Read On the Night of the Seventh Moon for Free Online Page B

She went all yellow.”
    â€œThe father was constantly drunk. I told her that the child must not go about in torn garments. ‘We’ve got no pins, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Pins!’ I cried. ‘Pins!’ What is wrong with a needle and thread?’ ”
    â€œThe doctor gave her up. It had led to congestion of the lungs. She lay like a corpse.”
    And so on, happily pursuing their individual lines of thought.
    I was amused and then exasperated; I would take my mother’s book called
Gods and Heroes of the Northlands
and read of those fantastic adventures of Thor and Odin and Siegfried, Beowulf and the rest of them. And I fancied I was there with that unmistakable scent of the fir and pine trees, the rushing of little mountain streams and the sudden descent of the mist.
    â€œIt’s time you took your nose out of that book and did something useful,” commented Aunt Caroline.
    â€œBending over books will send you into a decline,” Aunt Matilda told me. “It stops the expansion of the chest.”
    My great solace at that time was the Grevilles. They could talk of the pine forests. They had a feeling for them. They had spent a holiday there some years ago and often went back to visit them. It was they who had brought me back and forth from the
Damenstift
for they had been great friends of my parents. Their son Anthony was studying for the Church. He was such a good son, the delight of his parents, who were so proud of him. They were very kind and sorry for me. I spent Boxing Day with them and it was a relief to escape from the aunts. They tried to make it gay for me and there were little individual Christmas trees just as my mother had arranged them.
    Anthony was there, and when he spoke his parents listened in a hushed silence which amused me while it endeared me to them. We played guessing games, and games with paper and pencil but Anthony was so much more learned than the rest of us that we came nowhere near him.
    It was quite pleasant and Anthony walked home with me and said rather shyly that he hoped I would visit his parents’ home whenever I wished to.
    â€œIs that what you would like?” I asked.
    He assured me that he would.
    â€œThen they would want it too,” I said, “because they always want what you do.”
    He smiled. He had a quick understanding and was very pleasant, but not in the least exciting to be with and it was impossible for me now to avoid comparing any man with Siegfried. If Anthony had found a girl in the mist he would have taken her straight back to where she belonged and if he could not, to his mother; and she would have no need to utter warnings and to take on the role of guardian angel.
    I would be pleased to go to the Grevilles and see them and their son; but the desire to be again in that hunting lodge sitting opposite my wicked baron was so intense that it was sometimes like a physical pain.
    There were more visits to the Grevilles. The Cleeses came to the shop and I heard that I had fifteen-hundred pounds clear when all debts were paid.
    â€œA nest egg,” said Aunt Caroline, and invested wisely it would give me a small income which would enable me to live like a lady. I would continue under their care and they would teach me how to become a good housewife, an art in which it was obvious to them I was by no means accomplished. I was disturbed. I saw myself growing like the aunts: learning how to run a house, speaking to Ellen so that she cringed, making rows of jams, preserves and jellies and lining them up in chronological order with labels on them denoting that they were blackberry jelly, raspberry jam or orange marmalade, of the 1859, 1860 variety and so on through the century while I grew into a good housewife with banisters which held not a speck of dust and tables in which I could see my reflection, making my own beeswax and turpentine, salting my own pork, gathering my black currants for jelly and brooding