The Second House. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ face, and I was surprised to see it darken. It was very brief, as though a cloud had passed momentarily between him and the sun, but it gave me a peculiar sensation of foreboding.

      “No,” he said, “not of the sisters.”

      But the way he said it left me with a curious knowledge: he was not afraid of the ghostly Nuns. But he was afraid of something else.

      “Good Heavens,” he said suddenly, breaking the somber mood that had settled over us. “It’s nearly three. Your Aunt will be after my scalp, or yours.” He jumped up and helped me to my feet. Then he put a squealing Hepzibah back into her basket.

      “I’m not at all afraid of my Aunt,” I assured him. “Or her temper.”

      “I have a feeling that you aren’t afraid of anything,” he said, folding up the robe we had been seated on.

      Again I had that curious knowledge of more than was being said. There was in his voice an envy of my fearlessness. And yet I knew that this man was no coward; certainly he had risked his own life to save mine, hardly the act of a fearful man.

      “I don’t suppose I am,” I replied aloud.

      “Not even death?”

      “Least of all death,” I said. I did not add that familiarity breeds contempt, that I had lived so much of my life in the shadow of death that that specter frightened me not at all.

      As we started up the hill I laughed out loud. “Heavens, aren’t we morbid though. Tell me, what brings you here? You said business, I believe.”

      “Yes, there’s a small silver shop near here; a very fine craftsman has had it for years, and for years we’ve been trying to induce him to join up with us. The Forrest family is in silver—good and bad, but the money’s all been made on plate, at least the last few years.”

      “Oh.” I stopped short. “Silver plate. Of course, how stupid of me. La Deuxième. The second service, as your ads put it.”

      He bowed before me with a gallant wave of his hand. “At your service.”

      We both laughed, and once more we were at ease and slightly silly with one another. But I had been given a glimpse of how much La Deuxième meant to Jeffrey Forrest; more, surely, than I could fully grasp from that simple glimpse his story had given me. That tale had been more than a traditional legend to him; it had come from deep within him. The sense of horror that the tale created was in part, and in a way that I could not understand, his horror. In time it would become my horror as well, but I did not foresee this on this sunny afternoon as we drove gaily back to Aunt Gwyneth’s.

      Jeffrey—he insisted on first names before the day was out—came again the next day, and the next after that. I was very happy that he did so. It was the first I had ever had a close acquaintance. I vaguely felt that I meant more than that to Jeffrey; and in a sense, he meant more to me as well. In the first flush of our meeting, I had wondered if this were to be my grand amour, my knight in shining armor.

      I quickly realized that I was not in love with Jeffrey, at least not in the sense that I understood romantic love; but I did love him, with an affection that was nearly shocking for having been so quickly established. I felt closer to him than to anyone else I had ever known. I felt so close in fact that, although I knew we would never be lovers in that true sense of the word, I did not stop myself from wondering what a future with Jeffrey would be like.

      I knew that he was handsome, sensitive, more inclined toward the arts than toward business. Enjoying his visit, but producing no success in his business mission, he had nevertheless sent off telegrams to his father that gave every reasonable excuse for staying on. I knew too that Jeffrey was wealthy and would be vastly more so at the death of his father. I had a notion that he was somewhat spoiled; he himself said that he was essentially a coward and lazy.

      “But you risked your neck to save me,” I protested.

      “An impulse,” he said. “It was so romantic, the lovely young woman drowning to save a sackful of kittens, I couldn’t help flinging myself into it. I don’t mind telling you now that when we were fighting that current I was sorry I hadn’t let you float downstream.”

      I didn’t believe him at all. I told him of my illness, and he was surprised. “Yet you went right into the river after those kittens, knowing you had been sick?”

      “Impulse,” I told him. He grinned and grabbed me impulsively, hugging me. That was the first time we had ever embraced. We both knew when it stopped being a silly gesture and became something quite a bit different. It was I who ended it finally, freeing myself gently but firmly from his arms.

      We said nothing about it, but when I saw into his eyes, I had a shock. I had never seen it before, and except for the books I had read, I was quite ignorant of the subject. But I was suddenly aware that Jeffrey Forrest was in love with me.

      Although it startled me, the full impact of this emotion, I could not honestly say that I was sorry about it. I still did not love him, not in the romantic sense; I had to be honest with myself about that. But I had lived my entire life alone and unhappy. Now, for the first time, I was happy. I had someone whose companionship I enjoyed, someone I liked and with whom I could share simple pleasures, and laughter, and interesting conversation.

      I found myself wondering if Jeffrey would propose. In my fancy, I thought ahead to what that life might be like—the wife of Jeffrey, handsome, kind, witty, living in a luxurious mansion haunted with legends of the past. I compared that vision to what my life was and had been. And it would be lonelier still when once Jeffrey went away. Having shared a little of my life with someone, it would be worse still to go back to being alone.

      I think he meant to ask me that day to marry him; and I would have accepted. But the moment was shattered for us—shot away, as it were.

      We were by the river, at a spot that was a mutual favorite of ours. Hepzibah, out of her basket, was engrossed in the pursuit of a grasshopper. I was leaning against the trunk of a large elm tree. Jeffrey had been lying beside me but he had gotten to his knees to embrace me.

      That embrace had just ended, and we were still close, still gazing uncertainly into one another’s eyes. So absorbed was I that at first I did not realize the significance of the loud cracking sound I heard, or the ping of something striking the tree trunk in the short space between our faces.

      There was a second crack, and this time a piece of bark jumped from the tree, striking Jeffrey’s cheek. Suddenly I realized that the reports were gunshots, and that the bullets had struck the tree within inches of us.

      “Get down,” I cried, throwing myself to the ground. Jeffrey fell too, covering me with his body. For a long moment there was silence.

      “Some stupid hunter,” I said breathlessly, shaking with anger. We were at the edge of the woods, and hunting, even out of season, was not very unusual.

      “Hallo!” Jeffrey called. “Watch out for us.”

      There was no answer. After another long moment we got shakily to our feet. “I wish I had gotten a look at him,” I said, staring in the direction from which the shots seemed to have come. “He’d hear about this before I was finished.”

      Jeffrey managed a faint laugh, but when I looked at him I was quite shocked. He was far more shaken than I. He had gone absolutely white.

      He СКАЧАТЬ