The Siren's Tale (22 page)

BANG, bang, bang
. The knocks were growing weaker. Cassandra closely watched her husband's face, willing him to open his eyes. Without his eyes to gaze into, her powers were useless. His eyes remained shut, even when she beamed the full force of her siren powers upon him twice over.

Cassandra was as intent on not facing her mother-in-law post-coitus as she was on opening Nick's eyes. Her plan was to scuttle away
as soon as her husband woke up, go to her room, and repair her face and hair, before she had to endure the Widow's scrutiny.

Bang, bang, bang
, weaker still. Again Cassandra willed Nicholas to open his eyes. “Wake up, wake up, damn you.” But still Nicholas slept on.  

Finally there was a dead silence, almost like
a third presence in the room. Cassandra waited in her crouch for one, two, three minutes. Then she crept to the door and slowly opened it. No one was there. 

Stepping quickly outsid
e, she looked around, spotting the open gate. So, the feared mother-in-law was gone without much ado. Thankfully, she had been spared a direct encounter with that disapproving face. She could still feel the imprint of Curly's passionate kisses on her lips and breasts. A bit ashamed of herself but vastly relieved, Cassandra softly closed the door behind her.

Quietly she sat down in the
dilapidated armchair that was the one piece of furniture in the room and picked up her book. Her husband was still wearing the leather leggings, thick boots, and rough sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked. Lightly snoring, he slept on.

As my pulse slowly returned to normal, I reflected upon the ease with which my former lover and I had fallen into our old pattern. Being with him had seemed as natural and enjoyable as playing my zither.  Our instinctive, passionate grappling had spent itself in a flurry of hot kisses. Then, recollecting myself, I had drawn back. After a pause, we talked like two friends and as though nothing was happening between us.

“I hope you reached home safely after the rendezvous,” Curly said.

“
Oh, yes,” I replied, though I was fairly sure Caleb Scattergood had spotted us together, and I wasn't sure how safe that was.

“
Were you tired the next day? I was afraid you would be.”

“
I was, rather. But I liked the dancing all the same.”

“
Do you often dance with your husband?”

“
Never,” I said. “He is tired all the time. You can't imagine how differently he behaves now compared to when I first met him.” 

I was thinking of how differently he appeared in hi
s work clothes compared to Curly, who was elegantly dressed in a new summer suit and light hat. Nick dressed in the latest fashion when we first met, and when we were married, his hands were as white and soft as mine. His complexion was still fair, of course, but now he had a rusty look. The dust and sun had not only burned his clothes but also imprinted a permanent brown stain on his skin. I blush to say it, I was thinking he looked like one of the Indians whose distress he was brooding over while mine went unheeded.

“
Why is he cutting hay, for God’s sake?”

“
He says that when people are living on their capital they must turn a penny any way they can.”

“
Ha! Spoken like a true native. But he has a great gift.”

“
What is that?”

“
His wife.” He looked at me so meaningfully that I blushed.

“
I thought you meant his natural gifts of intelligence. He is an enthusiast and an idealist, and he doesn’t care at all about outward things. I think of him as a modern-day Saint Paul.”

“
Glad to hear your husband is so grand a character as all that.”

“Oh yes, he is a saint. But though Paul was excellent as a man in the Bible, he would not have done well in real life.”

“
Well, if that means your marriage is bad, you have only one person to blame.” He looked me in the eye, and I flushed angrily.

“
The marriage is not bad,” I said vehemently. “We have simply had bad luck because of the accident to his eyes. But who knows what time will bring?”

“
Indeed. Sometimes, Cassie, I think your marriage is a judgment upon you. You rightly belonged to me, lass. I had no idea of losing you. My heart was torn out by the roots when you sent me that note.”

“
I belong to no one except myself,” I said firmly. “Anyway, the end of our relationship was your fault. You turned to another woman only to improve your prospects. I would never have thought of doing so. You made a fool of me, Curly.”

“
I meant nothing by it,” said Drake. “All men are subject to having a wandering eye. You told me your father was a Ulysses type, did you not?”

“
A kind way to put it, but I don’t want to think about you or Gio Zanelli right now.”

“
Brighton should be grateful. He may have problems, but he don’t know what it is to lose the woman he loves and be married to another. That is a torture like hell, and it has happened to me.” 

He looked as though he were about to say
more, but I put out my hand to stop him.

“
My husband is grateful for me,” I said, “and he is a rare man. Therefore I am the lucky woman. Our only problem is that I desire too much what is called life—music, poetry, passion, dancing, and all the beating and pulsing going on in the great arteries of the world. That was the shape of my dream, and I thought to get it alongside him. As it turns out, he desires none of those things.”

“
So you married him on that account!”

“
I married Mr. Brighton because I loved him. But I also saw the promise of a new and more intense life with him. I was wrong.”

“
And you are resigned to your fate now? That does not sound like you, Cassie.”

“
I turned a new leaf, believe it or not, by dancing at the fair. And I mean to stick to it. Why shouldn’t I be gay? I refuse to be brought down into the doom and gloom of these hobgoblins any longer.”

I was surprised when Drake suddenly
grabbed me by the hands and danced me around.

“
Stop, please,” I commanded him. The trouble is, I didn't really wish him to stop.

We gazed
into each other's eyes, once again overwhelmed by that old feeling, the electric current between us. The strong grip of his hands around my waist was my undoing. It was only a single, simple sensation that vanquished  my remaining  resistance.

Impulsively, w
e tumbled in a heap onto the floor, tearing off our clothes. When his cock entered me, I convulsed with an orgasm that paralyzed me from my eyelids to my toes. It was my first orgasm  in the arms of a man since Curly and I had last made love.

I now gazed at my husband, still asleep.

I sighed and deliberately pushed the tantalizing memories of my transgression from my mind. I then silently offered a hundred humble apologies to my sleeping husband. I had vowed in a church to be faithful to this human male, and I would rectify my mistake.

My penance would be the cessation of thinking about running away. I settled into my chair  with my book in hand.

I was reading George Meredith's
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
, with a plot hinging on a runaway wife. Meredith's own wife was a bounder, and therefore his novels are funnier and more revealing than he perhaps intended.

Surely I must run away! But no, I had decided against it. I would not willingly put Nicholas through the ordeal of losing me on top of losing his eyesight.

I wondered where Widow Brighton might be at this moment, whether she was making her way to the Grange seething with resentment or whether she was secretly relieved, as I was, by her not finding us at home.

I  opened the book to where I had left off reading. But I was exhausted from the stress of preceding events and quickly dozed off.

As Cassandra had surmised, Widow Brighton's
hasty exit through the garden gate was that of a woman who is more anxious to escape from a place than she ever was to enter it.

But alas, as fate would have it, in her desire
to leave the odious shut door behind her, the Widow had uncharacteristically gotten herself lost.

Her eyes were fixed on the ground
, and her lips trembled. Now she was looking about to regain the trail she had arrived on. She had got turned around. Unknowingly, she was following Drake’s path, which lay hidden from the cottage by a shoulder of the hill. 

“
It is too much evil to bear,” she muttered. “How can they do it? At home with the vixen, yet he lets her bar the door against me, his own mother!”

At that moment she spotted a youth gathering blackberries in a hol
low. He had a face that looked familiar to her, and indeed the boy was a fellow villager. Mark Horatio Nelson was picking berries for his mother and was on his way home from the Brightons' cottage. As soon as the old woman approached, Horatio started to trot along with her.

After awhile she spoke to him in a strange voice, as one in a state of hypnosis.
“It is a long way home, Nick, and we will not get there until evening.”

She seemed to be talking to someone else. He looked around; no one was there.
Horatio said, “We have supper at six o’clock, when father comes home. I have a long walk home, unless a carriage comes by.”

“
No one comes home to me,” said the Widow bitterly.

“
Is that what makes you so sad?” asked Horatio. “Or have you seen a devil? They say devils are common hereabouts.”

“
I have seen what is worse, a woman’s face looking at me through a window.”

“
Is that so evil, ma’am?” His voice had a wondering tone.

“
It is if the woman looking out won’t let me in.”

“
Once I was at Mill’s Creek Pond, and I saw my own face in the water, and—”

“
If they had only met me halfway. Shut out! As if I was a stray cur instead of his mother. Can there be people with no beating hearts inside? Fie on them. I would not have treated a neighbor’s cat so brutally on a hot day like this.”

 
“What is it you say, ma’am?” Her words were slurred, and he found it difficult to follow her. 

“
Never again—never! Not even if they send for me!” Her voice rose and fell in volume and sounded wild. It frightened the young man.

“
You must be in a very bad way, ma'am.”

“
Aren’t you done in with the heat, boy?”

“
Not like you are. Your face is pale and wet, and your head is wobbling.”

“
Ah, I am exhausted from the inside out.”

“
Your walk is funny too.” He made the motion of a jerk with one leg and a limp with the other.

“
Don’t be impertinent, boy. Stay with me a minute longer. I must sit down here to rest.”

When she was seated on the ground, he looked long in her face and said,
“How funny you draw your breath, like a horse who is nearly done for. Ma’am, do you always breathe like that?”

“
Oh, I don’t know.” Her voice was very faint now, almost a whisper.

“
I guess you should just stay here and rest,” said Horatio. “Is there anything I can do for you?” 

“
I am thirsty. Can you tell me if Ashtabula Pond is dry this year?” 

Ashtabula, an Indian
name for “river of many fish,” had been applied somewhat facetiously to a watering hole in Bulette that was characteristically dry as a bone by August.

“
There is a little water in it. I drunk some when I first come over here.”

“
Is the water clear?”

“
Middling.”

Widow Brighton fumbled in her straw basket and came out with an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle. It was one of a half dozen she had preserved ever since her childhood, a family heirloom passed down from her mother. She had brought the set with he
r today in a basket, as a present for Nicholas and Cassandra. 

“
Here, take this cup and go as fast as you can. Dip me up the clearest water you can find from the pond. I am very parched. I will die in this heat if I don't get water.”

The youth sped on his errand and soon was back with
the cup of water, which she attempted to drink, but it was so warm it made her nauseated, and she threw it out.  

The old woman remained seated on the ground with
her eyes tightly closed. The boy played at catching butterflies near her, not liking to leave her, but increasingly anxious. It was time for him to be headed home with the berries. It was a long walk and might take him all the time remaining until his curfew at six, if he did not manage to hitch a ride with someone on horseback. His mother would thrash him if he was late.

“
Will you soon be able to start again?” he asked her, with an eye to the sun's position in the sky.

“
I have a horse in old man Like's livery. I am going there now.”

“
Then you’ll be all right. He is only over the hill.” Horatio was hoping she might offer to carry him home. But as she continued to stare about her as if she were lost, he gave up on the idea. “Do you want me for anything more, please? I need to go home.”

“
No, you go along home to your mother, boy. I’ll be better in a minute. But there is something you can do for me.”

“
What is it?” queried the youth politely.

“
Tell everyone that you have seen a broken-hearted woman rejected by her son. Go along with you now and tell them so. Tell everyone.”

He th
rew her a wistful glance, as he was a good lad and naturally chivalrous. However, his mother had a tongue that was sharp, and she wanted the berries for his father’s pie. 

“
I’ll be sure to tell everyone what you said, ma’am,” said Horatio, and off he went. 

The sun now
glared directly into the widow’s face. With the departure of the youth, all visible animation had disappeared from the arid landscape. She had no energy to get up, and she was beginning to wonder why. Was it possible something was the matter with her besides the heat and the horrible rejection she had just suffered?

She could not
remember ever feeling quite so weak. This was her last thought before falling unconscious. 

Zelda Brighton had been
bitten by a serpent-like creature that had slithered toward her while she was sitting under the trees at Devil’s Bellows.

I
ntent on watching the couple in the garden, she had failed to see the adder draw up to its full height, stick out its spiky tongue, and hiss a warning before making the strike. The female adder was furious at the intruder who was sitting on her nest. When the strike came, the Widow was aware of the pain, but she thought it was the sun’s heat piercing the fragile skin on her calf.  

Rousing from his nap, Nicholas looked around for his wife. He saw she was sitting by the fireplace with a book in her hand, drowsing. As he watched, she sat bolt upright, evidently startled by something in her reverie. Her dreams were often troubling to her. He had often been puzzled by the trance she seemed to be in when awakening.

Cassandra's first sight was of Nick
rubbing his eyes with both hands. “Nick, stop it!  You know what the doctor said.”

“
Oh, sorry, dear. I had quite a dream just now, one I won’t soon forget.”

“
Yes?”

“
It was about my mother. I dreamed I went to her house to make amends. When I got there, I couldn’t get in. No matter how many times I knocked, she wouldn’t answer the door. My knuckles hurt from clenching them. What time is it, Cassandra?”

She avoided his eyes as she answered.
“Nearly two o’clock.”

“
Oh my! I will be late getting back at it today, and there is much to do in the field. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“
You were sleeping so heavily, my love. Annie May has not come back from the village yet to make your supper. I thought I would let you sleep until then.” 

“
Do we have any berries remaining, my sweet?” If his eyesight had been better, he might have noticed her cheeks were the color of strawberries.

“
We do, and some cream, if you would like a dish. It is so hot, I wish you would stay here with me instead of going back out.”

“
I must say I feel starved after all that distressful dreaming. But there is something else on my mind.

“
Yes?”

“
I am motivated to do something about my mother. Today, I mean.”   

Nicholas went to the win
dow and said, while looking out, “I would have thought I would hear something from mother by now, after I sent her the note about my inheritance. I keep expecting to see her at the door.”

Cassandra squirmed. Faced with the
difficulty of explaining her own behavior, she made a decision on the spot. She resolved to tell her husband nothing about his mother's failed visit. It was a failure of courage she would regret to the end of her days. 

“
I have come to a decision,” said Nicholas, after he had eaten a light meal. There was a tone of unusual resolution in his voice. “I must certainly go to the Grange, as she is too stubborn to come here.”

“
Shall I go with you?”

He looked at his wife with surprise, as he had often asked her to do so, and she had always refused.
“Actually, my love, I think I had better go alone.”

He picked up his work gloves, then
threw them down again. “In fact, instead of working anymore, I'll go see mother right now. I might be home late, dear, so don’t wait up for me.”

Cassandra was silent.

“What are you thinking of that makes you look down in the mouth? Certainly not my being away for a few hours.”

“
Oh, living in this place gets me down. The world seems all wrong.”

“
I see you’ve been reading novels and dreaming of living in a castle again. Well, cheer up, dear. Life isn’t so melodramatic as it is in fiction.”

“
I wish you weren’t going to Alta alone, Nick.”

“
Why not? You said it would be best if I went to her first.”

“
I was wrong. I have a feeling something may be said which will haunt us.”

“
I assure you my mother is not vindictive!” cried Nicholas, his color faintly rising.

“
Please, just stay with me tonight, Nick. I am feeling low. I promise I'll ride to Alta first thing tomorrow and set things right. You can meet me at the end of the morning when you are finished with work.”

He frowned.
“I’ve asked you several times to do just that, and you always refused. What is different now?” 

She searched his face for a look of suspicion, but his expression merely
seemed to say he was tired of dealing with her whims.

“
I cannot explain why. It's just a feeling I have. One of dread.”

“
Well, it’s very odd you suddenly want to see her after refusing to do so all this time. If I wait until tomorrow, I will spend another sleepless night. I would like to get it over with now, Cassie. Indeed I insist that I must.”

“
Then couldn't I go with you, Nick?”

“
My, my, my. You certainly are a mystery to me. But you would need more rest along the way than I’m planning to take, dear. Better if I go alone and keep it brief. Come, stop being perverse. Annie May will be back soon, so you’ll have company. Take your book and go to bed early. I will be back before you know it.”

“
As you wish,” Cassandra said, with the resigned air of one who lets the devil take the hindmost. 

And so, two hours after
his mother had failed to gain entrance to his home, Nicholas set off toward his old native home. Although the heat of the day had been intense, he rode in a fair degree of comfort. He felt a sense of peace, for he had no doubt that everything would be improved by his actions. He traveled on the hidden path, taking the bumpy back way to Alta, as it was faster.

After only a few minutes of his ride, he grew thirsty and turned to reach for the water flask strapped to Teddy’s underside. As he did so, he caught a whiff of something cloyingly sweet in the air.

Strange, he thought, how the floral fragrance was very like his mother’s tincture of roses worn on special occasions. On an impulse, he whistled his horse to a stop. It was then he heard a faint moan from the vicinity of a thatch of bushes at the south side of the path, below a knoll.