Four Souls Read Free

the interlocked figures of the Persian carpet. Azure and indigo, rose-brick and barley pale. I cared for that carpet with a mother’s tenderness. A damp cloth to sponge the mud up would be required, I thought, and asked her to discard her boots.
    Barefooted, removed from the deceptive brilliance, Fleur was a cipher, a sorry-looking piece of flotsam, I thought, in her coarse brown sack. She didn’t even own a proper shawl or a coat, this woman, when she came to us. Desperate, deserted by my Irish-woman the day before (and drubbed low, insulted, she threw my own money in my face!), I hired Fleur Pillager for the laundry, gave to her in the bargain a pair of shoes and the promise of a new-made uniform.
    Who could have known?
    She would come into the house and before a day was over she would unbow her shoulders and stand up straight. She would look so very different. Who could have guessed that brother-in-law would be sitting in his wooden steamer chair out in the conservatory, and she’d pass by with a bucket in her hands? They would glance at each other, turn away, and look again. I thought her stupid, quite harmless, much quieter than the Irishwoman. I was trying to spare brother-in-law’s nerves, as well. I was pleased that this Indian woman had no family connections. Nothing in the look of her and the ignorant silence told me she could possibly end up connected to me.
    My brother-in-law, John Mauser, was the cause and perpetrator—I should say the victim as well, though he surely would not countenance that statement. After his war year, my brother-in-law had acquired a specific and demanding need for fresh-pressed clean linen. He sweat, to put it indelicately. Sweat. Once, twice, then three or four times a night, his man-nurse, Fantan, was required to change him from the soaked skin out, to strip the bed down and make it up fresh, with sheets starched smooth and scented with sandalwood. Then, and only then, could my brother-in-law fall asleep. It got to be so we couldn’t keep up with the demand. And although quite a number of doctors had attempted to solve the riddle of his symptoms, their lack of progress in other matters quite convinced me that, in regard to this problem, looking to the future was wisest. The sweating would be permanent. And so I was anxious to hire. I wanted a woman specifically to launder, to live in the basement and use the soapstone tubs and iron taps to scald and renew the sheets as Fantan carted them down, and up, and down again from my brother-in-law’s closed chamber.
    “Good,” she answered, when I had explained the position.
    “I’m most pleased.” I conveyed my satisfaction with professional rigor, although inside I was vastly relieved. I asked how soon she might be able to begin.
    “Now,” she said.
    The emphatic answer filled me with hope. Though she spoke almost not at all, the fact that she understood English was thereby established. Also, the linen had collected. Below my feet, in the basement, a pile that would have scorched my mother’s heart lay twisted and towering over the scrub boards and wringers.
    “We have a hot water heater and pump, a Maytag, a system that Mrs. Testor will teach you to use.”
    I offered a proper sum of payment, to which she nodded. Then I told her that although she might hear Fantan occasionally address me by my Christian name, and although out of acceptance of his mental infirmity I’d given up correcting him every time he did so, I absolutely required that she address me as Miss Gheen.
    Again, she nodded. How much she understood, I cannot tell. I pointed to myself, tapping my chest.
    “Miss Gheen, not Elizabeth.”
    “Not Elizabeth,” she repeated, looking straight into my eyes. Not Elizabeth it was after that.
     
    I SUPPOSE it was my fault, then, for not being more specific, but the look she gave me wasn’t covered in Miss Katherine Hammond’s courses on the hiring and retaining of help. I could not in honesty have categorized the gaze