The Beast at the Door

by Althea Blue

  She wished to stay there for a hundred years and spend the rest of her life in the kiss. It would be a wonderful life.

  Slowly, she felt Ada start to step back. She held on more tightly for a moment but then let go. Was she going to get hit now? She opened her eyes to see Ada looking at her. Surprise warred with gentleness on the beautiful face and Patience waited, more terrified now than she had been of the men.

  Ada didn’t put her out of her misery quickly. She was silent for what felt like an hour, but she didn’t step any further from Patience, nor did her face display unhappiness. Patience’s heart felt like it might burst from the waiting.

  “We should turn off the machines.” Ada suggested softly, her eyes never leaving Patience’s. The lion’s roar punctuated her statement.

  Patience nodded.

  Ada turned from Patience and went to the door. “Keep out of the mist,” she reminded Patience, as she slipped through.

  Patience’s eyes followed her. Her fingers rose to touch her bottom lip, which felt warm and tingly. The rest of her felt cold though, without Ada there to keep her warm. She didn’t know what Ada meant to do now. Maybe she was just putting off the inevitable.

  Patience’s steps were leaden as she went into the corridor. Ada was already downstairs, so she went to the lion’s room and unlocked it, turning off the noise box and carrying it carefully back to the workshop. She was procrastinating going downstairs but she had a job to do so she steeled her shoulders and descended.

  The other boxes were quickly gathered, and Patience had all of them stacked up when Ada emerged from the room at the end of the hall, carrying the ghost machine. Their eyes met and Ada smiled softly. Patience felt like she could breathe again, a weight removed from her chest. She almost ran back up the stairs with the boxes, as Ada followed her more slowly, carrying the ghost cylinder and the birdcage, which mercifully, she’d shut off first.

  “We need to let the steam run out and dissipate some before I can bring the fog machine back.” Ada spoke, as she placed the birdcage back in its spot on the counter.

  Patience nodded.

  “It will take a while, maybe an hour. Until then we should try not to go near the room. Maybe we could go down to the kitchen and make something to eat?” she suggested.

  Patience nodded again, still waiting for Ada to say something about the kiss. Her heart still thudded and she wanted to touch the girl again. She didn’t trust herself to speak until she knew it would be okay. Her eyes avoided Ada’s, as she carefully stacked the noise boxes, lining them up perfectly and then looking around for anything else that would keep her busy.

  Ada walked over and stood beside her for a moment, then took Patience’s hand. “Come on,” she tugged the blonde behind her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ada held her hand all the way down to the kitchen and only let go when she had to light the stove. Patience dropped her hand to her side, feeling very unsettled and anxious. She looked around for something to do and noticed how messy the kitchen was. If there had been bread in the breadbox, it was gone, only minuscule crumbs remained. The empty rind on the counter suggested the cheese had met a similar fate. The men had clearly eaten everything they could find and had made a terrible mess besides. She picked up a cloth and swept the crumbs from the table into her hand, then looked around, unsure of where to deposit them.

  Ada saw her looking and gestured to the door, “Just toss them outside. The birds will enjoy them,” she said, sounding quite pleased. Patience did as she was told and then found a broom in a tiny cupboard and swept the floor, sweeping those crumbs out the door as well.

  Ada had unlocked the pantry and giggled. “What did you do?” she asked.

  Patience remembered that she had moved the shelf to block the door after Ada went up in the dumbwaiter, but was a little surprised that she hadn’t noticed when she returned to the pantry. Then she realized Ada hadn’t had a candle and had probably never gotten out of the dumbwaiter. “I thought they might come and check on us so I tried to make it harder for them,” she admitted.

  Ada tried pushing the shelf back to where it belonged but couldn’t get a purchase on it. “You did. But now you’ll have to come help me put it back or we won’t have any dinner.”

  Patience stood beside her, carefully keeping her elbows in so she didn’t touch Ada by accident. Ada showed no such compunction and together they managed to slide the shelf back to the wall where the dumbwaiter hid, and replaced the sacks on the shelves. Ada filled a small basket with fruit and vegetables, another bread loaf and a cheese, carrying it into the kitchen, Patience following behind.

  “It’s really too late to start a big meal, don’t you think? Will this be enough for you?” Ada asked, retrieving a knife from the knife block and laying out the vegetables onto the table to chop.

  Patience’s stomach was still feeling butterflies and she wasn’t sure she could eat anything until Ada said something about the kiss, but she nodded, and set herself to cutting up chunks of apple and pear while Ada focused on the vegetables. They took two plates from a sideboard and helped themselves to some food.

  Patience decided she needed to think of something else and she realized she knew almost nothing about Ada, except that her father was an inventor who was missing, and that she was good at chemistry. All the times they’d talked before, Ada had been more than happy to discuss books and flowers and everything else, but had really said very little about herself.

  “Can you tell me why you made the beast-creature?” Patience asked, toying with a slice of apple.

  Ada seemed uncomfortable, and Patience wished she hadn’t said anything.

  “It was so I could stay here.” Ada said, not looking at Patience.

  She seemed to be waiting, and Patience asked, “What do you mean?”

  Ada took a deep breath and started her story. “I was born in this house. My father is an inventor, which you know. And my mother came from a wealthy family in London. I don’t even know how they met. It must have been in London, there was no reason for her to be here. No one really comes to the village. Anyway, they fell in love and she came to live in the house when they were married. The house belonged to my father’s parents, so I guess they had some money too, but I don’t know where from. They died long before I was born. My mother’s mother died when I was a baby, and I think her father shortly after. I can’t remember them at all, though my father says I met them.

  My mother died when I was just a girl, I think I told you that once,” she looked up at Patience, the faintest glimmer of tears in her eyes. “I know I loved my mother, she was so beautiful, but I worshiped my father. I wanted to be just like him, and I think I took after him too. I learned to read very young and he was forever bringing books home for me and for himself. Well, you’ve seen his library.

  My mother made sure I didn’t neglect myself, I think because she couldn’t really do anything about him. He forgets to eat unless someone puts food right in front of him, and sometimes even then. Our cook was very good, but sometimes he was thinking so hard about a problem he would hold a forkful of food in front of his mouth for minutes at a time but he’d forget to open his mouth and put in. It was quite funny,” she giggled a little.

  “Anyway, my mother ensured I was dressed properly and made sure I ate regularly and it all went quite well, even if I did take after my father. Twice a year we took a trip into London to stay with her older sister, who never married. She lived in the house that had been their parents’, and was very proper and ladylike. My mother was too, of course, but not as cross about it. My aunt Euphania, she didn’t care for me at all. My father encouraged me to talk, you see. And I had opinions about everything, which he thought was grand. My aunt did not. She thought little girls should be seen and not heard, which was how she’d been brought up. My father and she fought horribly, until he refused to go to London at all with Mother and me. And my mother was caught in the middle. She was a little frightened, I think, of Euphania and would alway
s promise to take me to nice places if I did what I was expected to do.”

  Patience understood exactly what Ada meant about family expecting her to be the sort of girl she wasn’t naturally inclined to be. She nodded and Ada nodded back, commiserating with Patience’s own childhood.

  “Anyway, my mother died, as I said, and although I was very sad, I managed to get through it. Aunt Euphania wanted me to come live with her, she didn’t think my father would bring me up as befitted my station, but he put his foot down and refused to speak about it. After the funeral, I only saw my Aunt once a year, when he sent me to London to stay with her. The last time I saw her was just after I refused to go back again, she arrived here expecting to take me away permanently.

  "They argued loudly enough for the whole village to hear and he sent her away, saying that I could choose when I was older if I wanted to live with her. Of course I didn’t, and I refused to go see her again. I was afraid that she’d keep me in London and I’d never get to come home again. And I hated the way I had to be there. Wearing proper clothes and sitting quietly and the other girls she’d invite over for visiting and tea were so prissy and stuck up and didn’t think of anything at all. They only cared about having their hair done just right and a new wardrobe made up each season. I never had a single thing to say to any of them.”

  Ada might as well be speaking about Patience’s life. She understood exactly how the girl had felt. Except she hadn’t had a loving parent and a safe home to go back to. She hadn’t had any choice. “Did you want to go to school?” she asked.

  “I expected to. Father arranged tutors for me. Not governesses, but real tutors like your brother had. And we studied all the things I would need to go to a university. Maybe Oxford, I thought. I didn’t want to go to London because then I’d have to live with my Aunt.”

  Ada smiled, remembering. “I thought I was so clever, I’d play tricks on the tutors or hide in a tree if I didn’t feel like studying what they wanted me to. But I usually worked hard to make my father proud of me. And in exchange he let me act however I wanted. Not to be rude or disobedient, but I didn’t have to dress like a lady. I sometimes wore boys' clothes when I was younger, but I thought it’d be better if I started dressing like a girl when I was twelve or thirteen. That way no one in the village said anything nasty to me. They used to, sometimes, when I was a child. But mostly I didn’t care.” She clenched her teeth and Patience thought that she must have cared some, or she wouldn’t have mentioned it.

  “Anyway. I didn’t have a lot of friends in the village. The girls were boring and the boys wouldn’t let me play with them, so usually I stayed home and talked to my father and my tutors.

  My father has this friend, Mr. Welsh. He’s the village blacksmith, but really he’s a clock maker. He went to the University of London and had a shop in London for a few years, but came back here when his father died, so he could take over the workshop and care for his mother. Mr. Welsh usually visits Father a few evenings a week and they have debates about everything. What they read in the paper or astronomy or politics or even suffragettes. My father calls me his little suffragette, sometimes,” she smiled wistfully.

  “They let you listen while they talked?” Patience inquired. It sounded so, since Ada knew what they talked about.

  The girl grinned. “Let me listen? They encourage me to debate along with them. My father made sure I read the paper every week since I was six years old and quizzes me about the contents. He thinks girls should know as much as boys, which is more than most. He taught me to look at an issue from all sides and assigns me a debating side, even sometimes one that I don't believe in. My tutors also thought girls should be well-informed. I guess Father wouldn’t have hired them otherwise.

  "So I debate Father and Mr. Welsh, and sometimes make them see my viewpoint on issues. It was so different from how my mother was raised, she said. But she let my father teach me, even though sometimes she didn’t understand what I was talking about. She did read, but mostly histories and nothing about technology or science. She said those things didn’t interest her, but that it was okay if they interested me. Only she made me promise not to say anything to my Aunt about votes for women or going to university. She didn’t want the fight.”

  Patience was envious. “I wish my father talked to me. I mostly only remember him chastising me for not sitting still enough in church or getting my dress dirty, when he noticed. Mostly he just patted me on the head and sent me away when I would ask him anything. And I was not supposed to read the paper, though sometimes Mason brought it to me. My father and your aunt probably would get along beautifully.”

  “I suppose they would, though she’d not speak to him much. She doesn’t feel it’s proper for an unmarried woman to speak to a man, except in passing. And only if they were properly introduced. She’d probably like your mother though, if she is as interested in dresses and marriages as you said.”

  “But she’s left you alone since that last visit. Hasn’t she?” Patience asked.

  Ada nodded. “Because of my father. But if she knew my father… wasn’t here right now, she’d insist on my coming to live with her. And I just couldn’t. That’s why.”

  Patience had gotten a little bit lost. “That’s why what?” she asked.

  “That’s why I made the beast,” Ada replied, quietly. “So I didn’t have to go away.” She wiped a tear from her eye, and Patience wanted to comfort her, but she needed to hear the rest of the story and maybe Ada needed to tell it.

  “Father goes away quite regularly. Usually only for a few days, but it isn't terribly uncommon for him to be gone two weeks or a month. When my mother was alive she would look after me, and after she died, there were always servants who lived in the house and kept me safe. I was lonely while he was away but he’d always bring me something when he returned. A clockwork toy or new books, he knows what I like best. And he needs to travel to get supplies for his inventions, or to try and sell them. I know he took out patents on dozens of things and some of them have been manufactured. He’s very smart.”

  “Of course he is,” Patience assured her. “I’ve seen some of this things.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right,” Ada smiled. “They came in handy. Anyway, he shows me how he makes them, and I help him, especially with little tiny gears and cogs and things. My hands are quite steady.” She held them up to show Patience, though they were shaking a little now. “He was here for my nineteenth birthday, he bought me a whole new set of clock tools, but when he left the last time, he said he’d be gone about a month. Maybe as much as two. I know he was going to the continent, Germany and a few other places. And I waited for him to come back, but he was gone so long that the servants started to talk. They said he probably wasn’t going to come back. The nicer ones whispered that he must have been waylaid and murdered. Some of the others said he’d just run off. Of course, none of them said anything to me, but I could hear them whispering. And they’d always stop talking when I entered a room. None of them had been here that long, the cook we had since I was a child had retired to the country just before he left, and the others were always coming in and out. But when he'd been gone four or five months they started drifting away and I got worried. What would I do if they all left? I had some money, so I kept paying their wages, but no one wanted to work for a girl with no parents here to oversee the household. And when there were only a few left, and I knew they’d soon go, I had to think of something to keep my aunt from hearing anything and coming for me.

  "The village has an old wives tale about a beast that lives in the woods.” She waved towards the back door. “A horrible beast who eats anyone that crossed its path. They say he used to come to the village and steal goats or a calf, even a child or two. I don’t know when the story started, long before I was born. Most people don’t go too far into the woods. If they go in at all its just to cut a tree or two, and never alone.”

  “That’s why I never saw anyone,” Patience mused.

  “Righ
t, even now people are silly enough to believe things like that, when if they read a book once in a while they’d know that all the creatures in England have been identified and there are no such things as beasts in the woods. Wolves, sure, or other animals, but not any kind of supernatural thing.” Ada frowned dismissively. “So you and I know there are no beasts, but no one else seemed to, so I decided that if they thought the beast had come here and eaten me, then they’d stay away.”

  Patience forbore to mention that she had believed in the beast too, when she’d heard the roaring and seen the creature Ada had made. She didn’t want the girl to think less of her. And if Ada was willing to forget that she’d been as gullible as the villagers, she didn’t want to remind her.

  “I watched my father make the toy cat, you were right when you said it was just the same.” Ada smiled a bit. “It was just much, much bigger. We had all the pieces around. Even the fur, though I only had just enough of that and had to glue most of it to the front. If someone saw it well from the back they’d realize it was awfully threadbare. I used a tiger’s roar, but I slowed the mechanism a little to make it deeper and more sonorous. And I disappeared. I stopped going to the village for supplies just a few days before I brought the beast out for the first time. Luckily we have that good garden in the back, so I can get a lot of food from there. And I already knew how to trap animals. My father took me to the woods as a child, I wasn’t scared! And he showed me about snares and knots and how to skin a rabbit. The cook taught me to pluck a chicken. She thought even the mistress of a house should know how to do everything. It’s a very good thing she thought that or I’d have been useless alone.” Ada bit her lip, and looked unhappy.