Four Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

chin, and persisted.
    “I’ve a mind to let her go.”
    “Oh, don’t!” This captured my sister’s attention. She even set her camel’s hair brush down, though she loves to flourish it. “She irons my ribbons!” Placide picked up her brush again and dabbed a minuscule bit of color on her canvas. “And the bedclothes, my underlinen, all the tablecloths and napkins. She gets them so very white, my dear, quite in contrast to her complexion!”
    Placide dimpled at me, waiting for me to laugh at her attempted witticism. I did not indulge her.
    “Watch out, sister, have a care. He’s quite”—I chose the word without thinking how absurd it might sound uttered from beneath a false lamb’s wool beard—“ besotted .” The wool got in my mouth and I spluttered to get rid of it.
    Placide laughed out loud and shook her thin, dry curls. She wrinkled her nose, a gesture that was charming when she was a girl but which now made her look like a moth-eaten rabbit. She fluffed the silk bow on her painter’s smock as much as if to say, What would you know of men and their besottedness?
    I do know , I thought, I can see it . I know a love crush far better than you do, sister. You vain bit of fluff! Though I would die for you, I suppose, were it to come to that, I do see you clearly. And I know more about the direction of men’s desires because I’ve watched from the outside. I saw how they once looked at you, before everything about you dulled to an aged girl and your hair fell out. Their eyes followed your gestures and their bodies were always half poised, half turned, ready to sidle or leap, crawl or elegantly saunter in your direction whenever you changed your position in a room. You were the sun to their yearning faces, however eagerly they tried to conceal their interest. But it was a blank power. You were thinly wrought, a skim of cream, a pleasing sugar dip. Which is why I worry so intensely now, and fear this servant whose craft took me unaware.
    Yet the new woman did such an excellent job that I had absolutely no cause for complaint. Fleur filled and drained the electric tumbler washer, operated the short mangle, and at any time of day, while directing Mrs. Testor, I was apt to hear the thump and dance of her irons from below. The bedding appeared, stacks of it precisely folded and sun-bleached to a marvelous whiteness. In addition, she was discreet. I saw little of her. Fleur never appeared in the kitchen except at mealtimes, and as for the rest of the house, she made her rounds silent as a wraith. I never saw her on any of the other floors although the linens were delivered and changed, precisely as I had instructed, even to the paint smocks for Placide and the hand towels at my dressing table. Brother-in-law seemed both satisfied with the condition of his room and yet completely unaware that Fantan and Mrs. Testor no longer struggled and bickered over what was to be done with the mounds of soiled sheets and wrinkled pajamas that he discarded by the sixes and sevens. I was even lulled, as anyone would be I suppose, into the resumption of a modest social life.
    Nothing like life had been, of course, when Mother held sway. She had an unsurpassable gift for organizing formal picnics, sleigh rides, outings of various types. On those rare occasions when she pressed brother-in-law into joining the fun I never shall forget the picture that he and Placide, the two of them, made in spanking white, she on his arm, walking the grounds by the lake as the light turned golden and their shadows dragged beneath their heels like long and languid blue capes. They were really quite magnificent. She was the beauty of the avenue when she married—tall and slim, with a mass of dark golden hair that curled and crackled with lights. He was young too, wealthy, unpredictable, purported to be the son of minor British royalty and a German industrialist, an entrepreneur and scholar whose interests ranged from the classification and study of