They say that the thunderstorms that night were the region’s worst in twenty years. They say that at the top of Firethorn an old oak tree, long dead, was struck by lightning and burst into flames, and that the flames shot up so high into the galaxy that they touched a star, and the star exploded, filling the sky with a cascade of sparks.
They say that up at the Manikin, it wasn’t the wind that broke three windows and a mantel clock—it was Henry Junior, who went temporarily mad on account of the storm. Or was it bad home-brewed liquor, iodine and tapwater disguised as whiskey? No one could say for sure. But the fact was, he smashed up his own house and even tried to kill a colored child but was stopped by Lore Bennett, who beat him soundly.
The servants vacated the house that night without bothering to pack their few belongings. Peter tucked little June inside his shirt and led his family through the downpour back to their cabin. Lore and Ellen fled with Junket and Peg to the gatehouse, Red Vic and Sid Cheney close on their heels. Only Boggio chose to stay behind. He went up to the master bedroom and locked himself in. When Hal pounded on the door, Boggio refused to open for him.
So Lilian and Hal spent their first night together in the Manikin in the main guest room, Lily’s old room, recently inhabited by Peg and still strewn with her clothes and various books borrowed—rather, filched—from the Manikin’s library.
Offended by this new disorder, Hal threw every article of clothing out the window; then he lay back on the bed, his head raised by pillows, and stared at the white forepart of his Ralston sailor-tie oxfords. Lilian sat in a wicker chair by the door. To onlookers, they would have seemed more like a prisoner and guard than husband and wife, with Lilian keeping watch—keeping her thoughts to herself as well, while Hal muttered about the goddamn servants, wondering aloud why he hadn’t set the law on them long ago.
If it had been up to Lily, the celebration downstairs would have continued in all its frenzy—she’d obviously loved what she’d seen. But she hadn’t seen enough. She hadn’t been there the night the servants mutinied, no, she hadn’t suffered the humiliation, when Hal Craxton became the unhappy victim of an insurrection. He’d been licking his wounds ever since, the episode never satisfactorily distant in his mind, and he’d gone ahead and married young Lily for the same reason that soldiers get drunk after a defeat—in an effort to distract himself.
But Lily, as it turned out, hadn’t been able to sympathize with her husband in this matter. She spent most of the drive to the Manikin trying to persuade him to go easy on the staff. For the final miles she’d fallen silent, and Hal’s anger had intensified with the storm. He’d expected to find the servants making themselves at home, but he hadn’t been prepared to walk into the midst of a carousal. A wedding celebration, no less—Ellen betrothed to Mr. Green Thumb himself, a natural match, and why Hal had ever been inclined toward such a plain and uninspiring woman as that, he couldn’t say.
He hadn’t been able to say what he thought when he first opened the door, so tongue-tied was he by the image of Ellen teetering on her precarious throne. He had stared at her and she at him for what must have been a full minute. And then he’d gone wild, heaving the giant turtle onto its back, and seizing a walking stick from the hall stand, swinging it over his head. Ellen almost tumbled headfirst out of her chair. But the men managed to lower her to the floor without injury, and they moved in a tight herd out of Hal’s reach. He growled at them. They backed into the living room. The room had been altered, he saw at once, though it took him a moment to identify the change. Why, his father’s Cabinet of Curiosities—it had been scattered! The famous Craxton Collection, the only thing of value his mother had actually wanted him to keep. The bats were hanging like old stockings from the mantel, the windowsills were covered with bugs, rodents roamed underfoot, beasts lounged on chairs and sofas. In a rage, Hal swung his stick, spun around, smashed his mother’s mantel clock instead of the bats, smashed a windowpane and another, object by object destroying the house he had come to claim.
What happened next, like most accidents, did not adhere to the normal rules of time. Or that’s how everyone would remember it: the stick swinging forcefully but without constant velocity, so it seemed to move forward and then stop, move forward and stop, move straight toward Gracie’s head with stop-start accuracy. There stood little Gracie, still burbling with delight, unaware that the celebration had ended and that Hal Craxton was the enemy.… The stick swung round, Hal swiveling on his feet rather than at the hips so he didn’t see what he was about to strike. But the others saw, and Sylva managed to fill the gaps between the seconds with a scream while Lore dove through the air toward the child, covering her like the shadow of a cloud and catching the head of the stick on his buttocks.
Thwack! The master had struck his servant, an outrage that wasn’t supposed to happen, not in this democratic twentieth century, not in America. Lore yelped, turned round to face his assailant, gave another yelp, not in surprise and pain this time but in fury, and barreled headfirst into Craxton’s belly, pushing him against the wall and pounding his face with the work-worn knuckles of his right fist until Red Vic pulled him off.
He left Hal Craxton bent over, dripping blood. They all left him, except Lilian, who without thinking used the gold-threaded armrest cover from the sofa to stop his nosebleed. Obviously impatient, she helped her husband upstairs, and after the brief standoff with Boggio, she led him to the room that had been hers for the past winter.
So they spent that first night separated by the vast expanse of Hal’s anger. Lilian dozed in the chair while Hal studied his shoes and plotted revenge. He was still plotting when, hours later, Lilian woke with a shriek, clutching her throat, forgetting at once the content of the dream but still so overcome by a sense of peril that it took her a solid minute to catch her breath. And then she gave another little shriek and pointed at the floor.
“What in God’s name is that?”
Why, the head of a twenty-two-foot-long reticulated python (dead, of course), peeking out from beneath the bed, that’s all, Lily. Just a python left by naughty old Boggio to scare a girl witless.
* * *
Once upon a time, a giant turtle was overturned by a cruel man and left to die. “Someone help me!” Turtle cried, wagging his leathery legs in the air.
Dame Cougar, who just happened to be nearby stalking a young rabbit, came along and nudged the shell to set it rocking, but try as she might she couldn’t put Turtle right side up. “Wait here,” she instructed and slouched down the hall looking for an assistant. Finally she came upon Mr. and Mrs. Gibbon, who were having a romp in bed. Dame Cougar waited impatiently for the loving couple to finish with their business, then she cleared her throat to gain their attention.
“I need your assistance,” she said. “Both of you.” So Mr. and Mrs. Gibbon, always compliant, swung after her down the hall, hands to feet, feet to hands. Together, the three of them managed to turn over poor Turtle.
“A sordid affair,” Turtle said, bending her neck to improve her circulation.
“That’s people for you, pee-people, hardy-hah!” piped Macaw, who’d hopped in from the dining room to watch the rescue effort and was chewing on a cigar, scattering tobacco everywhere.
“Stinking homo sapiens,” mumbled Bat.
“Such a sight,” Daisy Dik-Dik said. The animals contemplated the refuse: broken glass, cracker crumbs, a pickled pig’s foot here, a sardine tail there. Not that they were surprised. Having lived among people for so long, they knew that the fundamental desire in a human heart was to destroy things, and from day to day they weren’t fooled by a show of propriety—even the housekeeper couldn’t deceive them. Mankind had been put upon the earth to create havoc, and as long as the species flourished, nothing was safe.
But the animals had grown accustomed to domestic life, and for their own sakes they had to make the Manikin inhabitable again. So despite their indignation, they spent the rest of the night restoring order. They washed and returned dishes to cupboards, discarded half-eaten food, swept up crumbs and broken glass. Dame Cougar dusted the windowsills with her tufted tail, Mr. P. Cock took care of the tables, Turtle pushed the carpet sweeper over the rugs, and the Gibbonses polished the silverware. Meanwhile, the domestic cockroaches organized their lesser fellows into groups and ushered them back to their display boxes. Daisy Dik-Dik plumped cushions, and Macaw stationed himself on the mantel and called out orders. All through the night the animals cleaned the house—not because it was their job but because it was a matter of survival. And what a job they did! Leave it to animals to repair the damage done by man. Leave it to animals to set everything right.
At least that’s what happens in a fairy tale—reparation so total it is magical, and everyone lives happily ever after.
* * *
After Hal bravely evicted the python from the bedroom, Lilian fell into one of those selfish and provocative slumbers so typical of beautiful young women, Hal knew from experience, having watched scores of them sleeping. She lay with her lips parted in an all-too-suggestive smile, her tongue flickering inside her mouth like the flame of a gas lamp. Annoyed by her self-sufficiency, Hal left her to her dreams and descended the front stairs.
Someone must have crept back into the house during the night and cleaned up—other than the broken windowpanes, Hal could find no sign of the merrymaking or of his own violent spree. Even the animals had been returned to their platform. Still, he half expected to hear the echoes of mayhem bouncing off the walls. He touched his hand to his nose—no blood flowing, but the bridge ached beneath the light pressure of his finger. The worse pain, though, was the memory of his latest humiliation. First he’d been evicted from his own home by his employees, and upon his return he’d been manhandled by his groundskeeper. Well, he’d come back to stay, to take control of the Manikin again. He was Henry Craxton Junior, worthy and legal heir to a natural history magnate, or so the court had ruled with unexpected alacrity, not because of Mary Craxton’s supposed insanity but on the basis of a legal glitch in the revised will, transferring to Hal the property that his mother had tried to deny him. His first task as master of the household would be to dismiss all the servants.
He wanted nothing more to do with them after what they’d done to him. While distraught over the loss of his mother, he’d been tricked into loving Ellen Griswood. Then the others had tricked him into fleeing. It had taken him a full month of recuperation to realize that he’d committed no crime and to understand the import of his mother’s death, which had affected him more than he’d thought. The Stone family had kindly nursed him back to sanity, hosting him while Craxton v. Craxton moved through probate. And on the very day the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Lilian Stone’s father offered Hal his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Between the dowry and his own income, Hal could have afforded to close up the Manikin and travel with Lily. Perhaps they would someday, but not until they had purged the house of demons. “Demons” was the word on the tip of his tongue when he entered the library—it was the word he’d fled from seven weeks earlier. So when he saw a woman’s knees covered by a pleated skirt poking out from the chair, he almost turned and ran again.
Instead, he inhaled deeply to regain his composure, wandered over to the mantel, and finally spoke.
“I’m giving you twenty-four hours’ notice, Mrs. Griswood,” he said.
“Mrs. Bennett,” she corrected him.
“Your impudence,” he muttered and let the phrase float without a predicate.
“Mine!” she echoed. “Mine, indeed!”
It angered him that she had occupied his wingback chair without permission, but he couldn’t bring himself to order her away. Instead, after a pause he asked, “What do you want from me?”
“I want compensation,” she said.
He thought he detected a surreptitious embarrassment in her tone of voice. Or maybe he was hearing what he expected to hear, given the nature of the demand. It wasn’t just back wages she wanted—she expected him to pay her for the disagreeable business behind them, the business concerning that kiss he’d thoughtlessly bestowed upon her coquette of a daughter. Compensation? Why, he’d pay his housekeeper exactly what she deserved.
“Certainly, Ellen. Excuse me. Mrs. Bennett, I mean.”
He glided around the front of the chair and dropped a nickel into her lap.
Oh, what a dynamo! The force of her temper, which Hal had glimpsed only briefly that night she’d turned on him, was astonishing—Ellen, thin-lipped, staid Ellen, leapt up and flung the coin at Hal’s feet. It glanced off his shoe and rolled across the floor until it was stopped by the rug’s fringe.
“You bastard, you!”
He expected her to come at him then, almost hoped she’d strike him so he could hit her in self-defense.
But Ellen just leaned against the chair, clutching the arm for balance as she rocked forward, bloated with hatred to the point of bursting. Hal had never known a woman to show her hatred so blankly, so honestly. For a minute he was shaken, until he recalled the absurd image of Ellen riding high above the men’s shoulders on a kitchen chair, Cleopatra of the Manikin. She’d obviously been frightened by his sudden entrance last night, perceiving as she did the scope of his authority, and Hal needed only to coax the fear to the surface.
“You won’t get any reference from me,” he grumbled, “so don’t ask.”
“I’ll take what I’m owed.”
“You’re a sharp beggar, Ellen Griswood. Bennett, I mean. Mrs. Bennett. Now if you sent your pretty child to collect, I might find it in my heart to be generous.”
“I curse you. I curse this house.”
“Good God, a curse! The sorceress has put a curse upon me! Whatever shall I do? I’m turning into a frog, help, croak, oh! Why, Mrs. Bennett, you’re not amused.”
“You disgust me.”
“And to think we might have been man and wife. Mrs. Ellen Craxton—no, it doesn’t sound right, does it? But your daughter, now there’s a catch!”
Smugness tends to dull caution. So Hal Craxton, whose smugness had flourished during this dialogue, was not prepared for the full consequences of Ellen’s temper, and he caught the milky foam of her spittle on his lips and chin before he could turn away. Shock froze him in place for the few seconds it took her to escape—a good thing because if he’d been able to move he would have grabbed the woman by the neck and choked the breath from her.
* * *
They would have taken the dogwoods and honeysuckle, the grapevines and wintergreen. They would have carried away the apple trees as well. The pastures. The spring. The azaleas and dahlias, the holly, the basil and wormwort and parsley, the cows and chickens, the lop-eared barnyard tomcat, the rock bass, walleyes, and trout, the songbirds and crows, the deer, beaver, muskrats, groundhogs, skunks, raccoons, and field mice. They would have loaded the Manikin itself piece by piece onto a broad-bed truck and carted it off. But everything, or almost everything, belonged to Hal Craxton. The servants might as well have been watching a fire sweep over the estate, leveling all that they loved. The Craxton land, the Craxton manor, the Craxton Collection—all had been used and appreciated by the servants, and now they felt cheated. The Manikin and grounds had been theirs in spirit, or so it seemed. But semblance made for an insubstantial claim, and here at the end of their terms of employment, they discovered what should have been obvious all along: they were taking away only what they’d brought to the Manikin, nothing more.
Peg could have dispersed the illusion long ago. She’d never been confused about ownership. Nearly every material thing within the boundaries of the estate belonged to the Craxtons, except, of course, the servants themselves. They’d always been free to leave. But having left and returned, Peg understood what her mother feared—a worse, more constraining evil that could drive decent people to ruin.
If only Hal Craxton had abandoned the Manikin forever. If only summer would never end. If only crimes could be undone, love withheld. Peg had spent the last weeks pretending that she had no past. But the past had overtaken her in the form of Hal Craxton and his new wife, so Peg had no choice but to go forward.
First, though, she would go backward and do what she should have done long ago: confront Lily face to face. She waited a few minutes after her mother left for the Manikin to gather her belongings, then Peg went up to the house herself, ostensibly to collect her own clothes from the guest room. Entering through the pantry, she found the kitchen immaculate, as though a regimen of elves—or perhaps her tireless mother—had scrubbed and straightened during the night. She crept quietly up the rear stairs, pausing when she heard the far-off rumbling of voices, which called to mind her stealthy departure on Christmas morning, when she’d snuck down these same stairs and fled the house, intending never to return.
She was moving in the opposite direction now, her attention so fixed on the imminent meeting that she didn’t care who was talking. On the second floor she went straight to the guest room and without knocking opened the door. She wasn’t surprised to see Lily’s creamy shoulders and head poking out from beneath the crocheted spread. What surprised Peg—though it shouldn’t have, given the voices she’d heard from the stairwell—was to find Lily alone.
She entered the room as quietly as possible, hesitated at each creaking board, but Lily didn’t move. Peg stood beside the bed and studied the contour of her body—she lay prone, her arms folded and tucked beneath her belly, her legs stretched out, her whole body as rigid as a plank, tense even in sleep, though her face, while not exactly relaxed, looked more thoughtful than anxious, like the face of a woman trying to recapture a lost memory.
Peg had come here for a dramatic showdown but found herself slipping back into love, dragged by the force of Lily’s beauty. Who could compare? Such intelligent, exquisitely drawn features, shoulders so slender and yet so soft. Remember how soft they are, Peg? She let her hand hover for a moment, then dropped her fingers to the back of Lily’s neck. Lily squirmed a little in sleep, just as Peg must have done while the stranger who had come to assault her in the Kettling station stood examining his prey. Lily’s vicious lover. Lily couldn’t necessarily be held responsible for his jealousy. It could be that she’d preferred Peg and had admitted it to him and sent him away with a few harsh words, never foreseeing the toll he would exact for a love that excluded him. It could be that Lily’s only fault was to have loved recklessly.
Under Lily’s spell once more, Peg forgave her almost everything, and without considering where it would lead began stroking the back of Lily’s neck with her forefingers, rousing her into a docile, half-awake state, coaxing a dreamy smile of recognition from her, falling into her embrace as Lily rolled over and lifted her arms.
Peg was enchanted, yes, in love again, adoring and adored. But if given the opportunity, she would have revenged herself. And sure enough, the opportunity arrived in the form of Hal Craxton, who came up the hall and stretched his head around the open door to take a peek at his young wife. But she was murmuring the same old meaningless vows to Peg, so lost in her bliss that she didn’t notice her husband. But Peg saw him—rather, she saw a man leaning out from behind the door, not Hal Craxton but the other one, the nameless one. Peg felt the stranger’s presence as surely as she felt Lily’s arms sliding up and down her back. It occurred to her then that the man who raped her in the Kettling station might have seen for himself what Lily had tried to keep secret, might have spied on the two girls and discovered their secret love. That was what had enraged him so, a secret inadvertently revealed, and he’d revenged himself on Peg.
Now she would give her beloved Lilith a turn with the devil. Peg held her face between her hands and kissed her, sinking her tongue deep into her mouth. On the threshold, Hal Craxton broke into a savage howl.