Merrick then asked through her tears if she could please have a glass of rum.
Of course no one was in favor of this remedy, but on the other hand, as Aaron judiciously pointed out, the liquor would quiet her, and she would go to sleep.
Several bottles were found in the bar downstairs, and Merrick was given a glass of the rum, but asked for more.
"This is a sip," she said through her tears, "I need a glassful." She looked so perfectly unhappy and distraught that we couldn't deny her. At last, after imbibing, her sobs became softer.
"What am I going to do, where will I go?" she asked piteously, and once again we made our assurances, though her grief was something which I felt she had to express with tears.
As for doubts about her future, that was a different matter. I sent Mary out of the room. I sat down on the bed beside Merrick.
"My dear, listen to me," I said to her. "You're rich in your own right. Those books of Oncle Vervain's. They're worth enormous amounts of money. Universities and museums would bid on them at auction. As for the Olmec treasures, I cannot calculate their worth. Of course you don't want to part with these things, and we don't want you to do it, but rest assured you are secure, even without us."
This seemed to quiet her somewhat.
Finally, after she had cried softly against my chest for the better part of an hour, she put her arms around Aaron, laid her head on his shoulder, and said that if she knew we were in the house, that we would not leave it, then she could go to sleep.
"We'll be waiting for you downstairs in the morning," I told her. "We want you to make that coffee for us. We've been fools, drinking the wrong coffee. We refuse to have breakfast without you. Now you must sleep." She gave me a grateful and kindly smile, even though the tears were still spilling onto her cheeks. Then, asking no one's permission, she went to the frilly dressing table, where the bottle of rum stood quite incongruously among the other fancy little bottles, and took a good slug of the drink.
As we rose to go, Mary answered my call with a nightgown ready for Merrick, and I took the bottle of rum, nodded to Merrick to make certain that she had seen me do it, so there would be some civil pretense of her permission, and Aaron and I retired to the library below.
I don't remember how long we talked.
Possibly it was an hour. We discussed tutors, schools, programs of education, what Merrick should do.
"Of course there can be no question of asking her to display her psychic powers to us," Aaron said firmly, as though I was going to overrule him. "But they're considerable. I've sensed it all day and yesterday as well."
"Ah, but there's another matter," I said, and I was about to broach the subject of the weird "disturbance" which I had felt in Great Nananne's house while we had sat in the kitchen. But something stopped me from speaking. I realized that I sensed the same presence now, under our Motherhouse roof.
"What's the matter, man?" asked Aaron, who knew my every facial expression and who could probably read my mind if he really chose to do it.
"Nothing," I said, and then, instinctively, and perhaps selfishly, with some desire to be heroic, I added, "I want you to stay where you are."
I rose and went through the open doors of the library out into the hallway.
From above, from the upstairs rear of the house, there came a sardonic and ringing laugh. It was a woman's laugh, there was no doubt about it, only I could not attach it to Mary or to the female members of the Order who were then living in the house. Indeed Mary was the only one in the main building. The others had gone to sleep some time ago in the "slave quarters" and cottages which made up part of the outbuildings some distance from the rear doors of the house. Once again, I heard the laugh. It seemed an answer to my very query.
Aaron appeared at my shoulder. "That's Merrick," he said warily.
This time, I didn't tell him to remain behind. He followed me as I went up the stairs. The door to Merrick's room was open, and the lights were on, causing a brilliant glow to spill into the long broad center hallway.
"Well, come on in," said a womanish voice as I hesitated, and when I did, I was quite alarmed by what I saw. In a haze of cigarette smoke, there was a young woman sitting in a highly seductive posture at the dressing table, her youthful and fastripening body clothed only in a scant white cotton petticoat, its thin cloth hardly disguising her full breasts and pink nipples, or the dark shadow between her legs.
Of course it was Merrick, but then it wasn't Merrick at all.
With her right hand she put the cigarette to her lips and drew on it, deeply, with the casual air of an accustomed smoker, and let her breath out with ease.
Her eyebrows were raised as she looked at me, and her lips were drawn back in a beautiful sneer. Indeed, the expression was so alien to the Merrick I had come to know that it was very simply terrifying all to itself. One couldn't imagine a skilled actress so successfully altering her features. As for the voice which came out of the body, it was sultry and low.
"Good cigarettes, Mr. Talbot. Rothmans, aren't they?" The right hand toyed with the little box which she had taken from my room. The woman's voice continued, cold, utterly without feeling, and with a faint tone of mockery. "Matthew used to smoke Rothmans, Mr. Talbot. He went to the French Quarter to buy them. You don't find them at the comer store. Smoked them right up until he died."
"Who are you?" I asked.
Aaron said nothing. He relinquished command to me at this moment completely, but he stood his ground.
"Don't be so hasty, Mr. Talbot," came the hard-toned answer. "Ask me a few questions." She gave more of her weight to the left elbow on the dressing table, and the petticoat gaped to reveal more of her full breasts. Her eyes positively sparkled in the light of the dressing table lamps. It seemed her lids and eyebrows were governed exclusively by a new personality. She was not even Merrick's twin.
"Cold Sandra?" I asked.
A burst of laughter came out of her that was ominous and shocking. She tossed her black hair and drew on the cigarette again.
"She never told you one word about me, did she?" she asked, and once again came that sneer, beautiful yet full of venom. "She was always jealous. I hated her from the day she was born."
"Honey in the Sunshine," I said calmly.
She nodded, grinning at me, letting go of the smoke.
"That's a name that's always been good enough for me. And there she goes, leaving me out of the story. Well, don't you think I'll settle for so little, Mr. Talbot. Or should I call you David? I think you look like a David, you know, righteous and clean living and all of that." She crushed out the cigarette right into the tabletop. And with one hand now, she took another, and lighted it with the gold lighter which I had also left in my room.
She turned the lighter over now, the cigarette dangling from her lip, and through the little coil of smoke she read the inscription. "To David, my Savior, from Joshua." Her eyes flashed on my face, and she smiled. The words she'd read cut deep into me, but I would have none of it. I merely stared at her. This would take a little time.
"You're damned right," she said, "it's going to take time. Don't you think I want some of what she's getting. But let's talk about this here, Joshua, he was your lover, wasn't he? You were lovers with him and he died." The pain I felt was exquisite, and for all my claim to enlightenment and self-knowledge, I was mortified that these words were spoken in Aaron's presence. Joshua had been young, and one of us.
She laughed a low, carnal laugh. "Course you can do women, too, if they're young enough, can't you?" she asked viciously.
"Where do you come from, Honey in the Sunshine?" I demanded.
"Don't call her by name," Aaron whispered.