“Thank you, no, Alicia,” old Mrs. Campbell said, equally crisply. “Nyx does not like cars and Sylvie and I prefer to walk. We like the exercise.”
“It’s too long a walk for Sylvie,” Alicia Campbell said, rather irritably, but she was not going to cross her mother-in-law in public. She turned to me, angelically beautiful and devilishly efficient. “Madeleine, my scout troop is having a big resale next Saturday to raise money for an outing. Is it all right if we use the store? Of course if it is warm we will use the porch; otherwise we will have to bring the things inside.”
On Saturday the store is apt to be crowded; I looked out at Alicia’s car and saw the back seat loaded with groceries from the A&P which she could’ve bought right here; but the scouts are not responsible for the fact that I don’t care for Alicia Campbell, so I just said, “You’ll have to check with Hugh, but I imagine it will be all right.”
“Fine. Don’t you forget to come to the PTA this week. I have a very good speaker lined up.” Alicia is vice president of the PTA. She is a trustee of our church and she teaches Sunday school and is den mother, and no matter how much she takes on she seems capable of even more, and she always looks beautiful and she never seems tired.
“You’re sure you don’t want to ride home with me?” she asked old Mrs. Campbell.
“Thank you, no, Alicia.”
“Sylvie, come along with me.”
But Sylvie just clung to her grandmother’s skirts.
“Say, ‘No, thank you, Mother.’”
Sylvie hid her face.
“Really,” Alicia said, her violet eyes clouding with annoyance. “Sometimes I think you aren’t quite bright. I’d really think you didn’t know how to talk if I didn’t hear you at home with Granny.” She swept out of the store; she wasn’t used to being crossed, and it rankled that I had seen it. As she got into the car, the sunlight glistened on the pale gold of her beautiful hair.
“Where’s my marketing bag, Sylvie?” Mrs. Campbell asked.
The marketing bag was in old Mrs. Campbell’s hand and Sylvie pointed to it silently. “Ah!” Mrs. Campbell said. “Come along, Sylvie.” And they trotted out the door and down the steps. Slowly Nyx, the cat, stood up on the rail, stretched lasciviously, arched its back, fluffed out its tail, drew its claws destructively along the rail, and trotted daintily down the highway.
That night I had just finished putting the children to bed and was setting the table for breakfast when the phone rang. My husband called me from the living room. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?” I asked, coming in, carrying the children’s three milk mugs.
“She wouldn’t say.”
I put the mugs down on the desk by the telephone, annoyed, eager to get upstairs and into a hot bath and our nice warm bed. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Franklin, this is Mrs. Campbell. Old Mrs. Campbell.”
“Oh, yes, hello,” I said.
“Mrs. Franklin, I want to see you,” she said.
“I’ll be at the store at the usual time tomorrow,” I promised her. “Twelve to three.”
“No. I want to see you tonight.”
“We’re just on our way to bed,” I said.
“Mrs. Franklin, do you remember what I told you this afternoon?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You didn’t laugh at me. You contradicted me, which wasn’t polite, but you didn’t laugh at me. You’ve never laughed at me, and I’ve given you plenty of cause. I’ve got to talk to you. I have to talk to someone and there isn’t anybody else. It’s terribly important.”
“Won’t tomorrow do as well as tonight?” I asked.
“No, I have to make up my mind by midnight. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t any problem. It’s Sylvie I’m worried about. I don’t know whether or not I have any right to make a decision like this for Sylvie. It’s her whole life.”
“If it’s that important, I should think your son would be the one to talk to, not me.”
“Him!” she cried in scorn. “He’d go right to her. And they’re both so good. It’s not that you’re not good, of course, Mrs. Franklin. You’re just not good in the same way. What I thought I’d do, if you don’t mind, is walk over and have a few words with you. I won’t keep you any longer than I can help. But you’ll see when I get there how important it is, and that I can’t take all the responsibility myself.”
“Mrs. Campbell,” I said swiftly, “it’s much too cold for you to walk tonight.”
“I’ll walk fast,” she said, “and I have my old sealskin. Tonight I’m prepared for it; last night I didn’t even have my sweater. I’ll start out on foot and if you think it’s so cold that you’d feel better if you came and picked me up in your car, I’ll be on the lookout for you. But not your husband, please,” she said in sudden warning; could she read my mind? “Just you.” And before I could answer, she had hung up. I knew that almost immediately she would be putting on that old black sealskin coat and slipping out of the house.
I turned to my husband. I had told him of the conversation at the store, and now I told him what Mrs. Campbell had said on the phone. “I’m worried about her,” I said, “and in a funny sort of way I’ve grown fond of her. I better hop in the car and go over and see what’s what.”
“Don’t you think you ought to call Jack and Alicia?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I think I ought, but I’m not going to. It would be betraying her, and I can’t do it. I’m going to get in the car and meet her. Okay?”
Sometimes I think my husband is too difficult to alarm. So I was a little surprised when he said, “Take Alexander with you. And if you’re not back in a reasonable length of time I’m coming after you.”
“Okay,” I said, and whistled for Alexander as I went out to the pantry and took my polo coat off the hook. Alexander’s ancestry is unknown, but there are sizable traces of both Great Dane and St. Bernard in him. He is gentle as a lamb and has raised our three children almost as well as Nana in Peter Pan, but he looks quite frightening and his bark if he thinks anyone is coming too close to any one of his family will make a strong man sweat.
About half a mile before the Campbell house, I saw two small, intense green lights and two larger, duller ones, and then I realized it was the beams from the headlights of the car being caught and thrown back by Nyx’s eyes and Mrs. Campbell’s spectacles. Mrs. Campbell stopped and waited, and when I had drawn up beside her and opened the car door she looked in carefully, saying, “You sure your husband didn’t come?”
“He’s home with the children,” I said reassuringly.
She looked at Alexander and her face and voice were dubious. “I’m not sure about the dog.”
“Oh, Alexander wouldn’t hurt a flea,” I said.
“It wasn’t that I was worried about,” she said with some asperity. Before she shut the door she leaned out of the car and called to the cat, “It’s all right, Nyx.”
In the glare of the headlights, Nyx waved his enormous tail menacingly, turned, and disappeared into the bushes at the side of the road. Through the undergrowth I thought I could still see the two lamps of his eyes.
For quite a long time, Mrs. Campbell just sat in the seat beside me, not speaking, but I could sense that she was trembling, very slightly, but constantly. Alexander, who had been sentenced to sit in back, leaned over the front seat and nuzzled her gently. If Alexander hadn’t done this I think I would have started the car, driven old Mrs. Campbell home, and delivered her into the hands of Jack and Alicia, betrayal or no. I was thoroughly scared, as I felt that I had taken too much responsibility upon myself if the old lady was spiraling into a mental breakdown. Who was I to think I could handle it alone? But Alexander has a nose for illness and abnormality. Once a placid-looking salesman came to our door; a more innocuous man was never seen, but Alexander would not let him in the house. Hugh read in the paper the next day that he’d had a complete mental crack-up, assaulted a housewife in a neighboring village, and been taken to a m
ental hospital. If there were anything seriously wrong with Mrs. Campbell’s mind Alexander would not have nuzzled her so gently; it was one of his forms of giving the seal of approval.
Mrs. Campbell broke out of her trance, smiled at Alexander with very much the same warmth she usually reserved for Sylvie, and turned to me with a worried frown. “I don’t know why your dog likes me,” she said. “Dogs oughtn’t to. Not under the circumstances.”
But she must be batty!
“Turn out the lights, please, my dear. I’d rather we weren’t seen. Just pull off the road a few yards and into that dull picnic area, will you please? Can you imagine people wanting to have picnics there in full view of every passerby?”
I had to admit that it was a wonder to me, too, as I passed on summer weekends with every table crowded, and table cloths laid on the few bare patches in between. I drove into the small half-circle driveway, and though we would be able to see any car or small animal coming down the night road, I suddenly felt very alone and isolated.
“Mrs. Franklin,” Mrs. Campbell demanded, “do you remember when you joined the church?”
“Why, yes,” I said.
“Was it important to you? It mattered, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s mattered very much or I wouldn’t have done it.”
“I knew I could trust you!” she cried triumphantly. “I’ve been watching you and testing you for a long time. You may not have realized it, but I have been. I knew you wouldn’t be like those women who do it because everyone else is doing it, just the way they join a bridge club or try to get their husband to take out a membership in the golf club. It ought to mean more than bridge or golf, oughtn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “though I do enjoy a good game of bridge once in a while. Haven’t time for golf.”
“Stop trying to keep this on a light plane. I know what you’re trying to do. Humor me along because you think I’m mad. But in your heart, you see, you’re not quite sure, and that’s why you’re here with me at all. This isn’t a light or laughing matter, Mrs. Franklin. It’s deadly serious. Think about how you felt when you made your decision to join the church. Think how you felt when the hour approached. That is the way I feel now.”
Mrs. Campbell paused, but evidently she didn’t expect me to say anything, because after a moment she went on. “We were talking about Alicia this afternoon, weren’t we? Mrs. Franklin, everything Alicia stands for I’m against. Now you’re going to remind me that I come to church every Sunday with Alicia and Jack and the children. Yes. The church has meant a lot to me during my life. But now I go each Sunday because it’s quiet and I can sit and think what I want to think. It’s always noisy in our house, and Alicia thinks it’s ungrandmotherly of me if I lock my door. But you see, Mrs. Franklin, I want to join another church now, and that’s what I want to talk to you about, because if I do, I’ve promised to take Sylvie in with me. There’s my problem, you see. Sylvie’s not old enough to decide for herself, and so have I the right to do it? And I have to make my decision by midnight.”
“What possible church could want this of you?” I asked uneasily.
“The church of the devil.”
In the back seat of the car Alexander moved uneasily, but he did not growl. The silence in the darkness pressed about us was like the silence and darkness that comes before a thunderstorm, but this was the fall of the year, and the night was clear and cold.
“I hope you don’t mean that,” I said finally.
“But I do. Alicia represents our church. Therefore, I am against our church. But, like most thinking human beings, I feel the need of a god to worship and to go to for comfort and succor. Therefore I’m going to the devil.”
“All right,” I said, “go to the devil if you must, but you’re quite right, you have no right to take Sylvie with you.”
“But those are his terms,” she said sadly. “My soul is not enough. I’m old and almost finished. He wants Sylvie, too.”
“That ought to show you he’s not fit to worship.”
“Oh, but he is! Make no mistake about it, Mrs. Franklin, he is! Have you read Milton’s Paradise Lost? Milton knew. He didn’t intend to make the devil the hero of his greatest work, but that’s exactly what he did. Oh, he’s worth worshiping! And if God approves of people like Alicia, he doesn’t want me; and the devil does. It’s nice to be wanted, Mrs. Franklin. I haven’t been wanted for a long time now.”
“But—”
She did not allow me to speak. “Please, I have one more favor to ask of you and then I won’t bother you again.”
“What is it?” I asked warily.
“We’re meeting at the fairgrounds at five minutes before midnight. Please bring your car and park it just at the entrance to the fairgrounds and wait there for half an hour. If I haven’t come to you with Sylvie by then, you’ll know that I made my decision and what it is and you can go on home. If you care what happens to my soul—and I think you do care about people’s souls, Mrs. Franklin—you’ll come. Won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “I’ll come.”
“Aaah!” She gave a great sigh of relief and leaned back. “There’s my good girl!”
Had she hypnotized me? No, I can’t shuffle off the responsibility like that. I did it of my own free will. I took her home, then went home and to bed quite normally, and when Hugh had gone to sleep I got up and went downstairs and dressed and got back in the car and drove over to the entrance of the fairgrounds.
I took Alexander with me. Maybe I thought this would appease Hugh a little when I told him about it later. Because I would still have to tell him.
I sat there and waited in the dark. I don’t smoke, but at that time I would have given anything for cigarettes to choke over, anything to occupy my hands and my mind. I thought of turning on the car radio and decided against it. In the eastern sky behind the fairgrounds a tired and ancient-looking moon rose, turning slowly from a large red flattened-out sphere to a small, dwindling white one. From the church steeple, slow deep strokes of midnight began to toll.
And still nothing happened. I counted the bells. Twelve of them. And still nothing. Had Mrs. Campbell made her decision? Did I really believe any of the wild tales she had told me?
Silence and darkness. I was shivering. Then across the fairgrounds I saw two figures streaking, barely illuminated by the worn-out moon. It was Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Campbell and Sylvie. They were running fast, much faster than I would have believed possible for an old lady and a small child to run. Then it seemed that there were other figures streaking after them, gaining on them. I flung open the door of the car. In the seat beside me I could see the fur rise on Alexander’s back. Before I could stop him, he jumped out of the car and went flashing across the field. The two small figures were slowing down now, stumbling, exhausted.
“Hurry! Hurry!” I found myself screaming, the sound thin and frightened against the night.
Now they were covering the last few yards. The dark, almost shapeless figures behind them were almost on them. “The sign of the cross,” Mrs. Campbell screamed. “Make the sign of the cross!”
Involuntarily I obeyed.
She and Sylvie flung themselves into the car as the two foremost following figures caught up with them. A great dark, hairy figure. And behind him, blond hair flowing, eyes gleaming redly, angelic face alight with satanic fire—no, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t possibly be—
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Mrs. Campbell screamed and made the sign of the cross.
And suddenly the figures fled.
“Did you see her?” Mrs. Campbell demanded, her voice still an exhausted scream. “Did you see Alicia? It was one of her tricks all along! All the church work, all the being so good, just a trick to get our souls for him! If it had been anybody but Alicia I’d have done it, too! But now I shall go back to God, Mrs. Franklin, and to hell with the devil!”
She sank back against the seat of the car, exhausted. Sylvie clim
bed up into her lap and twined her arms about her grandmother’s neck. Alexander came racing across the field and jumped panting into the back and gave Mrs. Campbell an affectionate nuzzle. He was holding something in his mouth; he had evidently taken a bite out of somebody’s garments. His kiss seemed to rouse the old lady and she said briskly, “Now if you’ll just be kind enough to take us along home, Mrs. Franklin, I’ll take Sylvie to bed. Oh dear, I’ll need keys tonight, won’t I?” She looked through her handbag. “I have them! No, we won’t have to disturb anybody.”
I took them home and saw them safely into the darkened house. I went home myself and crawled into bed beside Hugh. I told him about it when I wakened in the morning, before the children were off, when we were still lying together in bed. And he laughed.
“It isn’t funny,” I said tensely.
He looked at me skeptically. “You don’t believe it, do you?”
“Of course.”
“You’re still half-asleep,” he said. “Come on, wake up. Wake up!”
I got out of bed and went to my closet and plunged my hand down into the pocket of my coat. There it was, the thing I had taken from Alexander’s teeth the night before, neither the skin of an animal nor the cloth from the garments of a human being, a scrap of something red and rough and repulsively hairy.
Poor Little Saturday
The witch woman lived in a deserted, boarded-up plantation house, and nobody knew about her but me. Nobody in the nosy little town in south Georgia where I lived knew that if you walked down dusty Main Street to where the post office is, and then turned left and followed that road a piece until you got to the rusty iron gates of the drive to the plantation house, you could find the goings-on would make your eyes pop out. It was just luck that I found out. Or maybe it wasn’t luck at all. Maybe the witch woman wanted me to find out because of Alexandra. But now I wish I hadn’t because the witch woman and Alexandra are gone forever and it’s much worse than if I’d never known them.
Nobody’d lived in the plantation house since the Civil War, when Colonel Londermaine was killed and Alexandra Londermaine, his beautiful young wife, hung herself on the chandelier in the ballroom. A while before I was born, some northerners bought it, then after a few years they stopped coming and people said it was because the house was haunted. Every few years a gang of boys or men would set out to explore the house but nobody ever found anything. And it was so well boarded up it was hard to force an entrance. So by and by the town lost interest in it. No one climbed the wall and wandered around the grounds except me.
The Moment of Tenderness Page 19