Thunder Heights

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Camilla spooned a little golden honey into the tea and sipped it gratefully. “How is my grandfather? When will I see him?”

  At her words Letty’s withheld tears brimmed over, and she drew a lacy bit of handkerchief from her sleeve, leaving a trace of lavender scent in the air about her.

  “He is very weak today. Hortense won’t let me go near him, for fear I’ll upset him.” Her dark eyes lifted suddenly to hold Camilla’s own with intense pleading.

  “What is it, Aunt Letty?” Camilla asked. “If there’s anything I can do—”

  Letty shook her head. “No, no—nothing. That is, there’s nothing you can do now.” Her manner became faintly agitated, and her hands clasped and unclasped nervously in her lap. “You must believe that what happened wasn’t my fault—you must believe that I didn’t intend—”

  She was upsetting herself to such an extent that Camilla dropped to a velvet ottoman beside her and took the small, weathered hands into hers, feeling the wiry strength of the fingers. It was natural to adopt a protective role with Aunt Letty. Camilla felt drawn to this frail, somehow proud little woman, and she let the strength of her own youth and returning courage flow into the clasp of her hands. Her aunt looked hopefully into her eyes.

  “Perhaps you’ve come in time. I think Papa is sorry for a good many things. It’s wonderful that he has sent for you. You belong here with your family, my dear.”

  Unexpectedly, tears stung Camilla’s eyes. Such words made up a little for the lonely years behind her. Letty saw that she was moved and tried gently to reassure her.

  “Booth is delighted with you. He came to tell me how pretty you are and how lucky we are that you’ve come. Booth is a dear boy. A bit moody perhaps, at times, but brilliant and talented. It will be good for him to have someone young in the house.”

  She would have gone on, but a peremptory knock sounded at the door and she sat back quickly, withdrawing her hands from Camilla’s clasp.

  “That’s my sister Hortense,” she whispered. “It’s better not to keep her waiting. She has very little patience.”

  Camilla went quickly to the door. Next to her grandfather, she sensed that this was the most important meeting of her visit here. More than anyone else it was her difficult Aunt Hortense whom she must please, whom she must win, if she were to become a part of this family. Smiling and eager, she opened the door to the overwhelming presence of the woman who stood there.

  Camilla was not sure how she had pictured Hortense in her mind, but certainly her imagination had produced nothing like this tall, handsome, red-haired woman in elaborate dinner dress. She might have been beautiful, had her expression been less petulant and sharp. Certainly her red hair, untarnished by the years, was spectacularly beautiful in its high piled rolls and waves held in place with combs jeweled in jade. Her emerald green dinner gown was perhaps less than the latest fashion, but she wore it like a duchess, as she did the diamonds in her ears. The cut of the gown displayed firm, unwithered flesh and her figure was full and fashionable. Whether her eyes were green or blue or gray, it was difficult to tell, but one had a feeling that there was little their darting gaze missed.

  She noted her sister’s presence without pleasure, and Letty rose as she came into the room.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Letty said, and once more Camilla was aware of a certain dignity about her fragile person.

  “Thank you for coming, Aunt Letty,” Camilla said warmly, and accompanied her to the door. The little cat went with them and darted into the hall. Camilla turned to face Hortense, bracing herself, the eager smile a little stiff on her lips.

  Her aunt was moving about the room with an air of interest, as if she had not set foot in it for a long time.

  “I hope it has been cleaned satisfactorily,” she said. “We had so little warning of your coming. And we don’t have the servants we used to have in the old days. There’s always trouble getting this spoiled new generation to stay. I never could understand why Papa wanted this room left exactly as it was when Althea was alive. It’s a better room than mine—I’d have liked it for myself.”

  Camilla, still waiting for some greeting, watched her aunt doubtfully, uncertain of how to meet this outburst. Indifferent to her niece’s gaze, Hortense paused before the tray with its cups of cooling tea, the color of pale topaz. She sniffed the peppermint odor and wrinkled her nose.

  “Don’t let my sister dose you with her brews. She uses little sense in such matters and they don’t agree with everyone.” Then, having apparently satisfied her curiosity about the room, she turned her scrutiny upon Camilla and there was open antipathy in her eyes. “So you are Althea’s girl? You’ll be a shock to Papa, of course. But it’s his own fault for sending for you behind our backs. It has, of course, been a shock to us to learn that you were coming.”

  Vainly Camilla tried to think of something to say, but any opportunity for amenities of greeting had passed.

  “I—I hope you don’t mind my coming,” she said feebly. “Mr. Pompton—”

  “Pompton’s an old fool,” Hortense said. “Papa did exactly the same thing that time years ago when he took a sudden notion that he was going to die and he had to see your mother at once. It was Althea who died, and he’s been hale and hearty all the years since, until now. Let’s hope history won’t entirely repeat itself.”

  “About my mother—” Camilla began, seizing the opening.

  “The less said about your mother, the better,” Hortense told her, making a futile effort to tuck a lock of red hair into the trembling mass of puffs and pompadours. “When she married and left this house, your grandfather gave orders that her name was never to be mentioned to him again. Even after he remanded that order and invited her here, her death upset us all so badly that by mutual agreement we have avoided the subject of Althea King. Of course we speak her name when necessary—but we don’t discuss her. You understand? The memories are too painful.”

  Reminding herself that she must please and placate this woman, Camilla suppressed a twinge of indignation. “Yes, of course, Aunt Hortense,” she said mildly.

  “Good. While you look like your mother, I can only hope that you lack her wild, reckless spirit. Whatever happened to her she brought upon herself. Remember that. Come along now and I’ll take you to your grandfather. But don’t stay long—his strength is fading.”

  She swished through the door ahead of Camilla, leaving her niece to trail behind.

  She led the way toward the opposite wing of the house, circling the opening of the stairs. Before a door near the corridor’s end she paused.

  At her knock, a nurse in a blue striped uniform, with a puffy white cap on her head, looked out at them, nodded and led the way into a large, dim bedroom. Here the fire on the hearth had burned to embers and what light there was came from a lamp set on a table near the great, canopied bed. It was a handsome room, Camilla saw as she followed Hortense through the door, with fine mahogany furniture of vast, baronial proportions.

  The old man in the bed lay propped against the stack of pillows, his hair and beard grizzled with gray, his eyes, sunken above a great beak of a nose, still vitally alive in his weathered face.

  “Your granddaughter Camilla is here, Papa,” Hortense told him. “You mustn’t talk to her for long, or you’ll tire yourself.”

  “Get out,” said the old man in a surprisingly strong voice.

  “Now, now,” the nurse said roguishly, “we mustn’t excite ourselves. Miss Judd and I will step out in the hall and give you ten minutes with the young lady.”

  “You’ll step out in the hall and stay there until I send for you,” said Orrin Judd. “Get out, both of you, so I can have a look at the girl.”

  Hortense moved with a little toss of her head, and the nurse followed her. Camilla approached the bed and stood within the radius of lamplight. At her grandfather’s right lay a huge open Bible on a mahogany stand. He reached out to rest one hand upon it, as if he asked for strength. Then he looked up into h
er face. For a few moments old man and young woman studied each other gravely.

  “You’re like your mother as I remember her,” he said at last, and now there was a quaver of weakness in his voice. “You’re my lovely Althea come back to me when I need her most.”

  “I’m glad I could come, Grandfather,” Camilla said gently.

  He sighed long and gustily, as if all the breath left to him had gone from his body. His eyes closed, and she watched him anxiously, wondering if she should call the nurse. But in a moment they opened again—the eyes of a fallen eagle who had not surrendered his freedom—and she felt their hunger searching her face.

  “I should have got around to seeing Althea’s girl before this. I’ve let so much go these last years. Too much. The house and the family with it. Bring over a chair and sit where I can look at you. I need to talk to you quickly, before it’s too late.”

  The nearest chair was a massive piece, but she dragged it over to the bed and sat down on its velvet seat. He breathed heavily for a while before he spoke again.

  “The vultures out there are waiting for me to die. But it doesn’t matter if they hover, now that you’re here. Between the two of us we’ll fool them all, won’t we girl? By the look of you, I know you can be trusted. Because you look like her—like my Althea. Sometimes I have the feeling that she’s still around here—her spirit anyway—lively and gay, just as she used to be. Will you stay here, Camilla, and help me beat the vultures? We must change things all around, you and I.”

  “I’ll stay if you want me to, Grandfather,” she said softly.

  He turned in the bed and reached to a table on the far side, groping for something upon it. Camilla would have risen to help him, but he gestured her back.

  “I’ve got it. This is the way we looked in the days before Althea ran off and married that—that schoolteacher.” He seemed to have forgotten that the schoolteacher was Camilla’s father.

  She took the framed oblong of cardboard and held it to the light. Orrin Judd sat in a carved chair in the center of the picture, with his daughters about him. The print was yellowed by the years, but still clear. In those days he must have been a giant of a man, rugged and handsome and forceful. The youngest daughter, Althea, stood straight and lovely within the circle of her father’s arm, smiling warmly at the camera. On his other side Hortense leaned against him, a hand upon his shoulder, as if she strove to draw his attention back to herself. Letty stood beside Althea, a thin, frail girl with a smile that was somehow sad. Her right arm hung at her side with no evidence of deformity.

  “My three girls,” Orrin said. “Their mother and I wanted too much for them. We planned so much. But she wasn’t here long enough to see them grown and somehow—it all went wrong.”

  He was silent for a moment, and then sudden anger stirred in his voice.

  “I should have forbidden the house to John King! What could he do for Althea—who might have had everything?”

  Camilla could not let his words about her father pass. “She had everything she wanted most, Grandfather,” she told him gently. “If you had really known my father, you might have loved him.”

  The old man stared at her unblinkingly for a moment, and she could not tell how deeply she might have angered him with her words. Then he said, “I like spirit, girl. At least you stand up to me honestly. You don’t talk simpering nonsense.”

  He took the picture and laid it upon the open pages of the Bible, and now his gaze seemed suddenly a little vague, as if he had lost the focus of his thoughts.

  “Perhaps I’d better let you rest now, Grandfather,” Camilla murmured.

  At once a look of alarm came into his eyes. “No, no! Don’t leave me, girl. There’s something I had to tell you. Something that happened—”

  He had begun to gasp for breath, but when she would have left his side to call the nurse, he reached out and grasped her hand in a grip that was crushingly strong. Between rasping breaths he tried to force out the words he must speak to her.

  “Trouble,” he gasped. “Trouble in this house. You must watch for it, girl. There’s something wrong afoot. When I’m well I’ll get to the bottom of it. But for now—” he struggled hoarsely to speak, “watch—Letty,” he managed and could say no more.

  “You mustn’t excite yourself, Grandfather,” she whispered. “Rest now and we’ll talk again tomorrow. Then you shall tell me whatever you want me to know.”

  His grip loosened, fell away. “Tired,” he whispered weakly. “Althea’s home is your home—you must help me save it. Don’t let them—”

  “Of course, Grandfather,” she assured him hurriedly. “I’ll stay for as long as you want me, and I’ll help you in every way I can.”

  He seemed to hear her words and gain reassurance from them. Though he said no more, she sensed the rise of loving kinship between herself and this very old man. The bloodline was strong and bright between them. They belonged to each other. She knew he read her look aright and was comforted, and she was assured that they would learn to know and value each other. But now he lay spent, and she went quietly away.

  In the hall outside the nurse sat on a carved chest, resting her feet and dozing. Hortense had disappeared.

  “You’d better go to him now,” Camilla said.

  The woman started up and hurried into the room, closing the door behind her.

  Camilla followed the empty hall back to her room and sat quietly before the fire, feeling both torn and heartened. She had crossed the years so swiftly to stand at her grandfather’s side, and in those few moments of interchange they had given each other their love and trust. Strange that it should be as simple as that. Yet it was a searing thing, too, because of all that troubled him, because of the regrets and sorrows that crowded upon him out of the past. She would do as she had promised. She would stay on in this house as long as he needed her. The antipathy she had seen in the eyes of Hortense Judd troubled her, and she had a sense of failure there. But the most important thing was to help this despairing old man who was her grandfather.

  What he had meant in trying to warn her of some sort of trouble, she did not know. It was clear that he was filled with distrust of everyone under this roof, though such a feeling might well be no more than the product of his weakness. She must leap to no conclusions until she had talked to him further, until she knew the family better.

  The French clock on the mantel marked the time as nearly seven-thirty. She rose to look at herself in the dressing table mirror and smoothed back her dark hair so that the peak came into clear evidence on her forehead. Once her mother’s face had been reflected in the depths of this very mirror, and it would be easy to imagine her there again, smiling out of the shadows over her daughter’s shoulder. Perhaps there was a fulfilling of destiny in the coming of Camilla King to the house where her mother had grown up, and whose halls must still remember the echo of her footsteps, the sound of her voice.

  A thought came to her, and she went to her suitcase and took from it a green velvet jewel case. She had nothing in which to dress for dinner, as Hortense chose to dress, but at least she might wear a bracelet of her mother’s. Althea had kept only a few favorite pieces of the jewelry Orrin had given her, and now her daughter had them for her own.

  The bangle was made up of gold medallions alternating with carved peach stones. Camilla fastened it about her wrist, feeling that it dressed her up for the occasion and that, wearing it, she would take something of her mother with her downstairs. There was a yearning in her to start anew with this family to which she now belonged. She wanted to free herself of her own early uneasiness and forget the unhappy warnings of an old man who was sick. This time she knew better what to expect, so she would not be surprised, or taken aback. She must show her aunts, her Cousin Booth, how ready she was to like them, how eager for their liking in return.

  With something of her first feeling of hope recovered she opened her door just as a deep-voiced Chinese gong sounded from the depths of the house. No one appeare
d, so perhaps the others were already downstairs. She went down the octagon staircase alone. Not knowing where the dining room lay, she opened a door toward the land side of the house and found that she had guessed right.

  The others were not there and Camilla hesitated, looking around the long, wide room. Dark wainscoting ran halfway up the walls and above it pictured wallpaper presented a country scene in raspberry against cream, its busy pattern repeated to a demanding degree. The darker red carpet was figured in a design of yellow roses, faded now, and worn threadbare about the long mahogany table. The sideboard and china closet were of vast proportions to fit the size of the room. The dining table had been set with linen and spode china, with candles alight in the branched silver candelabra at each end.

  Booth Hendricks came in first, wearing informal dinner dress. The lapels of his jacket were of satin, his shirt front stiff, with pearl buttons studding it. At sight of Camilla his eyes brightened.

  “What a pleasure to see someone young and pretty in this house. Are you rested from your trip, Cousin?”

  “I wasn’t tired, really,” she told him. “I’ve been too excited to be tired. And now that I’ve seen Grandfather, I’m not so worried as I was. I didn’t know how he would receive me.”

  “And how did he receive you?” Booth asked dryly.

  “With affection,” she said, and explained no further.

  Letty came in, still wearing the floating gray dress that became her so well, and her eyes turned to Camilla questioningly. Camilla smiled and nodded in reassurance. When Hortense entered the room, Camilla gave her the same warm smile, but her aunt paid little heed to her. All her attention was for Booth. She took his arm and let him lead her to her place at one end of the long table.

  “Have you had a good day, dear?” she asked him. “Have you been able to work?”