Thunder Heights

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Better go change your gloves before we dock. That’s Westcliff coming up ahead of us.”

  It was exasperating to be given directions, as she might have directed a child in her charge. Perhaps he regarded her in that light—as a foolish girl who soiled her gloves and had to be looked after, however reluctantly, because he worked for her grandfather. Her indignation with him increased as she hurried below to put on a fresh pair of gloves from her suitcase. When she carried the bag up on deck, Ross Granger was there ahead of her, his own large suitcase at his feet. The dock was clearly visible now, with the clustered houses and white steepled church of Westcliff behind. On the small dock townspeople had gathered to watch the boat come in. Her companion looked down at them with interest.

  “I see you’re to be met,” he said. “There’s your cousin, Booth Hendricks, looking for you.”

  “Cousin?” she repeated. “Oh, you mean the one Mr. Pompton said was adopted as a child by Aunt Hortense?”

  “Yes—he has kept his own name in spite of adoption. He’s the tall fellow down there in the gray derby.”

  Camilla studied the figure of the man Ross Granger indicated. He was lean and dark, with a thin, melancholy face. Even at this distance she could see that he was handsome. He looked rather like an actor her father had once taken her to see play Hamlet at the Garrick Theater in New York. The knot of his cravat, the loop of gold watch chain across his well-cut vest, the gray derby on his head, all were fashionable to a surprising degree. Booth Hendricks would have looked at home on Fifth Avenue in New York. He seemed out of place in Westcliff. Perhaps, like her, he knew himself as an outsider. She felt sympathy quicken for this cousin by adoption, and she went down the gangplank eagerly to meet him.

  THREE

  Booth Hendricks came forward to greet her. He had only a careless nod for Ross, but he held out his hand to Camilla and flashed her a quick smile in which a certain astonishment was evident.

  “Cousin Camilla!” he said, his dark face glowing with an unexpected warmth. Then he turned coolly to the other man. “So you’re back? We thought you might not make it in time. Can we give you a ride out to the house?”

  Ross Granger shook his head. “Thanks, no,” he said, his tone equally cool. Clearly there was no liking between these two. “I’ve business in the village first. I’ll walk out as usual.” He touched his cap casually to Camilla and walked away, to lose himself in the crowd.

  Booth stared after him for a moment. “Did Pompton arrange for you to come upriver with Granger?” he asked.

  “No.” Camilla shook her head. “I met him by chance on the boat. He didn’t know Grandfather was ill.”

  Her cousin seemed to shrug the other man aside. “No matter. The pleasant surprise of your coming is the important thing. Though I may as well warn you that you’re going to be something of a shock to the family. We had no preparation before Pompton’s wire. My mother says it’s history repeating itself. I suppose you know how much you look like your mother?”

  The flattery of frank admiration in his eyes was pleasantly soothing after Ross Granger’s prickly remarks and critical attitude.

  “I’m glad I look like her,” she told him warmly.

  Booth hailed a rig waiting on the narrow dirt road. The driver flicked a hand to his cap and drew up before them. Booth handed her suitcase up and helped Camilla into the carriage, then climbed in beside her. The driver flapped the reins, and they started off along the main street of the village.

  “It’s one of our little economies at Thunder Heights to keep no horses.” Booth spoke lightly, but there was a sting in his voice. “Westcliff has little choice to offer in the way of hired rigs. I’m afraid you’ll find us backward in a good many ways. Hardly like the gay city you’ve come from.”

  “I didn’t lead a very gay life there,” she confessed. “And I’m looking forward to seeing my mother’s home. How is Grandfather’s health?”

  Booth Hendricks shrugged. “My presence at his bedside hasn’t been requested. I gather he survives. Amazingly, considering his years. You should be good for him.”

  “I hope so,” Camilla said. She went on a little timidly, longing to put something of her happiness into words. “Two days ago I never dreamed I would be coming here. I’ve grown up feeling as though I had no real family. But now I can hardly wait to meet my grandfather and my aunts. And to see my mother’s home. I want to know everything about her. I want to ask a thousand questions and—”

  The man beside her put one gloved hand upon her own, stemming her outburst. “I know how you must feel. But perhaps a word of warning at this point is a good idea. Thunder Heights isn’t a particularly happy house. It’s a house in which it is better not to ask too many questions. Perhaps that’s one reason we are all a little disturbed by your coming. My mother and Aunt Letty won’t want old sorrows brought to the surface and made acute again. They’ve suffered enough. Will you take my advice, Cousin, and move softly? Don’t ask too many questions—at least not in the beginning.”

  She felt a little dashed, but she could only nod agreement. Once more uneasiness fell upon her as the carriage moved on, and she was silent, watching the road they followed.

  A bank sloped toward the river on their left, with wooded hills rising above on their right. Ahead the blunt, rocky top of Thunder Mountain thrust into the sky, but the house on its slope was well hidden by the brown forest that grew all about. Spring seemed far away this chilly April day, with leaf buds still close-furled nubs along dry branches.

  The road curved inland around the property of Blue Beeches, and Camilla caught a glimpse of its mansard roof among the trees below. They were climbing now, the horse moving at a walk, the harness creaking with the uphill pull. A thick, untrimmed privet hedge came into view, the leafless broom of its twigs interwoven and untamed until it had grown to a monstrous height, shielding the property behind it from the road. Rain had begun to fall again.

  “We’re passing the house now, though you can’t see it,” Booth informed her. “The driveway approaches from the southern exposure.”

  In a few moments their carriage pulled up before an entrance in the hedge to what had been a wide driveway. The driver got down to open a once handsome iron gate, badly in need of fresh black paint. Stone gateposts rose on either side, and on each crouched a mournful stone lion. One lion had lost the tip of its tail, the other both its ears. Just inside the gate was a large coach house, deserted now, with empty stables below.

  The driveway was overrun along the sides with encroaching weeds. All about, the forest crowded in, darkly bare and forbidding, its branches rattling as rain slanted through them. The approach seemed increasingly dismal, and Camilla felt the last of her eagerness melt bleakly away.

  “Good luck that we’re nearly there,” Booth said. “I’ve no taste for being soaked in a leaky carriage.”

  The house was upon them now, looming out of the rainy dusk, huge and crouching and gray. The driver pulled up the horse, and Booth sprang down upon the carriage block and held out his hands to Camilla.

  “Welcome home,” he said dryly, and gestured toward the house behind him. “You’ll find it carpenter’s Gothic at its most fantastic. Orrin had the money to build with brick, but since his beginnings were in lumber, he wanted to show what could be done with wood.”

  Camilla left the carriage and waited at the foot of the steps, looking up at the house, while Booth paid the driver and took down her suitcase. The structure stood at right angles to the river, with its back to the north, and a single-story wing had been attached on the land side.

  Light shone in upstairs windows and through an arched fanlight above the heavy door of glass and wrought iron. But no one came eagerly to greet her, and as the clopping echo of the horse’s hoofs disappeared among the trees, she was aware of a vast silence that seemed to engulf river and house and mountain. Accustomed as she was to city noises, the stillness seemed oppressive and a little eerie. She was glad when Booth led her up the step
s to the front door. There he took out an enormous key, smiling at its size as he held it out for her to see.

  “Always we have to be picturesque here, rather than comfortable. Grandfather Orrin sent clear to New Orleans for this door and it’s heavy enough for two to pull.”

  A grating of metal shattered the silence, and he pushed the heavy door open so that she could walk into an antehall that was much as Camilla had imagined it. The room was large and square, with a light wood floor set in fine parquetry and an ornate plaster ceiling molded in rosettes. Except for a small rug or two, it was completely bare of furnishings, with a door opening on either side, and a wide arch straight ahead. But it was the room’s curious lighting fixtures that Camilla noted with recognition. From the walls on either side, and from either side of the arched doorway ahead, marble hands protruded, each grasping a torch whose flame was a burning candle behind a glass shield.

  “I see you’re to be given a rousing welcome,” Booth said to the silence. “Ah well, come along—I’ve warned you.”

  The arch of the doorway ahead was marble, and the smaller enclosure beyond contained the octagon staircase, with its panels of intricately carved teakwood. From a tall window behind the stairs, and from some unseen source of illumination above, light fell upon the steps. As Camilla followed Booth, a girl in a maid’s uniform came running down, to bob a curtsy to them when she reached the bottom.

  “This is Miss Camilla, Grace,” Booth said to her. “Will you show her upstairs to her room, please.”

  Grace bobbed another curtsy. “If you please, mum,” she said, gesturing toward the stairs.

  Booth gave the girl Camilla’s suitcase. “I’ll see you at dinner, Cousin Camilla,” he said.

  She felt a sudden reluctance to leave his company and go off into the unknown reaches of the house. The lack of any welcome from her aunts had quenched her eagerness completely. Booth, at least, had been friendly. But he did not see her perturbation, and when he turned away to a door opening off the antehall, there was nothing to do but follow Grace.

  Stairwell and halls were cold and drafty, adding to her feeling of chill. At the second floor Grace waited for her, and as Camilla climbed the stairs she saw that the light from above came from an oil lamp in a carved cinnabar bowl, hung beneath a wooden canopy from the ceiling of the stairwell. The octagon shaft of the stairs was set in the heart of the house, and two halls rayed out from it on each side at the second and third levels. On the second floor Grace led the way toward the river wing of the house.

  “Mr. Judd has given orders you’re to have Miss Althea’s old room,” Grace told her in an oddly furtive whisper. Then, apparently regarding Camilla more as a fellow conspirator than superior, she went on. “Miss Hortense don’t like that much, but she don’t dare say no, when the old—when Mr. Judd, that is, sets his mind on something. It’s a real pretty room, mum. Hasn’t been opened for years, so we had to rush to get it ready for you today.”

  She turned a pink-tinted cloisonné doorknob near the end of the hall and opened the door upon a room alive with firelight, gracious and inviting in the cold, rainy dusk. Grace set the suitcase down and ran across the room to brush a wrinkle from the dull gold bedspread, to flick imaginary dust from a two-tiered rosewood dressing table. Then she nodded toward a water pitcher and basin set on a marble-topped stand.

  “The water’s still hot, mum. I brought it up myself just before you came. Thought you’d want a good wash, after your trip. Dinner is at seven-thirty. Prompt, mum. Miss Hortense don’t like to be kept waiting. She gets nervous.” The girl watched her, as if waiting for some response to her sly hints.

  Camilla paid no attention, longing for her to go. This was her mother’s room and she wanted to know it in every detail. But not while a stranger watched her.

  “When am I to see my grandfather?” she asked.

  Grace shook her head. “Nobody’s told me that, mum. Though I know Mr. Judd has been asking for you. The nurse said so.”

  The girl gave another uneasy bob of knee and head and went out of the room.

  Once she was gone, Camilla could turn slowly and look about the lovely room that once belonged to Althea Judd. The pink marble mantelpiece above the lively fire was carved with a rose leaf design, and a small French clock of gilt and enamel ticked away upon it. The carpet was soft-piled and of a paler gold than the bedspread, the wallpaper light gray with a gold fleur-de-lis pattern. There was a small gray and gilt French desk with a little chair to match—a desk from which her mother, who had loved parties, must have sent out many an invitation. A pink upholstered chaise longue near a French door invited one to comfortable lounging. Heavy gold brocade draperies, faded and a little shabby, had been drawn across the room’s tall windows and French doors. The ceiling was enormously high, promising the cool passage of air on summer days, and a handsome plaster medallion marked the center, from which hung a gay little French chandelier, adrip with crystal.

  This was her mother’s room. She wanted to feel it, to believe in it, to reach across the years to her mother through it. But the room, though charming, remained remote. It was not yet ready to accept her, to speak to her.

  She went to one of the doors and opened it upon a small balcony that fronted the river. It was raining harder now, and though wind swept a spatter of drops in upon her, she stood for a moment trying to make out the river, far below this high level on which the house stood. Rain and the failing light obscured her vision, however, and she closed the door, returning quickly to the warmth of the fire. Tomorrow perhaps it would be clear and she could see the view of the Hudson this house must command.

  The water was steaming hot in the pitcher, as Grace had promised, with a towel laid across the top to contain the warmth. Camilla gave herself up to the refreshing comfort of bathing. The pale green cake of soap in the rose leaf dish had a delicate scent, and she wondered at such luxury in this remote place. But then, with wealth, anything could be ordered from New York. Or from Paris, or London, for that matter. What a strange economy to keep no carriage, no horses.

  When she had put on a clean shirtwaist and changed to a fresh, though somewhat wrinkled, blue skirt, she lay down on the chaise longue to await the summons of her grandfather.

  As she relaxed, savoring the pulsing heat of the fire, she thought of the little she knew about her Aunt Hortense. Hortense was the elder of the three sisters, with Letty the middle one. From her mother, Camilla had received the picture of a woman with an unbridled temper and an enormous vanity. There had been little love lost between older and younger sister. Once, when Camilla had been no more than seven, her mother had said casually that Hortense had suffered from a lifelong unrequited love affair with herself. The words had stayed with her, though they had little meaning then, and she wondered about them now.

  A light tap roused her from her musings, and she went quickly to open the door. At a glance she knew that the slight gray figure in the doorway could not be Hortense.

  “It’s—Aunt Letty, isn’t it?” Camilla said.

  The woman’s face, pale and fine-skinned as eggshell china, seemed to crumple into tiny lines, as if she were about to burst into tears. In her hands she held a small lacquered tray with a teapot and cups upon it. Too moved to speak, she held the tray out wordlessly.

  Gently Camilla drew her into the room and closed the door.

  FOUR

  Miss Letitia Judd was somewhat less than fifty. She was of medium height, but she managed to seem tiny because of her small bones and general air of frailty. She wore her gray hair bound about her head in a coronet of braids that gave her a certain dignity and presence, even when she was on the verge of tears. Her long-sleeved dress was of a light gray material that had a tendency to float when she moved, and she wore a coral brooch at the high, boned ruching of the neck. She looked immaculately neat in every detail.

  As she entered the room, a small gray tabby cat came with her, padding lightly across the carpet with an air of interest in unfamiliar terri
tory.

  “This is my friend, Mignonette,” Letty said, and smiled tremulously at Camilla. “See—I’ve brought you some hot peppermint tea. It’s just the thing for heartening one after a long trip.”

  She set the tray upon a marble-topped table near the fire, and not until she reached out to put it down, did Camilla note that her right arm was twisted and crooked. Her full sleeve, tight at the wrist and edged with lace, hid the deformity to some extent, and it was hardly noticeable except in the fact that she could not straighten the arm.

  “My little sister Althea’s daughter,” she murmured, and turned to look at Camilla. While all else about Letty Judd was pale and softly gray, her eyes were a dark brown, deep and surprisingly intense, with lashes as long and dark as Camilla’s own. “You are so much like her. Even that black peak of hair on your forehead. And the light way you move. But there, I mustn’t welcome you by crying.”

  She seated herself in the silk-cushioned rocking chair Camilla drew to the fire, her hands clasped in her lap so that the bend of the crooked arm seemed natural. The glow of the fire gave color to her pale, fine skin, but when she held out her left hand to the warming blaze, Camilla saw that her hands were strangely unlike the rest of her. Though small-boned, they were far from fragile. There was a strong, muscular look about them, and the skin was tanned and freckled, as if they had weathered the sun of past years and gone unprotected.

  Beneath Letty’s tender gaze, the lack of welcome which had been so evident to Camilla in the beginning seemed to lessen in importance. For the first time the fire began to warm away her chill, and the fragrant odor of the tea was tangy and cheering. She sat opposite her aunt while Letty poured a cupful, her crooked arm seeming to hamper her little. The gray tabby padded back across the room and looked up expectantly.

  “Not now, dear,” Letty said to the cat. “We’re only going to stay a minute.” She smiled at Camilla, as if apologizing for the bad manners of a child. “Mignonette loves all my herb teas. She joins me by having a saucerful every afternoon.” She held out a cup and saucer to Camilla. “There you are—and do flavor it with a bit of clover honey. You’ll find it gives you strength and courage.”