The Lord Came at Twilight by Daniel Mills

Author:Daniel Mills [Mills, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Renaissance Books
Published: 2015-10-18T22:00:00+00:00

*

Six o’clock. He dresses himself in his finest suit, unlaundered in the weeks since the Professor’s funeral. He fastens his ascot tie and polishes his shoes to a high shine. A dry boutonniere—a white lily—completes the ensemble. He descends the stairs to the corridor, where he positions his chair against the wainscoting ten feet from the doorway.

He waits. At six-thirty, the bell rings and he opens the door to her. She wears a dress of beaded black linen. Like him, she has dressed up for their meeting, changing out of her customary work clothes. With both hands she holds a piece of heavy white crockery.

“It isn’t much,” she explains, joining him in the corridor. “Merely some things we had lying about the house. But I thought of you here without a housekeeper to look after you—and you’d been so kind in lending us that book...”

He shakes his head. “Please,” he says. “It was nothing.”

“Maybe to you it was, but not to Mother. She wanted to come with me, to thank you herself, but the stairs were too much.”

“What a shame,” he says.

She indicates the crock in her hands. “I made this for you this morning. Before work. It should still be good, but it needs warming up. Where’s your kitchen? If you like, I can put it in the oven for you.”

“I—I think I would like that, yes.”

A moment passes. She regards him pointedly. Her dark hair cascades down her back and shoulders, neatly framing her oval face. Her eyes are gray and lustrous, nearly opalescent.

She prompts him. “The kitchen?”

“Ah, yes,” he says, flushing. His pulse catches in his throat, rising like a gorge. “How foolish of me. Come this way.”

He opens the door to the dining room and leads her through to the kitchen. The counters are bare. The basin is crowded with empty milk bottles left to soak.

Katherine bends over to open the oven and light the gas. Her movements are rapid, precise but efficient, and he wonders at the reasons for her haste.

“Your mother,” he says, fumbling for a suitable topic of conversation. “You said that she knew the Professor?”

“A long time ago,” she says, sliding the crock into the oven. “I believe he was her tutor? She would have been just a girl at the time. I gather something happened, and they parted ways, but that was nearly fifty years ago. Her memory isn’t all it used to be.”

She turns around. “But I expect you must know all about that, living here alone with the old Professor—and you a young man yourself. I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s like living with a child sometimes. She sneaks outside. Late at night. After I’ve fallen sleep. She goes out in her veil because she thinks she’s late for her wedding. That’s sad, isn’t it?”

He murmurs his agreement. “It is sad,” he says, distracted.

He recalls the woman he had glimpsed from his window—the same figure of whom he later dreamt—and realizes what he had, in fact, seen.

“Anyway, it’s nearly seven,” Katherine says.

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