Are You Haunted (part fifty-four)

Are You Haunted

(part fifty-four)

He stood before a subterranean lake, black as obsidian. But now and again, as though the orchestra tuned its instruments, a shivering note of violin or piccolo would coincide with an expansion and compression of the lake’s surface. Rohdl thought he ought not to be hearing Dvořák, but Verdi.

He had come to the place at last. For so many years, he had seen it from the balcony.

It was Beauty, that which moves the soul, so undervalued…

A great chorus must hide here. Thus these voices murmuring, ensconced in shadow too deep to know their numbers. Only Beauty, bathed in white light, waited for him on the lake’s opposite shore.

“You will have to cross to me. You didn’t care for the idea when I came for you at the river. But there is no other way.”

The breadth of the lake separated them, but her eyes, her celebrated eyes, seemed to meet his own. And they were not spectral, but rimmed in tears of compassion.

“I was once very sorry to learn it myself. I woke, and I was no longer cold. I felt well. There was no wind, and the sun shone through the fog. I believed I would rise and walk up the hill. Oh, my beloved, how odd it was…”

Lettie, from the looking glass, looked at Lettie on the vanity stool.

A lifetime of flattery reduced a person to a state of docility. She was bored with it. She shifted her gaze to the window, and to that slice of river, metal-grey and flowing, margined by whiteness. Away in the distance came a puff of steam as a train crossed the bridge…and that was more promising. This morning the sun had come out. The hills, that had been snow-covered for weeks, sparkled.

Beauty. That at least. Her brother Davis said the barometer was falling, and the sky at the horizon had an ugly cast…

Papa with his arms crossed, standing against the lamplight; their unhappy talk taking place in the parlor the night before. Battering her down with his anger and disapproval.

And without letting her get a good look at his face.

“Well, Woolie doesn’t matter. Woolie,” she’d amended, “doesn’t want very badly to marry me.” She called her father’s favorite, John Wolter, by this name, and it suited him. His head wasn’t terribly clear.

“This disgrace, Letitia, I will not tolerate. You will go to church with us tomorrow.”

She had acquiesced, because her father would stifle her less, believing he had won his argument. In the long run, he would be mollified or he would not. She expected he would not.

Davis’s wife was privileged in her condition to avoid church. Lettie hoped her father would be consoled by a grandchild.

No, he had not won.

53

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part fifty-five)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)