Legenda Maris by Tanith Lee

making.”
    “You, my dear, are the one making the
fuss.”
    Merton went out on to the terrace and
waved to Albertine. The girl lifted her head; the gardener picked his fangs,
disdaining the mad people of the house, recounting whose debaucheries and
insanities kept him in free liquor at the village.
    “Did you pass Robert on the walk?”
    “Why, no, he’s upstairs in the tower
room.”
    “You see,” Merton exulted.
    Sibbi shook her head. Her teeth snapped
on canary bones. “I distinctly saw him, I tell you.”
    Albertine crossed the lawn, glancing up
anxiously at the shuttered landward window of the little tower and at the
yellow awning above.
    “Now you’ve made Albertine uneasy,”
Sibbi said crossly. She glanced at the girl with the same mixture of contempt
and liking she had displayed for her husband. She had enchanted the poet, and
could afford to be generous to his dull, pleasant handmaiden. Laura, the
serpent-tongued, was the one she feared. Albertine called in a high light
voice:
    “Robert,” and then again: “Robert!”
    They all stared up as if mesmerised at
the closed shutters, even the mahogany gardener, his thumbnail worrying at his
canines, added an oil-black stare to theirs.
    “Robert,” Sibbi suddenly sang out, as if
certain her magic would conjure him where Albertine’s could not. The heat
swirled sulkily and reformed. The gardener muttered ominously:
    “He write. He deaf to you.”
    Abruptly, for no particular reason, each
one of them shouted at the masked window.
    “Here I am,” Ashburn said.
    They looked down and saw him coming
between the veranda doors.
    Albertine and Sibbi exclaimed; the
gardener turned and spat disgustedly.
    Merton said, “Well, well. Just down from
the tower.”
    “That’s right.”
    “But you were in the garden,” Sibbi
asserted almost angrily. “I saw you standing on the walk while I played.”
    The poet looked at her and seemed not
quite to see her. His eyes, also glazed by the heat, and very dark, appeared to
gaze inwards, backwards into the shadows of his brain. He gave one of his
absent, charming, half-apologetic smiles. “Yes, I heard you singing upstairs.”
    Sibbi failed to take up her cue. She
looked feverish, annoyed; she went to him and touched his hand and gave a
little hard silver laugh like piano notes.
    They went in arm in arm to dinner.
Merton trailed after. “Perhaps, you know, we have a ghost.”
    The food was served and partly eaten. It
was too hot for food. Merton, watching Albertine’s gentle cameo face, the
barley-coloured hair, visualised all the paraphernalia of a saint, fashioned
for crucifixion. She ate little. If Ashburn looked at her she might eat
something, pathetically attempting to deceive him. Merton passed her rolls
reverently and helped her to wine. She was a fine woman, a sweet girl. Her
devotion to the poet moved Merton, for perhaps, in some obscure way, it
justified his own devotion to his blue-eyed cat wife.
    Now, striving to cheer everyone up after
the labour of eating, he revived his little piece and filled his pipe.
    “Do you think we might have a ghost?”
    “Such fun,” Laura observed acidly.
    Albertine lowered her eyes and played
with a piece of bread. “I’d far rather we hadn’t.”
    Sibbi, quickened, seated next to
Ashburn, caught his eye. “But how romantic—to think I supposed it was you, and
all the time it was a spirit. How edifying!” The wine had gone to her head, and
her appetite was unimpaired.
    “These old houses, you know,” Merton
went on, “though I don’t really believe in such stuff myself. Rather wish I
did, you know.”
    “Of course,” Sibbi said, “you’d frighten
any ghost to death.”
    Laura said; “Does it also write poetry,
I wonder? Though, of course, Robert doesn’t write anything at present.”
    “Don’t chide me, dear Laura,” he said.
    “I shall always chide you,” Laura said. “No
one else dares to do it, and without chiding you would perish.”
    Albertine rose.