I had the feeling that Vivian was happy to postpone our meeting with Meryl. When she’d parked, we climbed onto a low stone wall and sat watching.
“Everett will be annoyed because they’ve come down in one of his fields.”
Once the air was out of the great rainbow of cloth, the ground crew began to roll it up carefully, neatly, so it would be ready for the next inflating. When the task was nearly done, Vivian slipped down from the wall.
“I suppose we’d better go and see if Meryl is up at the house.”
I had never been inside the family home when Stephen had brought me to the farm. A gravel road followed the valley level for a half mile and then wound around a stand of dark pine trees.
“I’ve never liked this place,” Vivian said. “It gives me the creeps. Stephen’s grandfather came here from his home up the Hudson in New York—and he tried to bring that Hudson River architecture with him.”
The bright colors of the hills disappeared as we followed the curving road. Here the trees were pine and spruce and hemlock—trees that had been here for a long time, so that the ground beneath them was russet and springy with needles.
“When Julian and I took a balloon trip, we floated right over this place,” Vivian told me. “You can’t imagine how secluded it is. The woods fold around the house and it’s set into a little cove in the mountains. If this were the sea, the cove would be a bay, and almost landlocked.”
The entrance was narrower than the gravel road that ran past it. We turned off into a sheltered expanse of grassy space. Anyone following the main road would never guess that a house stood hidden away in this secret spot.
“How strange to build here,” I said. “It must have been hard to reach in those early days.”
“Right! I’ve always wondered if old Colonel Asche might be hiding from something. Anyway, he liked to be self-sufficient. The farm furnished most of what he needed, and it’s less secluded than the house. The world came to him when he pleased, but it must have been hard for his wife. I think Everett must resemble him. Here we are.”
As I got out of the car I looked up at a high ridge of mountain that rose in a rocky wall against the sky, and Vivian looked up too.
“That pile of rock up there is what divides us from Stephen’s place. We’re really not that far away, as the crow flies.”
The house stood out from trees that bracketed it in dark pine. A Carpenter’s Gothic structure had been set down in the hills of Virginia. Its steeply slanted roofs, peaked gables and wide front porch were all edged with intricate gingerbread, and I wondered who, here in the South, had created all this fanciful fretwork. I liked Jeffersonian pillars better, and I certainly preferred white paint to this dismal gray.
“Meryl loves this house,” Vivian said. “She says it suits her, though Everett can’t stand it. He hasn’t an ounce of sentimentality in him. He hated its isolation when he lived here some of the time as a boy. But Stephen is part owner and he feels an attachment to those who went before, and he won’t let Everett get rid of it.”
“There’s a car on the driveway,” I said, “so Meryl must be inside.”
“Except that it’s not her car, Lynn.” Vivian seemed suddenly alert.
“If Meryl isn’t here—” I began.
“I think she may be,” Vivian said softly. “Let’s find out.”
For a moment I waited, studying the scene before me. Somehow, the gray house had a deserted appearance, most of its shutters closed against storms that could blow up suddenly in the mountains. The front door stood open, however, behind its screen.
“What are you going to say to her, Lynn?” Vivian asked as we walked up a path of cracked and broken bricks.
I could only shake my head. “I’ll have to play it by ear.”
“I think she’s peeved with Everett right now, so that may help,” Vivian whispered. Her manner had taken on a conspiratorial air, so that it was startling when she went back to press her hand on the car horn. The sound splintered the silence.
Immediately, Meryl appeared on the porch, watching as we approached the steps.
“What is it?” she cried. “Has something happened?”
Vivian fell behind me as we mounted the steps, leaving me to answer. “Nothing urgent. We’d just like to talk with you. Away from Everett.”
“It won’t do you any good.” Meryl scowled, unwelcoming. “I can’t do a thing about Everett, but if you want to talk, I’ll listen. Let’s sit out here in the sun. It’s cold inside.”
Wicker furniture, painted as gray as the house, had been covered with tarpaulins, and Meryl pulled them off a sofa and two chairs. We sat down apart from each other, more than a little wary. Meryl seemed on edge, not happy with our presence, and apparently the car in the driveway was not to be acknowledged.
While I was seeking for the right words, Vivian surprised me again.
“Everett has told Julian and me to leave Stephen’s house,” she blurted out, and once more began to cry.
I could sense Meryl’s contempt for weak tears as she spoke. “I’m not surprised. I thought it might come to this—only not so quickly. He hasn’t said a word to me, though that’s not unusual. Anyway, Vivian, I don’t think crying about it is going to help.”
“Isn’t there any way you could manage to change Everett’s mind?” I asked. “This seems a terrible thing to do—and quite awful for Jilly.”
Meryl shook her head. “Once Everett takes a stand he has to hold to it, no matter what. If he did anything else it would show weakness—and he’s too unsure of himself to risk that. So if he’s decided about this, there won’t be any way to change his mind.”
There seemed nothing left to say. Our news had been told, the verdict given, and though I was nearly ready to give up, I made a last try.
“For Jilly’s sake, Meryl, you could talk to him at least. Julian and Vivian have been Jilly’s only friends in that house. Stephen is apparently helpless, and Carla Raines is a vicious influence when it comes to Jilly. I’ve seen how she treats her—with no sensitivity or compassion.”
“Everett thinks Jilly needs disciplining.” Meryl sounded bored with the subject and eager for us to leave. “All I can do is look in on Jilly frequently. Take her out when I can. Perhaps write to Oriana. Though that’s pretty futile too.”
In contrast to Meryl’s impatience, Vivian seemed anxious to postpone our leaving. She wiped her tears away and spoke to Meryl. “At least show Lynn the old house. I’m sure she’d be interested.”
Meryl had no choice but to lead me inside. Vivian didn’t follow but stayed on the porch, rocking comfortably and watching the car. I had a feeling that she knew very well who it belonged to.
A long, dim hall ran from front to back, with narrow stairs rising on the left. The door to a Victorian parlor opened on the right, and Meryl waved me into it. The room, with its velvet sofa, whatnot tables, and heavy draperies, seemed lost in gloom. An overhead chandelier—rather a plain one—shed a pale light that only added to the shadows. No one else seemed to be about.
“Who takes care of all this?” I asked.
Meryl explained. “We still have the same caretaker. The old man’s been here for a good many years. He’s pretty deaf now, but he’s quite happy to live in his own place out in back and keep an eye on everything. He keeps the forest from taking over and cleans up after a storm. There’s no vandalism to worry about. There aren’t even any neighbors unless you go back to the farm.”
I moved idly about the room. It had been emptied of the small possessions of the family who had lived here. There were few ornaments, but one object had been left to dominate a round table covered by a red velvet cloth with dangling tassels. I stared in recognition.
A handsome piece of white quartz nearly six inches high adorned the table. It was like a miniature mountain, with a flat base where it had once been embedded in the earth. Its graduated sides rose into sharp, individual peaks. Quartz shone in the light, with threads of darker silver, and there
were still stains of the red earth from which it had been taken. I picked it up and held it, recognizing the very weight in my hands.
This was the rock that Stephen had brought to me when the ground breaking for our house-to-be had begun. I remembered telling him that I would place it on a coffee table in our living room when we moved in. Now it had found its way to this lonely spot where Stephen’s grandfather had built his home.
A sense of stubborn ownership possessed me. “Stephen gave me this piece of quartz when the bulldozer turned it up on our land,” I told Meryl. It had been our land then.
“Keep it if you like,” Meryl said. “You know, I always wondered why you ran away. Though of course you were young and hurt and much too proud. Sometimes I’ve wondered what would have happened if you’d just stayed and waited for that crazy infatuation to die out? If you’d made it a little harder for Stephen at the time?”
“I couldn’t want a man who would do that to me!” I cried, hearing an echo of old passion in my voice. “If that was the way Stephen felt, he could have her! But he couldn’t have me too. I had the foolish notion in those days that love was supposed to be forever. I’ve learned better since.”
“A valuable lesson!” Her own bitterness came through her voice. “So what are you going to do, now that you’ve attained all this wisdom?”
The feeling of solid rock in my hands seemed to give me new courage and determination—not for myself, but for Jilly. As Julian had told me, Stephen was the only one who opposed Everett.
“I’m going to talk to Stephen,” I told her firmly.
Meryl’s laugh had a scornful ring. “I wish you luck.”
She walked into the hall and then stopped in surprise. Following her, I saw that Vivian had come into the house and was looking around searchingly.
“Where’s Paul?” she asked. “That’s his car out there, isn’t it? What’s he doing here?”
Meryl was clearly exasperated. “I don’t need to explain anything to anyone.”
“No, of course you needn’t explain.” Vivian spoke gently enough, but she sounded rather pleased.
Paul must have been listening at the rear of the house, for he came out of a back room a bit cockily. “Hi, everybody,” he greeted us.
“I think we’d better be going,” Vivian said. She turned her back on him with a certain disdain and walked out the front door. I glanced at Meryl and then went with her.
Meryl came after us at once, running down the steps as we walked toward Vivian’s car. “Look, Vivian, this isn’t what you probably think,” she began.
“I’m not thinking anything,” Vivian said sweetly. “What you do is your own affair. I just hope you’ll be able to help a little with Everett’s decision.”
Gentle blackmail, I wondered?
Meryl gave us both a dark look and returned to the house. For a moment Vivian stood with her hand on the car door, her head tilted as though she listened to something far away. I listened too, and heard the sound. From the ridge of rock high above the treetops, wind carried a keening harp strain down to us.
Vivian shivered. “I hate that sound! Julian calls those rocks up there the Singing Stones.”
“I know. I’ve heard them from Stephen’s house. What are they, really?”
She didn’t answer directly. “That’s the sound of death,” she said, and got quickly into the car.
This was much too weird. Julian had seemed almost reverential about the stones, but clearly Vivian felt differently. However, it wasn’t some strange rock formation that interested me as we drove back, but the fact of Paul’s presence in that remote place with Meryl. There seemed a shoddiness here that was disturbing, and I couldn’t imagine what Meryl might see in Paul Woolf. If Everett found out—but that didn’t bear thinking about. Vivian might really have found a source of pressure to use with Meryl. And that seemed shoddy too—though I could hardly blame Vivian, who was desperate.
When we reached the house, I told her what I had said to Meryl. “I’m going to talk to Stephen. It may not do any good, but I have to try.”
I’d brought the quartz rock with me, and I held it tightly in my hands—as though it were a tie with that happier past I’d left behind so long ago. It might even be something that would give me the courage I needed to face Stephen.
Most of the way back Vivian seemed lost in a thoughtful silence, but when we neared the house she fell in with my plan.
“Perhaps this is a good time to see Stephen, while Paul is away. Paul, of course, listens to Everett, who pays his salary, and he’s set himself as a guard between Stephen and everything outside. Even Julian and me. Emory Dale, who spells Paul, will be on duty now, and you can send him away so you can see Stephen alone. Perhaps if anyone can wake him up, you can.”
“All right, I’ll try.”
She glanced at the rock resting on my knees. “What’s that for?”
“I want to show it to Stephen,” I said, and didn’t try to explain, even to myself.
As soon as we reached the house and Vivian had parked her car, I got out and walked along the deck toward Stephen’s room, still carrying the rock, and feeling as though I held my heart in my hands.
There was no need to go inside, or talk to Emory. Where the deck curved out to offer a view of mountain and valley, Stephen sat in his wheelchair facing the rail. His back was toward me, so he couldn’t see me coming and wheel himself away. This was the western aspect of the house, and sunny now, but the wind blew up here and a blanket covered Stephen’s knees. Under his cardigan his shoulders were rounded, seeming without strength, emphasizing the sense of purposelessness about him. His short-cropped hair seemed painfully neat, since he had never been a careful, controlled man in the past, but always ready to take the next fence like the racehorse he’d once been. I doubted that he saw any of the beauty spread out before him.
For a moment I stood still, listening to the wind. But no sound of “singing” reached me, and I wondered why I heard the eerie music at one time and not another.
Steadying my own resolve, I walked around his chair and sat down on a bench close to the rail. Only his eyes moved. He noted me there, and then stared again into space. Eyes that seemed without life, no longer a flashing, brilliant green. I placed the piece of quartz on the bench beside me.
Again he glanced briefly before he looked away. But this time he spoke to me. “Why did you come to Virginia?”
Only a hint of the old deep timbre remained in the voice that had once sent chills up and down my spine.
I answered him, keeping my own voice steady with an effort. “I came because Julian Forster asked me to. My work has been with children, and when Julian Forster saw me on television he thought I might be able to help Jilly.”
“Why does my daughter need help?”
I exploded then. “Is everyone around Jilly so blind that you can’t see how much is wrong?”
He didn’t trouble to respond, and I rushed on.
“Until now, Jilly has at least had Julian and Vivian to care about her. No one else bothers. Carla Raines is terrible with her. And now Everett has told the Forsters to move out of this house. I suppose he means to bring in some hired couple as housekeepers. But when the Forsters go, who will care about Jilly?”
I’d made my challenge as strong as I dared, but again he didn’t answer. A complete indifference to life seemed to hold him prisoner, so that his only interest turned in upon himself. I couldn’t be sorry for him now, when my main concern was for Jilly, and I put a bite into my words.
“Apparently she can’t hope for any caring interest from you or Oriana—let alone any love!”
That forced him into words. “What do you know about that? What do you know about anything in this house?”
“I don’t need to know very much. I only need to use my eyes. Have you looked at Jilly lately to see what’s happening to her? Have you used your eyes?”
This too seemed to slip past, leaving him unmoved. “What has Julian done that has c
aused Everett to ask him to move out?”
“He failed to report that someone broke into your rooms, and that the next day you tried to kill yourself.”
That was blunt enough, and color flooded into Stephen’s face while his mouth tightened grimly. I could remember when that mouth had seemed sensitive, warm, loving.
I went on quickly. “Vivian was married to your father, and you’ve always been kind to her. At least, that’s what she says. So how can you allow her to be put out of the home where Larry expected her to stay?”
“Allow?” Bitterness laced through the word. “What possible power of action do you think has been left to me in this chair?”
“Whatever power you choose to take for yourself!” I knew how sharp I sounded.
His color faded and lassitude took over again. “Everett knows what’s best for all of us. I trust him.”
“Then you’re a fool!” My feelings were out of hand now, and I couldn’t help making everything worse. My own hurt made me want to hurt him, and I’d lost all thought of being fair.
Before he could answer, if he’d had any intention of answering, I picked up the quartz and held it out to him.
“I’ve brought you something. Once you gave me this—and now I’d like to give it back. It came from the ground this house is built upon—and it belongs here. I don’t want it anymore.”
He didn’t take it and I set it on his knees—to be ignored.
I told myself that I’d had to try something—find some way to break through his lethargy and indifference-even though I suspected my own motives at the same time. If he’d been furious with me, I’d have felt pleased.
At least I made an effort to speak more gently. “Have you seen Jilly dance? She has a special talent, but it’s being stifled by that woman who was brought in to take charge of her.”
“I don’t want Jilly to be a dancer.” I could hardly hear his low words.
“Why not? She wants to dance the way you wanted to be an architect. Stamp out the talent that was given us, and what is there left in life?”
The Singing Stones Page 10
