The Second House. V. J. Banis
felt that they had come to the place where they were needed. Of course it was a long way from what we consider the West, but they had no comprehension of the size of the country, and by their reckoning they had come a very long way, and they decided this was where they would stay.
He paused briefly before going on. “So, while the settlers built their homes the sisters built their convent. Don’t ask how they did it. That’s been a mystery all these years. Perhaps they had more help from the townsmen than tradition records. At any rate, for its time and location it was a handsome building. Parts of it still stand. Some of it was wood, and some of it stone, and it was complete with arches and naves and everything one would expect from a prosperous French convent in the old country.
“And the sisters did prosper, as well as the village. It grew quite rapidly. The largest family among the settlers was a silversmithing family, and this became the chief trade for the settlement. These people wrote to relatives and friends at home, who in turn made the difficult journey to the settlement. The convent served as a school for the town, and as a hospital, in addition to being a home for the sisters. And in a short time it just wasn’t big enough. Only a few years after the sisters first arrived, they were faced with the necessity of building a second house.
“After some discussion with the townsfolk, it was decided that the first building would become a community building; initially it had been outside the town, but the town had now crept around it. This time the townsmen took charge of the construction, and in a short while the new building was nearly finished. The old building was still referred to as the couvent, and the new one simply as La Deuxième.
“But it was never finished, at least not for the sisters. Tragedy struck. The plague suddenly entered the village. For all the progress, conditions were still primitive. The location was remote. There were neither doctors nor medicine in the village to cope with anything of this sort, and none less than a week’s travel away at the very least. The disease spread like wildfire. Entire families were wiped out. The sisters did all they could, but that was all too little. Their convent was filled completely with the dead and the dying; there were not even enough able-bodied men to keep up with the task of burying the dead. A doctor arrived, summoned by a pair of brave sisters who had risked the wilderness alone to bring him. But he had far underestimated the seriousness of the situation; the medicine he brought was literally a drop in the bucket.
“The rest of the story is quite horrible. You must remember that nearly all these people were simple peasants, volatile and as superstitious as everybody else of that time. By now it was known that the disease arrived with a Nun who had just come from the old country. And because the Sisters took many of the ailing into their convent, it was literally a breeding ground for the plague. Resentment against the place began to grow. People began to say that the sisters were being punished for some wickedness, and the townspeople were suffering as well. One of the villagers in particular, half mad with grief because he had lost his wife and three children, harangued the townspeople, turning them against the sisters. Nearly two hundred people, all but a handful of the town’s population, had died within a matter of weeks. Finally, the remaining villagers drew up a sort of petition, asking the sisters to leave in order to lift the curse that had descended upon the village. The sisters refused.
“A short time afterward a handful of men—either with or without the blessings of the rest of the village—set fire to the convent. It was during the night. The timbers were blazing fiercely before the sisters even woke from their slumber. Probably the sisters were meant to escape, but the fire seems to have burned faster than anyone expected. It is not known if any of them escaped alive; if they did so, they fled and never returned. The ruins were filled with the ashes of the sick and the Nuns alike.”
He paused for a long moment. “How horrible,” I said. I shuddered as I envisioned the flames reaching to the sky. I could almost hear the cries of the terrified sisters as they found themselves trapped in the inferno.
Jeffrey too seemed completely absorbed in his story. For a time he stared thoughtfully before him as though weighing the crime that had been committed.
“Afterward,” he went on, but less somberly, “the people were ashamed of what they had done. They met and concluded that there were too few of them left, and the town too haunted with tragedy, to make a home there. They gathered together the few who were unafflicted by the disease, and moved west. As they left, they fired the village, burning it completely to the ground. Only La Deuxième, unfinished, was left standing. No one had the heart to set the torch to it.
“A few years later one of my ancestors, in reward for some service to the British throne, was given a vast land grant in this country, including the area of La Deuxième, which was by then under English domination. My family found the unfinished house, and because it was quite a handsome structure, finished it. It’s been our family home ever since.”
“What a strange story,” I said when he had finished. “Those poor creatures, to die so horribly, for no fault of their own.”
“Yes, it’s said they haunt the ruins of the convent, and even wander the halls of La Deuxième. Tradition is filled with tales of their visits.”
“Are you afraid?” I asked it as a joke, in a teasing tone of voice, trying to restore the lighter mood that had prevailed before. But as I asked it, I glanced at Mr. Forrest’s face, and I was surprised to see it darken. It was very brief, as though a cloud had passed momentarily between him and the sun, but it gave me a peculiar sensation of foreboding.
“No,” he said, “not of the sisters.”
But the way he said it left me with a curious knowledge: he was not afraid of the ghostly Nuns. But he was afraid of something else.
“Good Heavens,” he said suddenly, breaking the somber mood that had settled over us. “It’s nearly three. Your Aunt will be after my scalp, or yours.” He jumped up and helped me to my feet. Then he put a squealing Hepzibah back into her basket.
“I’m not at all afraid of my Aunt,” I assured him. “Or her temper.”
“I have a feeling that you aren’t afraid of anything,” he said, folding up the robe we had been seated on.
Again I had that curious knowledge of more than was being said. There was in his voice an envy of my fearlessness. And yet I knew that this man was no coward; certainly he had risked his own life to save mine, hardly the act of a fearful man.
“I don’t suppose I am,” I replied aloud.
“Not even death?”
“Least of all death,” I said. I did not add that familiarity breeds contempt, that I had lived so much of my life in the shadow of death that that specter frightened me not at all.
As we started up the hill I laughed out loud. “Heavens, aren’t we morbid though. Tell me, what brings you here? You said business, I believe.”
“Yes, there’s a small silver shop near here; a very fine craftsman has had it for years, and for years we’ve been trying to induce him to join up with us. The Forrest family is in silver—good and bad, but the money’s all been made on plate, at least the last few years.”
“Oh.” I stopped short. “Silver plate. Of course, how stupid of me. La Deuxième. The second service, as your ads put it.”
He bowed before me with a gallant wave of his hand. “At your service.”
We both laughed, and once more we were at ease and slightly silly with one another. But I had been given a glimpse of how much La Deuxième meant to Jeffrey Forrest; more, surely, than I could fully grasp from that simple glimpse his story had given me. That tale had been more than a traditional legend to him; it had come from deep within him. The sense of horror that the tale created was in part, and in a way that I could not understand, his horror. In time it would become my horror as well, but I did not foresee this on this sunny afternoon as we drove gaily back to Aunt Gwyneth’s.
Jeffrey—he insisted on first names before the day was out—came again the next day, and the next after that. I was very happy that he did so. It was the first I