by Anya Seton
The girl started. 'Why, yes, I suppose so,' she said unenthusiastically. She was no longer curious about Azilde, who seemed to be connected with nothing but superstitious fear and disaster. But the prospect of leaving the warm kitchen and even this tepid companionship for the silence of the great house upstairs was less inviting.
'The patroon don't like that I tell about Azilde,' said Zélie. 'It make him afraid.'
'Oh, how ridiculous!' said Miranda, smiling. 'He's not afraid of anything,'
'Ah—' Zélie sighed with a weary patience. 'How the young are blind! Everyone is afraid of something, p'tite. Yes, I think I tell you the story. Listen well.' She was silent for several minutes and then she began to speak in a flat, chanting voice as though she repeated words learned by heart long ago. 'Marie Azilde de la Courbet was mos' beautiful girl in New Orleans, always she singing and laughing and lighting flames in the heart with her so big so soft black eyes.'
While Zélie talked, Miranda at first listened absently, finding the high inflected speech hard to follow; but gradually as the old voice went on it evoked a hypnotic power. Azilde grew real and Miranda forgot that she was hearing of a girl who lived in an unknown city a hundred years ago, or that Zélie was recounting a tragedy which she knew only at second hand through her mother's stories—the black Titine who had been Azilde's body servant.
The past was vivified by intimate details until it seemed that she stood on the scrubbed kitchen flags beside them—Azilde with her breathless gaiety, and her dark curls powdered white and piled high. In these curls she always wore a golden flower—jasmine or a rose. Her elaborate panniered gowns were usually yellow too, for Azilde bred the color of sunshine and laughter. 'All day long she sing like a mockingbird,' said Zélie. And all night long she dance at the Governor's Palace with fine French gentlemen in white perukes.'
Azilde had loved a handsome Creole youth, aide to the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and there had been many a stolen meeting beside the fountain in the de la Courbets' palm-fringed courtyard behind their house on Royal Street.
Until Pieter Van Ryn came to New Orleans on an October day in 1752. He had come on his own brig to buy a cargo of Louisiana indigo which he could sell at immense profit in New York. Theoretically the French colonials were forbidden to sell produce to any but the mother country; still there were ways of getting around that. Pieter's flat blue eyes, his square stolidity, above all his cold persistency unrelieved by a single smile or conventional compliment, disconcerted the gay colonials. He got his indigo, and he got Azilde too.
'You mean he fell in love with her?' asked Miranda eagerly.
Zélie hunched her shoulders. "There was no love in the patroon. He wanted her. He prove to her parents he was rich man, great lord, he took her with only a tiny dot. They think they make fine bargain.'
Even Titine had never known what actually happened on the long, stormy voyage to the North. But she had seen her mistress transformed overnight into a faded little wraith whose dark eyes now held but two expressions: a glassy blankness which changed when her husband was near to bewildered terror. There were no more songs or laughter. Day after day through the harsh snowbound winter Azilde crouched beside a tiny fireplace, her hair no longer powdered, its curls strained back under the Dutch matron's white cap, her delicate body shivering under the shapeless black dress.
The next fall Adriaen was born. The patroon had been momentarily pleased with his wife for having produced the requisite heir. In all other matters she had sorely disappointed him. The beauty and gaiety which had first attracted him had not survived her outward metamorphosis into Lady of the Manor and Dutch housewife. But he overlooked her shortcomings upon the birth of Adriaen, presented her with a diamond necklace and the little harpsichord which stood in the Red Parlor. Azilde never wore the necklace. After the baby's birth even the patroon could not fail to see that it was not Azilde's body alone that shrank from him. Her spirit had retired into a misty far-off land from which she never tried to return.
'All day she sit and stare out the window,' said Zeiie. 'She no answer when people speak. Only sometimes she go down to Red Room and play on the harpsichord when the patroon is out. Always she pky a little Creole song she learn as a child. The patroon hate that, it make him savage. Then one day—'
Zélie paused. She glanced down at the child by her knee, but Katrine had lost interest. She was bent over her china doll, frowning a little with concentration as her pudgy fingers unbuttoned one of Cristabel's starched petticoats.
Miranda leaned forward. 'Do go on, Zélie—' she urged.
The old woman nodded slowly. 'One day a disaster happen. The patroon's ship went on the reefs. All the hands were lost and all the cargo. Titine was sitting with Azilde trying to make her look at her baby, when the patroon came roaring in like a bull. He grab Azilde by the shoulders and shake her. "You won't understand—you witless thing—" he shout at her. "But I am ruined."
'At first Azilde just stare at him, and then very softly she start to laugh. Titine say the sound make her hair creep. The patroon's hands drop. He back away. "Why are you laughing?" he whisper.
And she answer him for the first time in months. "Because—" she say still laughing, "misfortune has come to this house of hatred. Always I will laugh at that."'
Zélie's chanting voice stopped abruptly. In the fireplace one of the hickory logs fell apart and a shower of sparks flew into the kitchen. Miranda drew a deep breath. 'What a horrible thing for her to say—she was crazy then, poor thing?'
'Crazy with fear and misery, p'tite. A tropic flower cannot live without sun. A soul cannot live without love.'
'But she had her baby,' protested Miranda.
Yes, but it was too late. The madness had come. One week after the patroon tell her about the ship, she creep downstairs in the night. She play her little Creole tune and she laugh to herself. Titine heard. She come running to Red Room, but not in time. Azilde had taken knife from dining-room drawer.' Zélie raised her hand and made an eloquent gesture toward her throat.
Miranda swallowed, staring at the grim old face.
'And still she laugh—' said Zélie calmly in her ordinary voice, 'when badness come to Dragonwyck. Only those of her blood can hear, but sometimes others feel warning though they cannot hear her. I have felt—and you too, I think.'
The girl was silent. For a moment she almost believed, as she thought of the two occasions on which she had battled the nameless mounting fear, but since then she had sat a score of times in the Red Room with no eerie sensations at all; and both her common sense and her reverence for Nicholas, who had expressed the greatest scorn for Zeiie's superstition, decided her.
'That's a shocking story,' she said, feeling reasonable and mature. 'But it all happened a long time ago. One should forget old tragedies. I quite agree with Mr. Van Ryn that the story shouldn't be repeated.'
Zélie, apparently not listening, pulled a clay pipe and a nubbin of tobacco from her pocket. She thrust a broom straw into the fire and, lighting the pipe, shut her wrinkled eyelids while she inhaled a mouthful of smoke.
'You know there couldn't really be "badness" at Dragonwyck,' went on Miranda, a trifle disconcerted. 'It's a beautiful place and I love it—why I only wish—' She stopped.
Zélie opened her eyes, the shiny black pupils fixed themselves on the girl. 'Aha!' she said with malice. You only wish—' She crossed her skinny shanks and inhaled again. 'Go back upstairs. I'm tired, I want to rest.' She turned her face away.
Discomforted and annoyed, Miranda got up. She should never have encouraged the daft old thing in the first place. She walked over to Katrine, who was now playing with a litter of kittens in the corner behind the spinning wheel. 'Let's go upstairs, dear,' she said, 'and I'll read to you.'
The child shook her head mutinously. 'I want to stay here. Annetje's making me a gingerbread man.'
There was nothing for Miranda to do but retrace her way through the kitchens and the hall full of servants, alone.
In
her absence all the tapers had been lighted. The house was no longer dark and threatening. It was filled with the scent of flowers mingled with the aromatic smoke of the cedar-wood fires. She walked through the downstairs rooms, her head high in a mood of defiance.
It seemed to her that they all welcomed her, the gilded and carved furnishings, the moss-thick carpets, the marble statues, the porcelains from China and Dresden, the tapestries and brocade draperies. All the intoxicating perfume of luxury.
I do belong here, she thought angrily. I'm Nicholas' cousin. How dare that old hag try to frighten me away!
She came last to the Red Room. It was as quiet and fragrant as the others, except that as usual its smallness and the warm crimson of its curtains made it cosier. She walked to the harpsichord and threw back its cover. She hesitated, then quickly touched one of the yellowed keys. A thin tinkling note responded. Her heart beat faster and she waited. Nothing happened. No queer sensations, no warning chill. Nothing. And I never had any either, she thought. So much for Zélie.
She pulled out the stool and seating herself played 'I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.' She played it faster than usual, and the old instrument so long untouched gave forth sounds that were reedy and jangling, but the effect was gay.
She played it through twice before she lowered the cover, pushed the stool back, and went up to her room. She took off her dress and slipping into the frilled India muslin négligée, curled up in the armchair before the fire. On the inlaid walnut table beside her were several books, and the Bible her father had given her lay squat and heavy in the middle of them. She looked at it with a stirring of conscience. How long had it been since she had read the required daily stint? There were no religious observances at Dragonwyck except that on some Sundays, when it was convenient, the family attended the village church where they sat on one side near the pulpit under a carved-oak canopy and listened to very dull sermons from Dominie Huysmann.
It was weeks, thought Miranda guiltily, since she had even remembered God or salvation. She pulled the Bible onto her lap and riffled the pages. On impulse she shut her eyes and put her finger at random on a verse. It fell in the twentieth chapter of Job.
'He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.'
Miranda made a disgusted face. How coarse and uninspiring! The Bible no longer opened windows into an enchanted world. It had become tiresome. She let the cover fall to with a plop. She put the Bible back on the table and took up her 'Twice-Told Tales.' On the fly leaf she had pasted Nicholas' note, which she now re-read for the hundredth time. She had read all the stories too, but they brought her closer to Nicholas because he had read them and once remarked that the author had talent and might some day be famous.
She began again on 'The Minister's Black Veil.'
7
THE RIVER FROZE EARLY THAT YEAR AND WITH the cessation of the regular boats, guests too ceased coming to Dragonwyck. That Nicholas had used the distraction of entertaining this continual horde of guests for a purpose of his own, Miranda had no idea, but now in November with no one but the Van Ryns and herself in residence she was suddenly much happier.
Nicholas was aware of her again. It was as though he had held her in abeyance during those summer weeks, but he had not apparently abandoned all interest in her as she had sometimes feared. Though no overt word was spoken, she felt that their relationship again approached that of the night of the Fourth-of-July Ball.
On a Tuesday morning in the middle of November, Magda rapped on Miranda's door. 'Mevrouw wishes to see you in her room,' snapped the maid. At once,' she added harshly, as the girl started for the bureau to smooth her hair and shake out the immaculate ruffles at the wrists of her blue morning gown.
Somewhat troubled, Miranda followed the maid down the hall. She had never before been summoned to Johanna's bedroom.
The Lady of the Manor lay in the ancestral Van Ryn bed. Like the Rent-Chair it had come from Holland with the first patroon, and on its headboard were carved the three leopards amidst an elaborate design of bosses and leaves. Anyone else would have been dwarfed by the four colossal oaken posts and the scarlet-and-gold tester which they supported, but Johanna's unrestrained flesh overflowed most of the mattress.
This room was gracefully proportioned and very large, but it gave no impression of space, for it was cluttered with a heterogeneous collection of shabby furniture brought by Johanna from Albany. And despite the maids' constant efforts all the little tables were littered with half-eaten boxes of bon-bons, torn clippings from magazines, and crumbs of colored wax. Johanna had lately taken an indolent interest in making the wax flower pieces which had become so fashionable. Though outside the front windows dazzling sunshine sparkled on the partly frozen river, the brown plush portières were still tight-drawn, and the room had a sour airless smell.
If this were only my room, thought Miranda, who had examined everything in one quick glance, how beautiful I would make it. It could be the loveliest room in the house.
Johanna was finishing her breakfast. She wiped her mouth and pettishly pushed an empty cup toward Magda. Tell Annetje to have more cream whipped into my morning chocolate. This was thin as dish water. Take my tray away.'
The maid silently complied.
Johanna hoisted herself up on the frilled pillows and acknowledged the girl's presence with a discontented sigh. 'Oh, good morning. I wanted to talk to you.'
'Yes, ma'am,' said Miranda anxiously. 'Is anything wrong?'
Johanna's expression of vague peevishness hardened as she surveyed the girl. Against the vivid blue of Miranda's dress the carefully arranged ringlets shone brightly gold. Johanna's resentful gaze lingered on the tiny waist, which Miranda's new stays pinched down to eighteen inches.
'Such tight lacing can't be good for you,' she said sharply. 'It's not suitable to your station. Nor is the way you wear your hair. It should be confined neatly in a net.'
A slow wave of rose washed up to the fluffy curls on Miranda's forehead. 'I'm sorry ma'am,' she said with difficulty. 'Is that—is that what you wanted to speak to me about?'
'No. I'm not satisfied with Katrine's progress. You don't pay enough attention to the child.'
'I try to, ma'am,' returned the girl unhappily.
'Well, I want you to take her into Hudson today. She has a whitlow on her finger. Let Doctor Hamilton on Diamond Street treat it.'
Miranda was bitterly disappointed. She had been looking forward to this day. Two nights ago at dinner, Nicholas had said suddenly, 'Miranda, do you skate?'
'Oh, yes, indeed I love it,' she had answered, thinking of happy winter outings on Dumpling Pond at home.
He had nodded, his brilliant eyes on her eager face. "The creek behind Bronk Island is well frozen. On Tuesday if the weather holds we'll cross the river and skate.'
This was Tuesday, and the weather had held clear and sharp in spite of bright sunshine. There would have been the joy of exercise; her muscles often rebelled against the ladylike inactivity which was now expected of her. And then she would have been alone with Nicholas.
'I don't think it's a whitlow, ma'am,' she protested. 'Trine had a splinter that I took out; you can hardly see the place now.'
Johanna pursed her mouth. 'Magda says it is a whitlow. Besides, the child must go to the cobbler's on Union Street and have her Sunday boots mended, and here's a list of things which you may get for me in the town.' She held out a scrawled piece of paper. 'You will go at once.'
'And where is Miranda to go at once?'
Both women jumped. Nicholas stood in the doorway, on his mouth an inquiring smile. He ignored Miranda, fixing his gaze on his wife.
Johanna's pasty face disintegrated into shapelessness. She moistened her lips.
'You—you startled me, Nicholas. You so seldom come in here—'
He inclined his head, and continued to wait for his answer. Johanna with a nervous motion pulled her bed jacket tight across her great breasts, straigh
tened her crumpled nightcap.
'Miranda must take Katrine to Hudson today. The child needs a doctor,' she said at last.
His eyebrows arched. 'Could a doctor not come here, as usual?'
'It would take too long; besides, there are other commissions in Hudson.' She added on a defiant note: 'I ordered the carriage. It's waiting now.'
Nicholas inclined his head again. 'I see. The trip to Hudson is very important. Miranda and Katrine must certainly go. It changes my plans a trifle, but no matter. I've been meaning to talk with the county sheriff for some time. Your wishes are always paramount with me, my dear, as you know.'
Johanna drew a labored breath. 'What do you mean?'
'Why, that I shall of course accompany them to Hudson,' said Nicholas gently. 'They could hardly get back before nightfall, and with the temper of the farmers what it is, the roads are unsafe. The Livingston coach was waylaid last week.'
Miranda could not suppress a delighted glance at Nicholas. But he still ignored her, his unwinking gaze on Johanna's face, over which now passed an expression of helpless bewilderment, and something else. Can it be that she's frightened? thought Miranda in amazement. Nicholas was always so courteous, just as he had been now. And it was quite true that he usually did exactly as Johanna wished, especially in these last months. What a fool she is! thought the girl impatiently, and forgot Johanna, whose wishes were negligible now that Nicholas had taken hold of the situation.
That November day in Hudson was to be one of those vivid days which come seldom and unannounced, when every slightest incident is gilded with emotion. Of the dark undercurrents beneath that glowing day, she had no conception then, nor for many years.
It was enough that from the moment Nicholas seated himself beside her in the closed barouche, she should feel for the first time with him at ease—excited, adventurous, and beautiful. She wore the green silk, into which she had sewn a fresh ruching of cream lace. Over this, for warmth, went a wadded fawn-colored pelisse, and her gloves and reticule were lemon yellow. Though she had had few occasions to wear it she knew how becoming the green bonnet was with its satin ribbons and ostrich plumes. Her handkerchief was perfumed with heliotrope, and the seductive yet delicate scent added to her sense of confidence.