Lien was not without perception, but I could not take her words with grace. In my youth, I was indeed offended. I rose somewhat stiffly, bade her good evening and started toward the door.
Behind me she spoke to Ian. “Go with her, please. I have much to think about, much to plan.”
Now that the play was over, Laurel went off ahead of us. As Ian returned with me to the upper hall of the other house, Mrs. Crawford was sounding the Chinese gong for supper. He kept me there for a moment, ignoring the summons. He had sensed my depression and discouragement and I knew he searched for some way to cheer me.
“Don’t mind Lien, Miranda. Give her time and she will get over this notion of posing for the figurehead.”
I met his look directly. “Laurel says she’s in love with you.”
He made no attempt at evasion. “Perhaps this was inevitable, though I did not seek it. She was a woman alone, with a husband grown old and indifferent. I found her friendless in this place. We were drawn to each other in sympathy when she came to me for her English lessons. I could not be otherwise than kind.”
“You are kind to everyone,” I said warmly.
He studied my face for a moment. “Not always, Miranda. There are times when kindness is not what I intend.”
I stepped quickly back from an implication I could not face. “Will you come to supper with me? There is something I want to show you, consult you about.”
He sensed my withdrawal and accepted with a faintly mocking bow. “I’ll be happy to join you,” he said, and waited while I went into my room and took the sea charts from the drawer where I had put them. Then we started downstairs together.
I do not know what made me glance back on the way down. Some faint creaking of a door, perhaps, or the whisper of a sharply drawn breath. At any rate I looked and was in time to see Sybil McLean’s door closing softly. How long had she stood there at the crack listening? Uneasiness lay upon me as I went downstairs to dine with Ian Pryott.
At least it was quieting to be with Ian. I doubted that Brock would be present tonight, and apparently Mrs. McLean was not coming down. Laurel of course had supped earlier. We sat beside each other at the round table and I tried to throw off the thought of that softly closing door upstairs.
THIRTEEN
Mrs. Crawford served us sullenly, setting out the cold meal with evident disapproval of this tête-à-tête. We could not help but be aware of her manner and we spoke guardedly while she was in the room. Not until the kitchen door had closed behind her did I show Ian the charts and point out the curious matter of the whale stampings. Though he pored over them, he could decipher no more of the matter than I.
“Will you keep them for a while and see what you can make of them?” I requested. “There must be meaning here that I haven’t been able to translate.”
Ian promised and set them beneath his chair. I started then to tell him of the information Mrs. Crawford had let drop—about my mother being brought to this house before I was born, and of her dying here. But I had broached the story with no more than a few words, when the door opened and Sybil McLean walked into the room, erect in her rustling black dress. She had decided to join us for the meal after all.
As she neared the table I saw that her skin seemed more sallow than before and her eyes were more darkly hollowed. Ian rose to seat her, but she barely thanked him for the courtesy. She rang the silver table bell for Mrs. Crawford to serve her, and during the rest of the meal she spoke to neither of us, her face drawn and strained, only her eyes moving watchfully.
I knew why she was here. She had heard us talking together in the hall and she had no wish for me to be alone with Ian, now that I was her son’s wife. Once she had wanted him to take me away from this house. Now she must accept me and guard what she felt were her son’s interests.
There must have been some demon in Ian that night. As he had warned, he was not always kind and considerate, and he had never liked Mrs. McLean or enjoyed her snubbing. Now he turned to a deliberate baiting of her that frightened me a little because I so mistrusted the woman.
“Tomorrow,” he announced with exaggerated cheer, “Miranda is going to pose for the figurehead I am carving. It is a replica of the Sea Jade’s famous figurehead, you know. I’ve been at a loss to find a model for the face, but Miranda has solved my problem. As her mother’s daughter, she will fit the subject admirably.”
The sallow hue in Mrs. McLean’s cheeks gave way to a purplish tinge. “You will do nothing of the kind,” she said arrogantly. “It is not suitable for the girl to pose for you.”
The demon of mischief-making quickened in Ian, though I tried to catch his eye and signal him to stop. Perhaps he had suffered so long under Mrs. McLean’s tyranny that he could not resist this opportunity to reverse the process and gain for once an ascendancy over her.
“I think you forget,” he said with deceptive sweetness, “that the girl, as you call her, can now do exactly as she pleases. One thing she pleases is a plan to bring the Sea Jade back to Scots Harbor. She has had word, you know, that the ship is afloat in Salem now.”
I gasped softly. I wanted this indeed, and had said so. But he was committing me to too much too soon. I had made no real plans since Brock had broken the glass of the picture.
Mrs. McLean put a hand to her mouth, as if to stop its twitching and answered a little wildly. “No—no! History must not repeat itself! I warned Andrew that he would bring bad luck upon the ship and upon all of us if he used Carrie’s face for the figurehead. Yet she posed for him in spite of my disapproval. With his own gifted hands he created that monstrous image. I cannot endure to have this thing happen again.”
Her look alarmed me and I reached out my hand to her. “Don’t distress yourself, please. I couldn’t bring the ship back without Brock’s help and he has already refused me. So perhaps nothing will be done. You mustn’t concern yourself. Ian likes to tease.”
She threw me a look that thanked me not a whit for my effort to reassure her. “You!” she said. “From the time when you were a squalling babe in this house you’ve brought us nothing but trouble.”
Brock had said I was not to speak to her of that time, but now she had brought it up herself. I leaned forward eagerly.
“I’d like to know more about what happened here at that time. Will you tell me?”
The woman had barely touched the food on her plate. Now she pushed herself abruptly from the table. “Some matters are best forgotten. I am not feeling well. If you will excuse me—”
I could not let her escape so easily, now that the subject had been opened. “Carrie was my mother. I don’t want her to be forgotten. I want to learn everything I can about her life, and about the time when she was in this house.”
Mrs. McLean rose from the table and stood for a moment looking down at me. She did, indeed, look faint and ill, but she managed to rally her forces for a further effort.
“Very well. Come with me and you shall learn.”
I flung a quick look at Ian. The mockery had gone from his eyes. I think he was a little ashamed of himself for baiting one who was momentarily helpless. He nodded to me to go with her and I left my place at the table.
As she climbed the stairs, Mrs. McLean clung heavily to the rail. In the upper hall she led the way to the rear and opened the door of the small room I had occupied upon my arrival. It stood as stark and empty and chill as it had on the day I had first set foot in it. She stepped into its emptiness and lighted a candle on the bureau. The door to Laurel’s room was closed and I heard the child humming tunelessly to herself in the room beyond.
Sybil McLean had rallied a little. She moved to the center of the floor and stood looking about with a strangely gratified air—as if she took some pleasure in her memories of this room. As if she drew strength from the mere thinking of them.
“You were born here,” she said. “Your mother died in that very bed.”
The room’s chill seemed to invade my bones. So innocently had I slept here
my first night in this house, not knowing that my mother had lain in the same bed—in suffering and in death.
“The captain had the room shut up just the way it was when she died,” the woman went on. “We did not open it again, until you came here to Bascomb’s Point.”
I could not speak. I wished she would withdraw her cold, intent stare. It was as though she meant to relish any pain I might feel. As though she meant to search the very depth of my being and enjoy perversely the probing of wounds. I had asked for this, but I had not expected so hurtful a thrust of pain.
I tried to shield my vulnerability by speaking of practical matters. “Did you nurse her when she was here?”
“I?” Mrs. McLean shifted her gaze to the bed for a moment, as though she saw the sick woman there. “Naturally I did not! I would never have touched the creature. The captain knew that very well. He brought in a midwife from the village to nurse her.”
“And afterwards?” I pressed. “After my mother died, who cared for me?”
She actually smiled at me, spreading tight, thin lips in a grimace. “I took care of you myself for several months. Until Captain Heath came home and took you away. You were, after all, a helpless baby, and I had no objection to tending you. It had been a long while since I’d had a child of my own.”
I could not imagine her caring tenderly for Carrie’s babe. If I had been in her care during my first months, I was perhaps fortunate to be alive. I thought of the scar upon my shoulder and what Brock had said of my injury. Yet I could not bring myself to question her about it. In this direction terror awaited me in the shadows of the past.
Perhaps she guessed the turn of my thoughts, for she looked almost amused. “Come,” she said, motioning me from the room. “Since you’ve opened this door yourself, there are other things I can show you.”
This time she led me to the big front bedroom that had once been Rose McLean’s and was now mine. From the keys she wore dangling from her belt, Mrs. McLean selected a small one and unlocked the tall wardrobe closet. With a careless hand she brought out several dresses that hung there and flung them upon the bed.
“There you are! These are your mother’s clothes—those she brought with her when she came here. The captain would not permit us to burn them as I wished, and after Rose’s death we stored them here.”
Under the woman’s cold, elated look, I did not want to touch the garments that lay upon the bed. She saw my hesitation and reached past me to pick up a dress of soft brown cashmere and thrust it into my hands.
“It must seem strange to know that your mother’s fingers fastened these hooks, that this fabric clothed her body. Are you pleased now that you asked me? Are you happy to wallow in old tragedy? Does it give you satisfaction?”
I tried to return her look without wincing. “I’m happy to have something of my mother’s. Thank you for showing me her things.”
She flung the dress on the bed and went out of the room without another word. When the door closed after her I picked up the garments and sat in my rocker, holding them in my arms. A faint scent of old perfume emanated from the cloth, musty and stale. It was as if something of the girl who had been my mother came close to me for the first time. As though she stood beside my chair—a misty, formless figure, yet with the power to reach out and touch me over the long dead years. Almost I could hear the whisper of her voice—as if there was something she tried to tell me, some warning she urged upon me, and by which she sought to protect me.
The rocker creaked under my moving weight. A gust of wind rattled a windowpane and I sighed deeply. The garments in my hands were only a means of evoking dreams. They could tell me nothing. Dreaming was something I had put from me for good—unless I could dream to a purpose. I must not return to old habits again.
Reality lay in the fact of a man’s body tumbled backward from a ladder, bleeding upon ballast stone. A man of the sea, who would never have slipped so easily from a ship’s ladder, or fallen by accident with such force as to result in death. Someone overhead had run away and only I had knowledge of that running. All this was real. All this had happened.
More clearly now, I began to sense my own danger. I had held my tongue and no one knew what I had heard. No one knew of the words Tom Henderson had whispered. Yet what if there was one who feared that I might still speak out at any time? One, perhaps, who suspected me of greater knowledge than I possessed?
The very thought was frightening. I could not sit here longer with fear running through me, icy cold. I rose to hang my mother’s dresses in the wardrobe and closed the door upon them. Then I went to tap lightly on the door of Laurel’s room. The child at least would be company.
When Laurel answered, I went in and finding her in bed, sat beside her. For nearly an hour I stayed to talk and for once she did not fight me off, or try to hurt or alarm me. She had been reading herself to sleep and was already a little drowsy, which perhaps made her more tranquil and amenable.
Deliberately I spoke of plans for the days to come, broaching the question of whether or not the Sea Jade might be brought back to Scots Harbor. I spoke of the posing I would do for Ian. And so, at length and by roundabout ways, I came to Laurel herself.
“Tomorrow you must help me with your dresses,” I said. “You can show me where mending is needed. Perhaps, together, we can make you some new things. My aunt always said I was very neat and clever with a needle.”
A faint interest showed itself in the child’s eyes. At least she was enjoying the attention I had given her. And a beginning had been made. Before I left her to fall asleep, I told her one of my father’s tales of the sea—all about the courage of men pitted against an element so much more powerful than themselves—an element which they nevertheless bested, as brave sailors must.
Yet while I talked and Laurel listened drowsily, I could not give my attention wholly to the matter in hand. Another part of my mind was remembering Brock. Where was he now? In spite of my evasion, did he suspect me of knowledge withheld? And if he did, what measures might he take to assure my silence? Though I listened for his footsteps to mount the stairs and come down the hall to his room, I heard them neither then nor later. I must have been long asleep in my bed by the time that dark-browed, vengeful man returned to Bascomb’s Point from whatever business he had been about.
During the following days, in spite of an anxiety that continued to haunt me, in spite of a new habit of glancing over my shoulder when I neared any lonely place, in spite of a growing sense of enemies about me, the time passed quietly enough and at first without event.
Mr. Osgood informed me that the legalities of the will might take many months to work out. He was as good as his promise and came at once to go through Captain Obadiah’s papers, but he did not find the letter the captain had mentioned that would supposedly explain the motives behind his plan. I told the lawyer of secret drawers in the captain’s desk aboard the Pride, but it seemed to go against Mr. Osgood’s neatly legal mind to think that much of importance would be stored in such a place. He suggested casually that I might investigate this material when it was convenient and show him anything I thought important. For me, however, the Pride, so bright and shipshape above decks, was a place of oppressive evil below—a place where dark deeds had been committed. I did not want to visit it alone.
As far as Tom Henderson’s death was concerned, rumors and gossip were still rife and on the two or three occasions when I went to the village I could see that I was not wanted there. Officially what had happened had been set down as accident, since there were no indications that could be regarded as evidence of anything else. Nevertheless, I had the feeling that the fact of murder—an awareness of that fact—lay close to the surface at Bascomb’s Point. We who lived there did not speak of Tom Henderson among ourselves, but we watched one another with distrustful eyes. A shadow lay upon us—as if of some dreadful calamity that was still to fall. Only Ian seemed able to escape the shadow, coming seldom to meals at the house, slipping quietly in and out
of the library to avoid Brock and his mother.
In those uneasy days there were three deviations from what I was coming to regard as the usual at Bascomb’s Point. First, the black dog took to baying at the moon every night, wearing my nerves thin with the frightening sound. When I brought myself to speak to Brock about the matter, questioning whether the animal could be taught more silent ways at night, he merely laughed and told me that I might take on Lucifer’s education any time I saw fit. The moon was full, he pointed out, and both men and dogs became restless and uneasy at that time. Eventually the baying would stop. The others in the house seemed to take no concern for the matter, perhaps being long inured to the sound. I tried to resign myself, tried to sleep in spite of the ugly clamor.
The second change had to do with my posing for Ian Pryott during the morning hours. On the day after I had promised to serve as model for the figurehead I had gone into the workroom and sat down. Ian was there waiting for me and the work was begun. When what was happening became evident there was a fuming among the others in the house. No one approved, but this condemnation did not at once break violently into the open. Mrs. McLean urged her son to forbid my posing on the grounds of impropriety. I heard him tell her carelessly that if she disapproved she could sit in at the posing sessions and play the role of chaperon. But this she could not bear to do.
Brock’s own dislike for what we were doing did not cause him to interfere. I almost wished that he would. Anything would have seemed preferable to his remote disavowal of concern toward all that affected me.
Of Lien I saw little, though Ian reported that she had not forgiven him for using me as a model and that her mood was one of deep gloom. Since she would speak frankly to no one at this time, we could not be sure what course her thoughts were taking, or what plan she might be considering for the future.
Sea Jade Page 19
