by Anya Seton
'One of the servants may sit with Katrine,' said Nicholas. 'Of course Miranda must be at the ball. She'll soon manage the steps.'
'Oh, well, it makes no difference,' answered Johanna, burying a spoon in her vanilla ice.
Aha! thought the Count. The fat one is not so stupid after all. She tries to suppress the little one, to keep her in her place. Cousin Nicholas then comes to the rescue and Mademoiselle's superb eyes caress him gratefully. All this, so far, is instinct. Madame is perhaps too lazy and too smug to realize what is happening. Monsieur is too much bound by the consciousness of his position to permit himself to realize it. As for the little one, she is not awake. Simply, as yet, a pretty little animal.
They all rose and the Count examined Miranda with a connoisseur's eye, admiring the long slender limbs, die high breasts outlined by her tight basque, the fairness of her skin. He liked that blond-cendré type; he particularly liked the tiny black mole which emphasized the right corner of her mouth, and the slightly retrousse nose. This type was often capable of great passion. He sighed, wishing momentarily that he might be the means of awakening her.
He watched her graceful body as she followed the other two ladies out of the dining-room, and its innocent carriage and youth-fulness touched him. Pauvre petite! He could teach her the arts of love with a tenderness that she would never get from this Nicholas for all his handsome face and exquisite manners. Then the Count's sense of humor returned. Eh bien, c'est la vie! The emotional complications of this household were none of his business.
He settled down to superlative port and conversation with his host, whom he found to have broad knowledge and well-expressed opinions on any subject. They touched on foreign affairs, France's Moroccan war, England's recent peace with China, the Foundation of the German Catholic Church. They passed quickly over the proposed annexation of Texas and the possibilities of James K. Polk's winning the Presidential election. Here the Count found himself out of his depth, so that Nicholas tactfully introduced the topic of science, in which the Frenchman was an amateur dabbler.
'What wonders we have seen in the last few years!' said Nicholas. 'The steam engine, the electric telegraph, the daguerreotype, this new illuminating gas, which I find harsh and hideous.'
'True,' said the Count, looking around the great dim room with its soft yellow points of candlelight. 'You have none here, and yet I should have thought that in a palace like this you would want all modern improvements.'
Nicholas shook his head. 'To me there is no beauty without mystery and shadow. There's a young American author, Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings express my feelings perfectly; do you know his work?'
The Count said no, and Nicholas continued, "I think you will some day. I believe he's a genius. Sometime I shall go to him and tell him so. Listen—' And Nicholas began to recite.
By a route obscure and lonely
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon named Night
On a black throne reigns upright
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime
Out of Space—out of Time.
Toward the end of the poem his voice took on a deeper vibration and he lingered over each musical word so that the Count, who detested sitting still and listening, was impressed in spite of himself. Who would have suspected here so much latent dramatic power, or for that matter so much appreciation of die mystically macabre?
'Tiens,' he said, 'it creates an atmosphere certainly. Not too gay, but exquisite, mon ami, quite exquisite. What is it all about—these sad dead waters, melancholy nooks, and shrouded forms?'
Nicholas leaned back, crossed his legs, and offered his guest a cigar.
'Ne me demandez pas des énigmes,' he quoted lightly. He regretted having exposed even a small portion of his inner emotions. He had been seduced into it because he seldom found an intellectual equal and had foolishly expected instinctive understanding from the Count.
'What do they think in France of these new experiments with ether?' he asked, changing the subject.
'Ah, that is a miracle indeed! If it works it will stop so much pain.'
'And it will provide a most easy death for those who deserve it.'
The Count looked startled. 'What the devil do you mean by that, "those who deserve it"?'
At that moment Tompkins came into the room, stepped softly around the table pouring more port. Nicholas waited until the butler had gone, then answered: 'I believe that death is inherent in our lives, that we get the kind of death which our natures attract. The mediocre die in bed where they began; the brave die advenrurously.'
'And those who are murdered deserve to be murdered?' asked the Count, amused.
Nicholas' eyes lingered a second on the other's face. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'There's a vast amount of twaddle and sentimentality in the commonplace mind about death. It would be far better for the race if the ugly and useless ones were eliminated.'
'But monsieur!' expostulated the Count, laughing. 'This is barbaric. Who is to decide which one is ugly or useless enough for death? Who would dare?'
Nicholas lifted his glass and took a delicate sip. 'I would dare—if die occasion arose.'
The Count swallowed. The candles had burned down and some of them were guttering. The corners of the room flickered in shadow, but such light as there was illumined his host's impassive face.
The Count made a secret sign of the cross and was immediately ashamed of himself. This was no more than the jejune atheistic talk one heard from many a young sophisticate in Paris salons. All the same he was uncomfortable.
There was a small silence. Through the shut door there came the distant tinkle of a gavotte from the music room. He recognized it. His wife must be playing the piano for those other two strangely assorted women. Poor Marie Louise, he thought, it must be very dull for her, imprisoned with people whose language she did not speak. He longed to go and join them. But Nicholas, for once negligent of a guest's wishes, showed no sign of moving. He sat quiet, abstractedly fingering one of the Madame Desprez roses which had fallen from the centerpiece.
The Count cleared his throat and brought out a topic which he thought would be pleasant. 'You have a magnificent estate to leave to your sons, monsieur.'
Nicholas put the rose down. 'I have no sons.'
'Eh bien, they will come. There is much time yet,' said the Count hastily.
Nicholas slowly turned his head. You have seen my wife. Do you think she will bear me sons?'
Quelle question extraordinaire! thought the unhappy Count. But apparently one must answer something.
'Madame Van Ryn has quite a bit of embonpoint, certainly, but that is nothing. Why, the Marquise de Laon weighs ninety kilos and she has had eight—all boys. One must not be discouraged, and if there is something a little wrong, some petite maladie, why, that is easily fixed; you have good doctors here, I think— 'He broke off, astounded at the expression that came and went so quickly on the other's face that almost he doubted that it was not a trick of the candlelight.
'Johanna will bear no more children,' said Nicholas, and rose at the same time, adding casually, 'You seemed interested in my Persian oleanders. I have a fine crimson specimen in the conservatory. Would you like to look at it on our way to join the ladies?'
While he dutifully admired the oleander, the Count was engaged in renewed conjecture, piecing together this last peculiar conversation. Did the man then find his wife so repugnant that he did not sleep with her? Was this his meaning? The fat one was unappetizing certainly, but when one wanted legitimate sons one must overlook such matters and do one's best. One can always find an outlet for romance elsewhere, after one has done one's duty. Perhaps as an older and more experienced man he would find an opportunity to point out this view to Monsieur Van Ryn. He would seize a chance tomorrow.
But the chance never came. Nicholas had allowed himself to be more personal with the Count than he had with
anyone in years, and he was now annoyed at this momentary weakness.
The Countess having exhausted her repertoire, the ladies had retired to the Green Drawing-Room, where the men joined them, and after sitting down beside the Countess and while chatting with her in French, Nicholas did what he always avoided. He turned his eyes on his wife and deliberately looked at her.
He watched her attempt to respond to the little Frenchman's persiflage while she stifled the yawns which always assailed her after the evening meal. He noted how her scanty hair lay lank despite Magda's efforts with the curling iron, and how the pink scalp showed beneath die strands. He noted, too, the clumsy coquetry of her glaring rouge and that she had tried to darken her eyebrows with an unskillfully applied pencil.
His eyes descended to the pendulous bosom stuffed into the straining blue satin. It supported tonight the Van Ryn diamonds, a delicate necklace of the rose-cut gems which had been bought for Azilde by Pieter Van Ryn. They were fine stones, but they seemed lusterless, as everything, thought Nicholas, which touched Johanna, became by some malevolent alchemy tarnished and unkempt.
He no longer remembered or wished to remember that he had not always viewed her with this pitiless disgust.
She had been plump seven years ago at the time of their marriage, but passably pretty. Though she was two years older than he and of a stolid temperament, she had not been unattractive. She was placid and well bred, from Dutch stock as proud and long established as his own.
Upon his return from the Grand Tour to find himself an orphan, for his mother had died when he was twelve, Nicholas had discovered amongst his father's papers a letter designating Johanna Van Tappen as a suitable choice for Lady of the Manor. He had accordingly wooed her, without passion but without reluctance either. The change had come after the birth of Katrine. The child's sex had been a bitter blow then, but with the eventual certainty that Johanna was henceforth barren he had withdrawn into a cold and remote endurance which gradually crystallized into physical repulsion. For three years he had not shared her bed, and during those years she had become as she was now.
But she was his wife and the Mistress of Dragonwyck; to that position he had always given and would continue to give outward respect and punctilious courtesy.
He replied to the Countess, who had happily embarked on a long account of her children's beauty and sagesse, and seeing that for this fascinating topic she wanted only a listener, Nicholas turned his head a fraction of an inch. His eyelids drooped and his veiled gaze rested upon Miranda.
She sat across the room, her head bent over the embroidery hoops and the same lawn handkerchief on which Johanna had been working Nicholas' monogram. This transfer was at his suggestion, for upon seeing that Miranda was as skilled with the needle as Johanna was clumsy, he had remarked that he thought it foolish for his wife to waste her time, 'If Miranda will be kind enough to do them.' She had, of course, been delighted, and she took great pride in her exquisite stitches and the neatness of the letters which Johanna had bungled.
From the silver sconce on the wall above Miranda's head candlelight fell directly on her hair and burnished it to gold fire. The color and texture of this hair gave Nicholas yet again a sensation of pleasure which was deeper than admiration, a curious pleasure which had in it both voluptuousness and solace. But for the origin of this sensation he had never troubled to search. Introspection was alien to his nature.
He continued to watch the pure oval of the girl's averted cheek, the long white throat and the youthful shadows at her collarbones, while her nimble fingers continued to manipulate the embroidery silk, which had much the same sheen and whiteness as her skin. She had scarcely attended to the conversation, in which as befitted her youth and anomalous position in the household she had taken no part. Her thoughts ran on the anticipated excitements of the ball.
Suddenly, in unconscious response to the steadiness of Nicholas' gaze, she raised her eyelids and looked full at him. A shock ran through her. Her heart beat in slow thick strokes. They looked across the room into each other's eyes for a half a second only, then Nicholas turning to the Countess said smoothly: 'Ah, that is most interesting, madame. Tell me more about your little Blaise.'
But Miranda knew that for all the triviality of the incident something cataclysmic had occurred. Their relationship had changed and from this point there could be no going back.
That night she had a dream in which her father came to her at Dragonwyck, and she ran to him with a joyous affection that she had never felt in reality.
'I've come to take you home, my girl,' he said, caressing her. And she clung to him crying for happiness, and yet she could not go. For a while she struggled frantically while her father receded and beckoned to her from across a shadowy gulf. Then she looked down at her body and saw that it was bound around with many colored flashing chains like jewels. 'You see I can't get free!' she cried. 'The chains are holding me.' Her father's face grew angry. You can free yourself if ye'll but try!' he shouted. She shook her head and he vanished. At once the chains grew light as clouds. She gathered them up in her hands and fell to kissing the jeweled links. And as she kissed them fear came to her, a fear so sharp that she awakened.
For a while she lay shivering in bed, but soon in the growing light she felt the security of her familiar room. She watched the bureau and the great Kas dwindle from dim monsters to useful pieces of furniture. The first rays of the summer sun slanted across the distant Taghkanic Mountains into her windows. She got up and looked out. The Catskills seemed near and distinct. She could make out scattered rooftops down the river at Coxsackie. The Hudson's waters were brightly blue and ruffled by nothing except the wake of a great schooner bound for Albany.
Below the houses on the vast lawns, booths covered with red, white, and blue bunting, picnic tables, and a carrousel had been set up during the night. From a distant grove of hemlocks came the squeak of a fiddle and the wheeze of a hand organ where the rustic musicians were practicing.
It would be a fine day for the festivities.
5
BREAKFAST THAT MORNING WAS HURRIED AND eaten to the accompaniment of confusion from outside. Nicholas' tenants were beginning to arrive in their rattling farm wagons and there was a constant stamping and whinnying of heavy draft horses, shouts from the men, excited squeals from the children as they spied the carrousel and the picnic booths, a quacking and cackling of poultry, and the bleating of lambs which had been brought as tribute to the patroon.
This was one of the semiannual rent-days, and before Nicholas' speech and the merrymaking which would follow it must come business. A platform had been set up under a large tulip tree and upon it were an armchair, a table, and several smaller chairs.
At ten o'clock Nicholas mounted this platform accompanied by Dirck Duyckman, his bailiff, the Count, and Miranda. Johanna had not attended this recurring ceremony for several years. It bored her, and she disliked being gawked at by the yokels, one of whom had once made loud and uncomplimentary remarks on her figure. The man had been punished, not as Nicholas' grandfather would have punished him, by a day in the stocks, but in a more modern way—by confiscating a portion of his farm on which he had been laggard in paying rent. But after this Johanna appeared no more on rent-day' until the tenants had gone home.
The Countess also preferred to remain in her room and rest, but the Count was interested in this feudal custom, and as for Miranda she was always glad to be near Nicholas and take part in the life of Dragonwyck whenever she was invited to do so.
Nicholas seated himself in the traditional 'rent-chair' of carved oak black with age, for it had come from Holland with the first patroon and been used for this purpose ever since. The bailiff stood beside him holding a great gold-stamped ledger. He cleared his throat and called importantly, 'Let the tenants come forward, single file, with their payments. The patroon is ready!'
The crowd of farmers who had been kept on the back lawn by a rope shuffled, and sheepishly removing their hats arranged the
mselves in order. Two of the Van Ryn footmen lowered the rope.
A wizened little man in brown homespun stepped up to the platform clutching two gray geese and a bumpy sack of potatoes.
'Tom Wilson,' said the bailiff, thumbing through his ledger. 'Hollow Farm on the north road. Poultry and potatoes. Co—rect.' He eyed the geese narrowly. "Them birds is a mite skinny, Tom. Couldn't you bring no better than that?'
The wizened little man shook his head, casting an anxious glance at Nicholas, who sat silently attentive. 'I couldn't do no better, sir. My corn give out and the crops is bad so far. We ain't getting enough rain. 'Sides, my old woman she's powerful sick; she can't feed the poultry like she used to.'
Nicholas leaned forward. 'I'm sorry to hear that, Tom. Has she had the doctor?'
'No, she ain't. She don't hold with no doctors, they won't do her no good. She thinks there's someone witching her, maybe old Molly Clabber lives down the road.'
'Nonsense,' said Nicholas. 'If she's sick she needs a doctor. Duyckman, look into this later and report to me.'
The bailiff nodded. Tom Wilson said, 'Thanky, sir,' dubiously, and touched his forehead. He deposited the geese and potatoes in a large pen to the right of the platform and walked over to a keg of beer which had been provided for the tenants.
The bailiff signaled and another farmer came up. The procedure was repeated. Jed Ribling had brought a spring lamb, a side of bacon, and a sack of flour ground at the village mill. He too was entered in the ledger, placed his stuff in the pen, and joined Tom Wilson at the beer keg.
They filed slowly by, the Dutch names, the English names, a scattering of German ones. Nicholas spoke to each one asking after the health of some member of the family, or inquiring into the condition of the crops.
Miranda from her corner of the platform watched him breathlessly, admiring his infallible memory for names, his detailed knowledge of his tenants' lives, the graciousness with which he said just the right word to everybody.