“That night a loud noise awakened Jean. She heard someone shout three times. Someone—a voice she didn’t recognize—was calling her. ‘Jean Ritenour Beegle, Jean, come to the garden.’
“Well, Jean’s bedroom didn’t have a window on that side, so she went downstairs. She wasn’t afraid, because it was a woman’s voice. I would have been afraid, I think. Anyway, she walked out into her garden and there stood a tall well-figured woman.
“She said, ‘My name is Mary Carmichael and I died here in 1791. As I loved the garden, my brother buried me out here and planted a rosebush over my grave. When he died the new owners forgot that I was buried here and didn’t tend to my rosebush. I died in the kitchen, which used to be in the basement of the house. The fireplace was large and it was so cold. They kept me down there.’
“Jean asked if there was anything she could do to make Mary happy.
“The ghost replied, ‘Plant a rosebush over my grave. I love pink roses. And you know, I built a trellis, which I put up between the two windows.’ She pointed to the windows facing the garden, which would be the parlor. ‘If it would please you and it does look pretty, put up a white trellis and train some yellow tearoses to climb it.’
“So Jean did that, and she says that in the summers on a moonlit night she sometimes sees Mary walking in the garden.”
As the humans continued their ghost stories, Mrs. Murphy gathered the two kittens around her.“Now, Noel and Jingle, let me tell you about a dashing cat named Dragoon. Back in the days of our ancestors …”
“When’s that?” the gray kitten mewed.
“Before we were a country, back when the British ruled. Way back then there was a big handsome cat who used to hang around with a British officer, so they called him Dragoon. Oh, his whiskers were silver and his paws were white, his eyes the brightest green, and his coat a lustrous red. The humans had a big ball one night and Dragoon came. He saw a young white Angora there, wearing a blue silk ribbon as a collar. He walked over to her as other cats surrounded her, so great was her beauty. And he talked to her and wooed her. She said her name was Silverkins. He volunteered to walk Silverkinshome. They walked through the streets of the town and out into the countryside. The crickets chirped and the stars twinkled. As they neared a little stone cottage with a graveyard on the hill, the pretty cat stopped.
“‘I’ll be leaving you here, Dragoon, for my old mother lives inside and I don’t want to wake her.’ Saying that, she scampered away.
“Dragoon called after her, ‘I’ll come for you tomorrow.’
“All the next day Dragoon couldn’t keep his mind on his duties. He thought only of Silverkins. When night approached he walked through the town, ignoring the catcalls of his carousing friends. He walked out on the little country path and soon arrived at the stone cottage. He knocked at the doorand an old cat answered.
“‘I’ve come to call on Silverkins,’ he said to the old white cat.
“‘Don’t jest with me, young tom,’ the old lady cat snarled.
“‘I’m not jesting,’ said he. ‘I walked her home from the ball last evening.’
“‘You’ll find my daughter up on the hill.’ The old cat pointed toward the graveyard and then shut the door.
“Dragoon bounded up the hill but no Silverkins was in sight. He called her name. No answer. He leapt from tombstone to tombstone. Not a sign of her. He reached the end of a row of human markers and he jumped onto a small square tombstone. It read, ‘Here lies my pretty pet, Silverkins. Born 1699. Died 1704.’ And there on her grave was her blue silk ribbon.”
The kittens screamed at the end of the story.
Harry glanced over at the scared babies. Mrs. Murphy was lying on her side in front of them, eyes half-closed.
“Mrs. Murphy, are you picking on those kittens?”
“Hee hee” was all Mrs. Murphy would say.
[Êàðòèíêà: _2.jpg]
58
No goblins bumped in the night; no human horrors either. Harry, Cynthia, and Blair awoke to a crystal-clear day. Harry couldn’t remember when a winter’s day had sparkled like this one.
Perhaps Harry had overreacted. Maybe those tracks belonged to someone looking, illegally, for animals to trap. Maybe the truck or car Cynthia heard coming down Blair’s driveway was simply someone who had lost his way in the snow.
By the time Harry arrived at work she felt a little sheepish about her concerns. Outside the windows she saw road crews maneuvering the big snowplows. One little compact car by the side of the road was being completely covered by snow.
Mrs. Hogendobber bustled around and the two gossiped as they worked. BoomBoom was the first person at the post office. She’d borrowed a big four-wheel-drive Wagoneer from the car dealer just before the storm. She hadn’t bought it yet. “How fortunate to have such a long-term loan,” was Mrs. Hogendobber’s comment.
“Orlando arrives today. The ten-thirty. Blair said he’d pick him up and we’d get together for dinner. Wait until you meet him. He really is special.”
“So’s Fair,” Harry defended her ex. If she’d thought about it she probably would have kept her mouth shut, but that was the trouble: She didn’t think. She said what came into her head at that exact moment.
BoomBoom’s long eyelashes fluttered. “Of course he is. He’s a dear sweet man and he’s been such a comfort to me since Kelly died. I’m very fond of him but well, he is provincial. All he really knows is his profession. Face it, Harry, he bored you too.”
Harry threw the mail she was holding onto the floor. Mrs. Hogendobber wisely came alongside Harry … just in case.
“We all bore one another occasionally. No one is universally exciting.” Harry’s face reddened.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker pricked their ears.
“Oh, come off it. He wasn’t right for you.” BoomBoom derived a sordid pleasure from upsetting others. Emotions were the only coin BoomBoom exchanged. Without real employment to absorb her, her thoughts revolved around herself and the emotions of others. Sometimes even her pleasures became fatiguing.
“He was for a good long time. Now why don’t you pick up your mail and spare me your expertly made-up face.” Harry gritted her teeth.
“This is a public building and I can do what I want.”
Miranda’s alto voice resonated with authority. “BoomBoom, for a woman who proclaims exaggerated sensitivity, you’re remarkably insensitive to other people. You’ve created an uncomfortable situation. I suggest you think on it at your leisure, which is to say the rest of the day.”
BoomBoom flounced off in a huff. Before the day reached noon she would call everyone she knew to inform them of her precarious emotional state due to the personally abusive behavior of Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, who crudely ganged up on her. She would also find it necessary to call her psychiatrist and then to find something to soothe her nerves.
Mrs. Hogendobber bent over with some stiffness, scooping up the mail Harry had tossed on the floor.
“Oh, Miranda, I’ll do that. I was pretty silly.”
“You still love him.”
“No, I don’t,” Harry quietly replied, “but I love what we were to each other, and he’s worth loving as a friend. He’ll make some woman out there a good companion. Isn’t that what marriage is about? Companionship? Shared goals?”
“Ideally. I don’t know, Harry, young people today want so much more than we did. They want excitement, romance, good looks, lots of money, vacations all the time. When I married George we didn’t expect that. We expected to work hard together and improve our lot. We scrimped and saved. The fires of romance burned brighter sometimes than others but we were a team.”