Galore - Michael Crummey [54]
Virtue went to Selina’s bedroom to speak to her in private that afternoon, Selina at her dressing table watching Virtue mirrored over her shoulder. —I thought you were happy here, Virtue.
—It’s not that, ma’am.
—Well where do you plan to go?
—There’s the house, she said. —In the droke.
—Don’t talk such nonsense, Virtue.
—I won’t be the cause of him harming another soul, ma’am.
—Who are you talking about?
—Mr. Gallery.
Selina turned in her chair to see the woman true. —Your husband?
—Yes ma’am.
There was a noise overhead and they both looked to the ceiling. —What is that? Selina whispered. She stood from her chair and reached a hand to hold the housekeeper’s arm. —Virtue? she said.
Mr. Gallery’s feet and legs came through the ceiling first, dangling there a moment before he came crashing through thatch and plaster and landed on the bed in a cloud of debris, a wash of soot drifting out of the fireplace. Selina screamed and ran from the room, shouting the Devil himself had come through her ceiling. Virtue stood where she was, watching her dead husband stand amid the plaster dust. He was thinner than she remembered and there was something nearly opaque about his face, as if the light from the window at his back passed through him. —What do you want? she asked finally, but he refused to look at her, only stood with his head bowed like a servant awaiting instruction.
Virtue went downstairs to pack her few things in the room off the kitchen and left Selina’s House for a second time, walking across Paradise Deep to the stud tilt that had been sitting empty more than a year. Those who witnessed it swore they saw the figure of Mr. Gallery following at a distance and disappearing behind her when the door of the house in the droke was closed.
Jabez Trim made a visit the following day, holding his leather-bound Bible to his chest like a shield. He couldn’t bring himself to step over the threshold and he called to her from the doorway. —Everything all right here, Mrs. Gallery?
Virtue was in the tiny pantry where she’d been washing dishes unused since she left and setting them back on the shelves. The place was dilapidated and damp from sitting empty so long, broken panes in its one window. The fire burning in the fireplace had barely touched the chill of the place. In the gloom he could see Mr. Gallery huddling as close to the dog irons as a chair could be set. —Mrs. Gallery?
She came out to him, wiping her wet hands on her apron. He looked down at his shoes and whispered, not wanting to be overheard by the figure near the fire. —We’ve just been wondering, Mrs. Sellers most especially and the little one, Absalom. We were all of us fearful for your safety.
—A year too late for that I’d say, Mr. Trim.
Jabez nodded and motioned with the Bible in his arms. —Is there anything can be done for you, Mrs. Gallery?
She turned to look directly at her husband. —Can you send this one to hell?
—Would I was at liberty to make such arrangements, he said. —What is it the creature wants of you?
—I would have thought you might be able to tell me such things, she said. —You and that Book of yours.
—I am the dullest instrument of the Lord, Mrs. Gallery, and that’s the sorry fact of the matter. You don’t plan to stay here?
—You can ask Mrs. Sellers to send along what wages she owes me, Virtue said and then held up her hand to ask Jabez to wait, disappearing into the bedroom. She came back, folding a coil of jet-black hair into a square of cloth. —This is for Absalom, she said. —Tell him I meant him to have it when he was older. And Mr. Trim, she said. —If you could find a private moment to pass it on.
Jabez nodded and turned the strange gift over in his hand. —You’ve precious little wood to keep that fire, he told her.
—Whatever you can offer, she said, I’d be grateful.