The Lightning Keeper (40 page)

Only a rock wall separated the Walchensee from the flat land; the bottom of the lake behind this natural barrier reached to the level of the plateau. The situation invited development, for a tunnel could be dug through the rock at a point a small distance below the surface, and large pipes, or penstocks, could then carry the water rushing down the slopes to turbines in a powerhouse nestled against the slope….

Consulting engineers like [Oskar] von Miller usually do not themselves invent and develop technology, but instead depend on manufacturers to fulfill design specifications. Furthermore, large projects like the Walchenseewerk…are often designed to take advantage of the state of the art rather than to advance far beyond it. The challenge for von Miller…was artfully to adapt…technologies to particular local conditions.

—
description of the Walchensee (Bavaria)
generation & distribution project, completed 1924.
Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power

When she heard the thump and the wailing cry, Harriet had a pretty exact idea of what had happened, and her first reaction, despairing and ungenerous, was “Oh, not now!”

Mrs. Evans had fallen. She was in the dining room, trying to entertain Amos Bigelow and set the table for the Thanksgiving dinner at the same time. Harriet was in the kitchen, basting the bird one last time, and wondering if it was done. Both the cook and the pantry maid were down with a nasty flu, and Dr. and Mrs. Crowell, old and understanding friends of the family, were in the parlor. Harriet nearly dropped the bird and the pan to the floor. She thrust the baster and the potholders at the scullery girl, whose eyes were round with apprehension.

In the dining room Mrs. Evans, in her best black, lay in a litter of cranberry sauce, and the clothes gave up a strong smell of urine. Dr. Crowell knelt by her and held her hand. Her soft moaning was overridden by his louder complaint about the absence of his medical bag.

“It was right there by the door, and all I had to do was put out my hand. You'd think after forty years that I'd have more sense.”

“Is it the hip, then?”

“Yes, almost certainly. We shall have to get her to a bed.”

“Of course. Father, go sit with Mrs. Crowley.”

The old man stood with his back to the fire, and so close that she could smell the singed wool, which was what drew her attention to him. He wrung his hands, bleating, “Oh, oh, oh…”

“Mrs. Crowley,” Harriet said very distinctly, “go and sit with Mrs. Crowley.” She gave him a gentle push, and like a toy boat he drifted off in the direction of the parlor.

“We'll need help getting a blanket under her. Has she her own bed here?”

“Yes, but I'm afraid it's upstairs. Lily!” she spoke sharply to the hovering maid, “don't just stand there. See if you can find Carpenter. He should be in his room over the garage.”

Harriet put her hand on Mrs. Evans's forehead, which seemed to quiet her.

“Will she be all right?”

“Probably so, but she's had a terrible shock. Would you have a sleeping draft, a sedative of any sort?”

“No.”

“Then I shall just have to drive home and back, but that will take some time, and I'd like to have her in bed first.”

An anxious white face appeared in the pantry door. “Begging pardon, ma'am.”

“Yes, Sarah, what is it?”

“The bird, ma'am. Maybe it's burning.”

“For Heaven's sake take it out, then!” Sarah vanished.

Dr. Crowell actually smiled at her. “You have your hands full today. You should have told us.”

“I am so glad you are here, and so sorry about the dinner.”

Lily burst into the room, and behind her, in the shadow of the stairwell, stood Olivia. Harriet had not even known she was in the house.

“He's not there, mum.”

“Where is he?”

“I'm sure I don't know, mum.”

“And the stable boy?”

“Him neither. Gone the both of them, maybe to town.”

“Well, get a blanket then, and stay with Mr. Bigelow and Mrs. Crowell.”

“I can help,” said Olivia from her station.

Harriet, Olivia, and Dr. Crowell managed to get Mrs. Evans up the stairs and into her bed, with a couple of old blankets and a torn sheet
under her. Harriet began to fumble with the fastenings of the skirt and Olivia put a hand on her arm.

“I will take care of this.”

The doctor stood back from the bed while they worked. He seemed to be more concerned about Harriet.

“I say again, you have your hands full, and not just today.”

“What?” Her mind was wandering: to the kitchen, where Sarah would be doing something with the turkey; to the parlor, where Lily would be on pins and needles. Her father, she knew, made Lily very anxious even under the best of circumstances.

“I think it is time that you took some care for the other situation, and even some strong measures.”

“This is not about Mrs. Evans.”

“No, but this fall will make it impossible for her to help your father, to tend to him. You cannot do this yourself, not all of it. It is too great a burden.”

She protested that she was strong and determined and she could always call upon Carpenter, the chauffeur.

Dr. Crowley said nothing. He raised his eyebrows.

“What are you saying?”

“Amos is an old, old friend, as you must know, but I think it is time, for his own safekeeping.”

“You mean the Home?”

“Yes.” The word sounded in her ear like the closing of a door.

The Home was a universal shorthand for the Connecticut Home for the Incompetent, located on the outskirts of Billingsford, not a dozen miles away. She had twice visited that forbidding stone building in the course of her work with the Ladies' Auxiliary, and had come away with a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the weather.

“Please don't.” Her voice was faint.

“Harriet, try to think clearly about this, for his sake and your own.”

“It is the most dreadful place….” She remembered, too late, Dr. Crowell's connection to the Home as a member of the advisory board, but her memory of particular smells gave her the courage to go on. “Please don't let us talk of this. However sensible the suggestion may be, it is not acceptable to me. He must stay here. I will find the strength.”

“I'm afraid I have seen other cases like his, an early descent into…well, too early. I'm afraid you have little idea of the sacrifice you will make of yourself, of your domestic happiness.”

Harriet, with her eyes cast down, seemed to be reflecting on the wisdom of his words, but she was instead taking an inventory of those blessings. “It is too late, Doctor. Those sacrifices have already been made. I should be in Washington with my husband. But I am here, and this accident will not change my mind about what I must do.”

“Well, then,” Dr. Crowell made a tactical retreat, “let me see to my patient.”

Harriet seemed intent on the dumb show of the doctor's ritual: checking the pulse against the gold pocket watch, bending over the bed to hear the respiration. She was thinking of the office, of those afternoons that began with such bright purpose and ended in the languorous dusk with her staring at a crack in the stove, a necklace of fire, all animation now suspended until his footfall should break the spell.

Olivia said something to her that she did not hear clearly.

“What?”

“She is old. She will be in bed for weeks, and maybe then a cripple. I will take care of your father.”

She took Olivia's hand in her own and held it, not briefly, as one might expect, but with a firm, lasting, and fervent pressure.

C
IRCUMSTANCE HAD SCHOOLED
Olivia Toussaint in many things, but to the subject of love she came late and at a disadvantage. Her mother had been taken at such an early age that she was not sure, now, what she remembered and what she imagined. She had never known a grandmother, an aunt, an older sister. She did not know if her mother had a family: no letters survived, not a single photograph. At the funeral the plain pine box had been nailed shut on whatever was left, and the priest gave her a pasteboard card with the Ave on one side and on the other a brightly robed and smiling Virgin, who would become the image and metaphor of her mother.

Had she loved Horatio before he put his hand on her and made her lie with him? Afterward, all that remained was obedience, his need an unyielding, inescapable fact, the anvil on which her life was to be shaped.

At first she paid little mind to Amos Bigelow, who differed from people she had doctored only in that there was no chance of improvement in his condition. He would not speak to her, and asked every day, in her hearing, when Mrs. Evans would be coming back. He had forgotten that Mrs. Evans lay in a bed directly above the servants' dining room, where he took his meals, and that his daughter had taken him up to see her.

Where Mrs. Evans had persuaded with gentle common sense,
Olivia presided with silent strength. She could, if necessary, resort to force: it was a lesson he had not forgotten. Olivia took over at noon when Harriet went into town, and Amos Bigelow had refused to eat with this strange woman as his companion.