CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When they reached the upstairs, Walter leading the way, they found Alicia lying unconscious on the floor, half in and half out of Liza’s bedroom. Peter and Mary, awakened by her screams, stood in the doorway of their bedroom, looking wide-eyed at their mother’s inert form.

“It’s all right, children, back to bed,” Helen said. She shooed them firmly back inside their room and ordered them into bed again.

Jennifer knelt beside Alicia. “She’s fainted.”

“But what on earth was she doing here?” Walter asked.

“Liza...?” Jennifer said. She knew how Alicia felt, especially now, and there must be some significance to finding Alicia in this very room. Had she come up the stairs, summoning the strength from God knew what source, meaning to harm Liza while she slept?

The same thought must have occupied to Walter, and he turned as if to investigate, but at the moment Liza appeared, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Alicia is quite ill,” Jennifer said. “She’s fainted. You may go back to bed.”

Liza seemed not to hear. She stood where she was, staring without expression down upon Alicia, until Walter repeated Jennifer’s order: “Back to bed now, Liza.” With that she went.

“I’ll carry her downstairs,” Walter said, lifting his wife’s frail body in his arms.

Helen reappeared from her grandchildren’s bedroom. “I’ll send one of the servants for Doctor Goodman,” she said. “No doubt they are all awake by now anyway.”

As Walter lifted Alicia, something fell from her hand. He did not see it, but Jennifer knelt to pick it up.

It was a crudely made doll, fashioned from a sock, really, and clothed in a rag dress. It had what appeared to be real hair, if a bit sparse. Perhaps the most striking thing about it was the ribbon tied so tightly about its neck. Jennifer almost loosened it, but then she thought probably that had been done to give the doll a distinct head.

Why Alicia should have such a doll she could not fathom. She wondered for a moment if it could have had anything to do with her scream. But surely not, she told herself. She put the doll atop the hall table and followed Walter downstairs.

Nothing served to revive Alicia and she was still unconscious when, much later in the night, morning, almost, Doctor Goodman finally arrived with the servant who had been sent for him.

“She’s probably sleeping,” he said, none too cheerfully, when informed that Alicia had not regained consciousness. When he saw her, though, saw the distortion of pain on her face and heard her labored breathing, his attitude changed.

“I was right, then,” Jennifer said, assisting him at the bedside. “This isn’t just another of her spells. She’s really sick this time.”

“Yes, thank heaven you sent for me,” he said. “She is really sick. Critically, I might say.”

“What is it?”

“I wish to God I knew.” He felt the thin wrist for a pulse.

Morning came. Jennifer watched the windows grow gray and then light. She started to pull the shades but the doctor stopped her.

“No, let the light in,” he said. “We may as well see what we’re doing.”

Jennifer could not see that they were doing much, however. She did not blame the doctor for that. He had tried any number of things, even resorting to steam inhalation in an attempt to clear Alicia’s breathing passages. Nothing seemed to help. Her breath was a ragged gasp each time and her chest rattled with the effort of getting air into her lungs.

Now, his invention exhausted, the doctor could only sit by the patient, watching for some sign of response to the injection he had given her.

Finally, he said, “Perhaps some coffee. Not for the patient, for me.” He sounded weary, not with physical effort alone, but with helplessness as well.

“I’ll see if Helen has some ready”

She found Walter waiting outside the bedroom door. “How is she?” he asked.

“She is still unconscious. She seems unable to breathe, as if she were being strangled. I’m afraid Doctor Goodman is stymied.”

In the kitchen, she found that Bess was up and had plenty of coffee brewing. Breakfast would be ready whenever anyone wanted to eat, she informed them.

Jennifer did not feel much like eating. She could only think of Alicia, weak as she was, somehow, for some reason, making that journey upstairs. Why had she done it, and what had made her scream as she had, a scream of pure horror?

“It won’t do to make yourself ill,” Walter said, helping her carry the coffeepot back to Alicia’s room.

“I know, I’m fine, really,” she said, giving him a weary smile. “I’ve been trying to think. Why did Alicia scream like that? What frightened her so?”

“We all know how she feels about Liza, and she was in Liza’s room.”

“Yes, but why go there at all? She certainly went there under her own power, which must have required an incredible effort. And why scream? She has never before shrieked at the mere sight of Liza.”

Walter stopped to face her directly. “Are you suggesting Liza did something to her?”

She had to say, “No, I don’t think that. Unless she is a very fine actress, Liza had certainly been asleep when she came to the door of her room.”

“You will call me if there’s any change,” Walter said at the door to Alicia’s bedroom.

Jennifer promised that she would and, taking the coffeepot from him, went in. Her heartbeat quickened a little when she saw the doctor bent over his patient.

“What has happened?” she asked.

“She was conscious for a moment,” he said. “I thought she acted as if she wanted to tell me something, but her mind must have been wandering. All she talked about was a doll.”

“A doll? What doll?”

“I have no idea. She said it was her, and that it was killing her. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

Jennifer did not reply. She watched in silence as the doctor tried to revive Alicia again, but she had sunk once more into that pained sleep.

Suddenly, so unexpectedly that it made Jennifer jump, Alicia’s eyes flew open. She looked straight upward.

“My God, she’s killing me,” she said. “She’s really killing me this time.”

“Mrs. Dere,” Doctor Goodman began, but he could say no more before she grasped at her throat with a low cry of pain. She seemed to be trying to tear something away, as if invisible hands were strangling her. Her eyes were fixed and as glassy as death.

Alicia gasped and closed her eyes again, writhing upon the bed, choking, strangling. The sounds that came from her throat now were unintelligible, inarticulate gurgles of fast-failing breath.

“You’d better call Mr. Dere,” the doctor said, feeling again for a pulse.

Walter was at his post outside when Jennifer opened the door. He looked at her with anxious eyes and she only nodded and motioned for him to go in. She knew there was nothing more she could do inside, and Alicia was entitled to those few seconds of life alone with her husband.

She went along the hall, but was startled to discover Liza, still in her nightdress, seated on one of the lower steps.

“What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, a bit sharply because she was very tired and her nerves were on edge.

“It’s morning,” Liza said without expression. “I always get up at this time.”

Jennifer had forgotten that the sun had come up. Although the windows had been open in Alicia’s room, it seemed as if she had just left the black gloom of night.

“Is she worse?” Liza asked.

“She is dying.”

Walter came out of Alicia’s bedroom. From inside, the doctor called after him, “Get kerosene. Maybe that will cut the phlegm.”

Walter went to do his bidding and Jennifer sat on the steps beside Liza. Before Walter returned, however, the doctor came out of the room, head down, and closed the door softly. Coming down the hall with the kerosene, Walter saw him and paused.

“She is in the hands of her maker,” the doctor said.

Walter went into the bedroom alone. The doctor saw Jennifer and came to where she was now standing.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said.

“I’m afraid I did very little.”

“Indeed. I did too little myself.”

“What...?” She let the question go unfinished.

“What was wrong with her? I don’t really know. Some sort of croup, I suppose. That’s what I shall put on the certificate, but I don’t really know. I never saw anything like it.”

When he had gone on to the kitchen, Jennifer remembered his remarks about a doll that Alicia thought was killing her. Could it have been the doll she saw upstairs? Her mind had been so occupied she had forgotten it until now.

She went up the stairs, moving slowly because she could feel fatigue weighting her limbs down. She’d had almost no sleep this night and she knew she should try to rest. The family would not need her now and this death was their private affair.

Still, the mystery of the doll bothered her. It was not on the table where she thought she had put it. She tried to think back, to envision the scene, but she found that she could not recall it clearly.

Maybe after all she had put the doll someplace else. Certainly no one would have taken it, unless one of the children had seen it and picked it up, in which case it would reappear in due time. And what if it did? She had no idea what significance it had, if any.

Despite her fatigue, she did not yet to go her room. She went downstairs again and out the side door, and stood in the shade of the magnolia tree there, breathing in the still cool morning air. Suddenly, quite without expecting to, she began to cry.

She was still crying softly into her hands when Walter found her and came up to her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“So, someone is crying for Alicia,” he said. “I should have known it would be you.”

She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief he gave her. “I’m not even crying for her, so much as for the fact that no one else is crying for her. No one loved her, no one is truly sorry she is gone.”

“I tried to love her.”

“I know that you did. I know that you tried to be a good husband to her, and I can cry too because she would not let you be. I see the sun above, and this tree here, and out there the swamp, and I tell myself that same sun shone on the earth when she was born. She walked beside those waters when she was a little girl, and happy, and loved. This tree was here the day she came to Darkwater as your bride. They are still here, and she has gone. Oh, Walter, I don’t know, I suppose I am not making much sense....”

“Jennifer,” he said, and stopped, surprised with himself because he had never called her that before.

She heard it too, and was thrilled in her heart, and hated herself for being thrilled, now, on this day of all days, in the wake of this event.

“We had better go in now,” she said and, without waiting for his reply, she left him and returned to the house.

* * * * * * *

The funeral services were held at the house, and people came from miles around. Jennifer reflected ruefully that no doubt the “witch” stories brought some people out of curiosity.

The Baptist choir sang “Rock of Ages” and the minister spoke briefly of the deceased. Staring at the woman in the casket, Jennifer had an eerie sensation once, as if she had seen Alicia’s eyes open and staring at her. She blinked and saw that they were closed, but the feeling persisted, making her skin crawl.

She looked to the right and saw the old clock that stood there. It had not run, Helen had told her when she first came here, in forty years. Now, she would not have been surprised to hear the clock strike. Things felt as if they had slipped out of their natural order. But the clock held its peace.

At last the funeral was over, the casket lowered into the ground in the family cemetery. Jennifer had not spoken to Walter since that morning under the magnolia tree, except in a very businesslike way. She had devoted her attention to the children, although in fact they were not in need of much consolation. They were young and for most of their lives their mother had not been a mother to them but rather a disquieting presence in the house. No doubt the fact of death awed them, and they were appropriately solemn around the family adults, but alone, out of doors, they were as high spirited and fun loving as ever. In that, Liza, who mourned not at all, encouraged them.

After the funeral itself, the house was filled with mourners and the church ladies who had brought food for the crowds. Jennifer had to admit that the air of somber cordiality was a relief after the deep silence that had settled upon the house in the wake of Alicia’s death.

At last it was over. Only a nagging sense of something amiss lingered in Jennifer’s mind. She had forgotten completely the doll that had so frightened Alicia the night of her death. She had not seen it to bring it back to her mind.

Now she did see it again. She had come to Liza’s room to see that she, as well as the other children, was ready for dinner. There was a houseful of company and she did not want them to look ill-kempt simply because Helen was too busy downstairs to look after them.

“I think you could wear a fresh dress,” Jennifer said when she saw that Liza was in one of the dresses she normally wore for play.

“I haven’t anything to wear,” Liza said.

“What nonsense,” Jennifer said, going to the wardrobe. “There are dozens of dresses in here.” She opened a door and saw on the floor the doll that had dropped from Alicia’s hand the night of her death.

“What’s this?” She stooped to pick it up.

“It’s my doll,” Liza snatched it out of her hand. “Give it here. I made it. It’s mine.”

Her voice was rising and, fearful of a scene that would disturb those downstairs, Jennifer let it go. “I think you should put on a fresh dress,” she said again, and left the room, her face burning. She knew that if she went to Walter he would discipline Liza for her rudeness, but she did not want to disturb him now with petty household quarrels.

Still, she wondered, through the dinner and even as the guests were departing—why should Liza be so excited about that doll? Why had Alicia been so excited about it?

Alone for a moment in the kitchen with Bess, she asked her, “What does a rag doll suggest to you?”

“A rag doll? What kind of doll?” Bess asked, screwing up her face suspiciously.

“Just that. Made from a sock, with some hair attached to it and a ribbon at its throat. Alicia had it the night she died, when we found her upstairs, and I found it a bit ago in Liza’s room, and it seemed to be important to both of them, but I can’t imagine why.”

Bess was silent for so long that Jennifer thought she meant not to answer, and when she did, her answer was entirely noncommittal. “It’s probably just some old keepsake,” she said, turning back to her cooking, but Jennifer had the sense that there was something more she hadn’t said.

* * * * * * *

When Jennifer did speak to Walter that night, it was briefly, and she had again forgotten about the rag doll.

She had gone to her room and finding herself too keyed up to sleep, she went back downstairs to the library, in search of a book to read. She was surprised to find Walter there, seated in a big old wing chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t expect anyone. I was just looking for a book to read.”

“Please, help yourself.”

She went to the shelves and hurriedly selected a volume, but when she started to leave with it, he stopped her.

“You needn’t run away from me,” he said.

“I thought you would want to be alone.”

“Yes, I should be, I suppose. But I want to talk to you briefly, if I may.”

She turned toward him and waited in silence.

“I suppose you’ve wondered about your future, now that Alicia is gone,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, I have.”

“I still have the children, and they are more than my mother can manage. It would please us...it would please me...if you stayed on to care for them.”

“I shall be glad to stay, then,” she said. Thinking he had finished, she started once more to leave, but again he stopped her.

“Miss Hale...Jennifer....” He paused, looking suddenly embarrassed. “I know this is neither the time nor the place to speak of...of certain things. Alicia’s death. Her illness before that. These have been very sad for me, sadder perhaps than I show. But the dead must bury the dead, and the living must go on living. In due time, when Alicia has been mourned long enough to satisfy propriety, I would like to talk to you further. About the future. About our future. If you will listen.”

She knew that he had all but proposed to her, and despite the solemnity of death in the house, her heart skipped a beat.

“I shall be ready to listen whenever you want to talk.” Then, because she could not trust herself longer to honor discretion, she did leave him, practically running all the way back to her room, and flinging herself across her bed, to think of the future.

“Our future,” he had called it.