant, and to have mentioned such a thing seemed rude.
“I turned to tell her I couldn’t hold off of kissing her, and I bent down and closed my mouth over hers. Ah. I never in my dreams felt that. I never tasted that. I never knew that. I felt the heat of her body through her clothes. It was so intense, I almost came. I put my arms around her and lifted her, and I put my knee against her skirts and pushed against her sex, and I put my tongue into her mouth.
“When she drew back, it took all my self-control to let her put her hand firmly on my chest. ‘Light the lamps for me, Quinn,’ she said. ‘You know, the oil lamps. Light them. And then I’ll make you the happiest young man there ever was.’
“ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. I knew right where they were. We always kept oil lamps at Blackwood Manor because, being out in the country like we were, we never knew when the electricity was going to go out, and so I found the oil lamp in the sideboard and I lifted it up and put it on the dining table. I raised the glass shade and lighted the wick with the cigarette lighter I always carried just for such things.
“ ‘Put it on the window, darling,’ she said, ‘yes, right there, on the sill, and let’s go into the parlor and light the lamp there too.’
“I did what she told me, putting the lamp onto the windowsill. ‘But that looks dangerous,’ I said, ‘with it under the lace panels and so near to the draperies.’
“ ‘Don’t you worry, darling,’ she said. She l
ed me briskly across the hallway and into the parlor. I took the lamp out of the high Chinese chest between the two hall doorways. After it was lighted, I put it on the windowsill in the same manner as I had done across the hall. Now, that harp, that harp was the same, the big gold harp, I thought, but everything else was changed.
“This was the strangest dizziness. I didn’t dare to think of having her, of her finding out that I didn’t know how.
“ ‘You’re my darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t stare at the pretty furniture, it doesn’t matter.’ But I couldn’t help it because only a moment ago—when I’d taken the lamp from the chest—it had been familiar and now it was different again, all those violet satin black-framed chairs, and there came a sudden chorus of voices, of people saying the Rosary!
“Candlelight flickered on the ceiling. Something was wrong, and terribly terribly sad.
“I was off balance. I was about to fall. I turned around. The sound of the voices was an inundation. And the room was full of people—people in black, seated on chairs and couches and in little gold folding chairs—and a man was sobbing.
“Others were crying. Who was the little girl who stared at me?
“There was a coffin lying before the front windows, an open coffin, and the air was heavy with flowers, drenched with flowers, the waxy smell of lilies, and then up out of this coffin there rose a blond-haired woman in a blue dress. In one swift gesture, as if she rode an invisible tide, she had come up out of the coffin and stepped down on the polished floor.
“ ‘Lynelle,’ I cried out. But it wasn’t. It was Virginia Lee. How could I not know the lovely little face of Virginia Lee! Our blessed Virginia Lee. The little girl let out a baleful cry, ‘Mamma!’ How could a woman rise from a coffin?
“ ‘You leave this house alone!’ she cried, and she reached out in a perfect fury at the woman who stood with me, her white hands almost touching her, but the woman at my side drove her back with a great hissing sound, a flash and sputtering, and the figure of Virginia Lee, our blessed sweet Virginia Lee, our household saint, the figure of Virginia Lee, and the coffin, and the bawling child, the mourners—all of it blinkered and went out.