Splendors and Glooms

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  Lizzie Rose helped her out. “My name is Elizabeth Rose Fawr. This is my brother, Parsefall.”

  “’M’not her bruvver,” Parsefall corrected her around a mouthful of toast. “Me last name’s Hooke.”

  “He isn’t my brother by birth,” Lizzie Rose explained, “but we have the same guardian, so I call him my brother.” Her eyes went to one of the paintings on the wall. “Are those your brothers and sisters?”

  Parsefall looked at the painting. He had not examined it before, since it was much too large to steal. Now that he looked at it, it struck him as queer and therefore interesting. It was huge, with a gold frame full of swirls and little holes. Five life-size children stood together in a tangle of garden. The light suggested that it was early evening, and they had been gathering flowers. There were two girls with long golden hair. The taller of the two leaned against a broken column; the other held a small child on her lap and crowned him with a daisy chain. A boy with curly hair and laughing eyes stood next to a dark-haired girl with ringlets. It was evidently Clara Wintermute, but she looked younger in the picture, and as though she didn’t quite belong. The other children stood like deer poised for flight; the air around their bodies was faintly luminous, like mist or pale fire. Beside them, Clara looked dense and stiff: a wooden statue.

  A little gasp came from Lizzie Rose. Parsefall looked back at the two girls. Something had passed between them. Lizzie Rose reached across the table to press Clara’s hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lizzie Rose whispered.

  Clara shook her head violently.

  Parsefall gaped at them, feeling as if a joke had been told and he’d missed the punch line. “Wot is it?” he demanded.

  “They’re —” Lizzie Rose lowered her voice. “They’re in heaven, aren’t they? I’m so sorry.”

  “Wot?” repeated Parsefall.

  Clara spoke brusquely. “My brothers and sisters are dead.”

  Parsefall considered this. His eyes went back to the painting. “All of ’em?” he said incredulously.

  Lizzie Rose hissed. “Parsefall!”

  “There was cholera.” Clara spoke hurriedly, as if eager to get the explanation over with. “Quentin was just a baby. That’s Selina by the column — she was the eldest. She was seven, and Adelaide was six, and Charles Augustus and I were five. He was my twin.” She hesitated a moment and plunged on. “Papa thinks the contagion was in the watercress. I was naughty that day. I’ve never liked eating green things, and I wouldn’t eat the watercress at tea. So I wasn’t ill, but the others died.” She bent her head and brought up one hand as if to cover her face. “Of course, it was dreadful for Mamma. For Papa, too, but Mamma nearly died of grief.” She cleared her throat. “It was seven years ago. I’m twelve years old today.”

  Parsefall looked back at the picture. “You’re five years old in that?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the canvas.

  “Not in that picture,” Clara told him. “That was painted four years ago. Mamma had an artist come to the house — she wanted a picture of the way they might have looked, if only they’d lived. Of course we have photographs — and their death masks.” She indicated four white casts over the piano. “Mamma says we must keep them alive by thinking of them all the time. We must never forget them or stop loving them.”

  Parsefall stared at the death masks on the wall. “Wot’s a death mask?”

  Lizzie Rose kicked him under the table.

  “They take plaster,” Clara said very calmly, “and press it over the — the dear one’s face. And then later take more plaster and make a mask. That way —” She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. She did not seem grief stricken so much as embarrassed.

  Parsefall’s eyes went back to the four white casts. “That’s nasty,” he said. “Stickin’ plaster on somebody’s face wot’s dead. It’s ’orrible.”

  Lizzie Rose kicked him a second time, harder. But Clara’s blue eyes met Parsefall’s. Something flashed between them. It was almost as if she said, I think so, too.

  “It’s good to remember the dead,” said Lizzie Rose. “My mother and father died of diphtheria a year and a half ago. It makes me sorrowful to remember them, but it’s good, too. I think of my father when I practice my music, because he taught me to play. And I sleep with my mother’s Bible under my pillow. I have her ice skates and a pair of coral earrings set in gold. Of course, I’m too young to pierce my ears, so Mr. Grisini is taking care of them for me. But he’ll let me have them when I’m sixteen.”

  Parsefall snorted. He had a very good idea how Grisini had taken care of Lizzie Rose’s earrings. He’d seen the ticket from the pawnshop. He pointed to the teapot, and Clara reached for it. “Would you like another cup of tea?”

  Both children accepted. Parsefall saw one piece of toast remaining, broke it in half, and gave part to Lizzie Rose. Lizzie Rose rolled her eyes at him to signal that this was bad manners, but Parsefall didn’t care.

  Clara took her last sip of tea — she hadn’t had any toast, Parsefall noticed. Her eyes strayed to the puppet theatre.

  “Would you like to see the puppets?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara’s face lit up. “Come and see.”

  The children left the table — Parsefall with a piece of toast between his fingers. “We carry them in bags to keep them clean,” Lizzie Rose explained proudly; the calico bags had been her own invention. “The fog makes everything dirty. Before the show, we unwrap them and hang them on the rack —”

  “The gallows,” Parsefall corrected her. He grinned ghoulishly at Clara. “It’s called the gallows. We ’ang ’em on the gallows, just like men.” But Clara was too intrigued to be squeamish.

  “We have to set them up just so, because it’s dark under the curtain,” said Lizzie Rose. “I make their costumes — Grisini can sew as well as I can, but he doesn’t like to. I just made a new frock for Little Red Riding Hood — isn’t she pretty?”

  Clara admired the puppet with her hands behind her back. She looked as if she were used to being told not to touch things. Lizzie Rose had an inspiration. “Would you like to work Little Red? You hold her by the crutch — that’s the wooden bit at the end — and pull the strings.”

  Clara dangled the puppet. Timidly she jerked a string. One wooden leg kicked.

  “The hardest thing is making them walk,” Lizzie Rose told her. “It’s easy to make the fantoccini dance, but hard to make them walk — isn’t that funny? I still float them sometimes — that’s what we call it when their feet don’t touch the floor. That’s a sign of a bad worker. Let Parsefall show you.”

  Parsefall took the Devil from the gallows and made him saunter toward Clara. The manikin had joints at the ankles; he walked with a swagger, but his wooden feet brushed the carpet with every step. Clara squeaked with delight and clapped her hands.

  “Grisini and Parsefall do the figure working,” Lizzie Rose explained. “I play the music. I’m not good enough to work the fantoccini, unless Grisini and Parsefall have their hands full. But Parsefall’s good.” She laid a hand on Parsefall’s shoulder. “Parsefall has magic in his fingers.”

  Clara looked at Parsefall’s hands. She gave a faint start.

  Parsefall understood why. His fingers were clever enough, but there were only nine of them. The little finger on his right hand was missing. There was no scar, nothing ugly to see. It was just that the little finger was not there. Parsefall didn’t know what had become of it. He was almost certain he had once had ten fingers, and it tormented him that he couldn’t remember what had become of the one he lost.

  “You’re so clever,” Clara said admiringly. “Both of you. You know how to make the wagon into a stage, and play music, and work the puppets.” She sighed. “I wish I could do things.”

  “I’m sure you can, miss,” Lizzie Rose soothed her, but Clara shook her head.

  “No. I embroider, of course, and I can play the piano, but there isn’t any use in it. Mamma doesn’t like music, because it makes her head ache, and we have
too many cushions already.” She swept the room with a glance that was almost contemptuous. It reminded Parsefall of what he had intended earlier — to rid this room of one of the objects that crowded it.

  “Would you like to help me take the rest of the fantoccini out of the bags?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara brightened at once.

  “Oh, yes, please! May I?”

  Parsefall hung the Devil puppet back on the gallows and turned his back. The two girls went on talking. The chirping, purring sounds in their voices seemed to indicate that they were becoming friends, but Parsefall paid no attention to their words. He was searching the room for something to steal.

  What should he take? The room was stocked with valuables, many of them small enough to be portable. Parsefall knew what he wanted: something that would fit in his pocket without making a telltale bulge, something valuable but not so precious that its absence would be noticed immediately. He surveyed a table full of knickknacks: a mosaic box, a wreath of wax flowers under glass, three china babies with gilded wings, and an assortment of photographs in silver frames. Another table held a porcelain bowl full of dead rose petals, a prayer book with mother-of-pearl covers, and more photographs.

  One of the smallest photographs had a round frame with tiny pearls going around the edge. Parsefall eyed it speculatively. Pearls were worth money, and the silver was probably real. There were half a dozen other photographs on the table. That was good; the absence of one might go undetected for some time. He glanced at Clara and Lizzie Rose, saw that they were occupied with the puppets, and his hand shot out. Another moment, and the photograph was in his pocket.

  At half past four in the afternoon, Clara led her guests upstairs to the drawing room and invited them to seat themselves before the stage. The youngest children sat on the floor with Clara. Older children chose footstools, and their mothers sat on chairs assembled from all over the house. Clara’s governess, Miss Cameron, shared a sofa with Mrs. Wintermute. The servants in the back of the room watched standing.

  Agnes dimmed the lamps, leaving most of the room in semidarkness. The little theatre stood in a pool of light. One of the footmen coughed. The door opened, and Clara’s father stole inside. Clara was glad. She had been afraid that Dr. Wintermute would be too busy to see the show.

  There was a rattle from Parsefall’s tambourine, and Lizzie Rose played a weird little melody on the flute. The miniature curtains lifted and parted, revealing a painted wood and a wolf in a green satin frock coat.

  The wolf tilted his head and began to speak. Gesticulating with one paw, he told the audience how hungry he was and how he longed for a little child to eat. He spoke so plaintively that Clara fully sympathized with him. Then Red Riding Hood took the stage. The little puppet in her red cloak was dainty and innocent; it seemed cruel that she should be the wolf’s prey. Clara locked her fingers together, caught between warring desires. Around her, the audience was held in thrall. The children in the front row no longer saw the strings that worked the puppets. The miniature actors appeared to swell in size; their painted features looked as if they smiled and frowned.

  Red Riding Hood was tricked, devoured, and reborn by the ax of the hunter. The front curtain dropped, while Lizzie Rose played the kit and Parsefall changed the backdrop. The curtain lifted to reveal a Venetian street scene, complete with humpbacked bridges and moving gondolas. A handsome young puppet lamented his lack of money. A stranger with a plumed hat overheard his complaint and offered to sell him a magic bottle with a demon inside it. The Bottle Imp, he explained, would grant him all the gold in the world — only he must sell it before he died, or risk the fires of hell. Ten minutes later, the hero lay at death’s door, and the demon leaped out of his bottle with a clap of thunder. He was sea green, with horns sprouting from his temples and bat wings instead of arms. His countenance was so frightful that one little girl left her seat on the floor and plunged into her mother’s lap.

  But the play was not yet over. A maiden with golden curls nursed the hero back to health. In the end, the stranger with the plumed hat was tricked into buying back the bottle, and the hero married his golden-haired sweetheart. The children clapped lustily. Before their hands had stopped smarting, the curtain rose again, and Lizzie Rose’s fiddle played a lilting air.

  A tiny ballerina tiptoed onto the stage. She was so light on her pointes, so perfectly balanced, that she might have been a fairy. Clara leaned forward, enraptured. She wished she could dance like that. Sometimes when she was supposed to be in bed, she danced in the dark nursery, twirling on half pointe and holding out the skirts of her nightdress. She wished that she could be a ballet dancer. She saw herself in pink gauze, with rosebuds in her hair, gliding like a swallow, leaping, fluttering, soaring. . . . Then her conscience rebuked her. Dancing wasn’t proper, and it was her duty to stay home and be a comfort to her parents. Clara’s breath left her in a sigh.

  The dancer was replaced by a juggler, who tossed three balls into the air: green, lavender, and silver. After the juggler came a tightrope walker — and by now even the grown-ups had forgotten that they were watching fantoccini and worried lest the manikin should fall and break his neck.

  The final act was the strangest of all. The curtains parted to reveal a churchyard and a skeleton puppet. As Lizzie Rose played the kit, the skeleton jogged along happily, raising its knobby knees and grinning. Then, with a trill from the fiddle, the legs parted company with the spine and sprinted to the opposite side of the stage.

  The children gasped. Several tittered. Clara knelt upright, forgetting the children behind her. Both halves of the skeleton were dancing — and now the skeleton shattered a second time. The skull rose in the air, floating high over the arms and rib cage. It landed center stage, the upper jaw jerking in rhythm with the tambourine. Clara pressed her fingers against her lips. She was shocked — and entranced — and tickled.

  The children giggled. The music grew softer. With another trill from the kit, the skeleton’s arms collapsed, making a pyramid of white bones. The legs buckled. Now it was only the skull that moved, clacking open and shut in a fiendish laugh. The white teeth gleamed. The spectacle was grotesque. It was —

  Clara heard a strange sound: a cry of laughter that was almost a shriek. It took her a split second to realize that the sound came from her own throat. Her fingers tightened; she covered her mouth with all ten fingers, but it was no use. If she didn’t laugh, she would choke to death. She opened her mouth for air. Another whoop escaped her. The children around her had stopped giggling. They were no longer watching the skeleton. They were watching Clara.

  There was a rustle from the back of the room. Clara turned. Her mother was on her feet, making her way to the door. Dr. Wintermute hastened after her. Horror stricken, Clara clamped her hands over her mouth. But the laughter within her was explosive, and knowing that she should stop — must stop — only made matters worse. Peal after peal escaped her. Tears blinded her, first warm and then cold upon her cheeks.

  The children shifted restlessly. The skeleton onstage was reassembling itself: rib cage on top of pelvis, head on top of spine. Clara whimpered, bent double. Her sides ached.

  The kit trilled its final note. In the silence that followed, the skeleton took a bow. The curtain fell. A few of the children clapped halfheartedly. Even the smallest child knew that Clara Wintermute had disgraced herself.

  Miss Cameron stood up. She went to stand in front of the miniature stage, facing the audience. Her face was stern. “I hope,” she said, “that you have enjoyed the entertainment.”

  There was a timid ripple of applause.

  “Clara,” said Miss Cameron, “you must thank your little friends for coming to the party.”

  Clara took a deep breath and got to her feet. Her cheeks were wet and scarlet. “Thank you,” she said hoarsely. She could think of nothing else to say.

  Several of the children said thank you in return. Miss Cameron nodded toward the door and began to herd the guests downstairs to the dining
room. A few soft thuds and rustles came from backstage. Parsefall and Lizzie Rose must be packing up the puppets. Clara followed her governess downstairs.

  The servants rallied around Miss Cameron. Coats were fetched. Gloves were sorted out, slices of cake wrapped up, paper cones filled with sweets for the children to take home. In the midst of the leave-taking, two footmen helped Grisini bring the caravan down the stairs. Lizzie Rose and Parsefall trailed after it. Clara would have liked to wave to them, but she forced herself to speak only to her guests. She stayed close to Miss Cameron, uttering stock phrases of hospitality. She knew that the other children would talk about her as soon as they were out the door.

  It was more than half an hour before the last guest left the house. Then Miss Cameron turned on Clara. “What on earth possessed you? How could you laugh in such an unladylike manner?”

  “I don’t know,” said Clara.

  Miss Cameron’s frown deepened. “Skeletons and cemeteries —! And in a house of mourning! Nothing could be in worse taste! You know how tender your mother’s feelings are, Clara! Did you know that — that vulgar skeleton — was going to be part of the program?”

  Clara lifted her chin, glad that there was one point on which she might defend herself. “No, I didn’t! Truly! That day in the park, I saw the show from behind. I didn’t know —”

  “Even so,” Miss Cameron interrupted, “you laughed. And the way in which you laughed was improper. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Clara. Her cheeks burned.

  “You had better go to bed. There will be no more festivities today. I will tell Cook you will not require dinner.”

  Clara nodded. She had not been sent supperless to bed for many years. To have such a babyish punishment on her birthday was a double disgrace, but she supposed she deserved it. “Yes, Miss Cameron. Only, please — before I go up to bed — oughtn’t I to see Mamma?”

  The governess hesitated. When she answered, the sharpness had gone from her voice. “She may not wish to see you.”