Sea Jade

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You may not love him yet,” she murmured, half to herself, “but the time will come when you will beseech him for a glance, a word, and your heart will break when he will not look at you. Women find him fascinating, irresistible—but he will never forget Rose. She had everything a woman might have for him—everything!” Her voice rose on a note of triumph, as though I were already beseeching her son for a glance. “Rose came of good blood, of a fine New England family,” she added. “She was one of us. While you—with your dreadful background!—you are that creature’s daughter!”

  Managing to hold my temper, since I knew she would listen to no words of mine in defense of those good, humble people who had been my mother’s parents, and of whom my father had always spoken with affection, I flung another look at the portrait of Andrew McLean in its place over the mantel. Here was a further possible reason for his wife’s dislike for me. Since I had come to Bascomb’s Point I had heard that all three partners—Obadiah, Nathaniel, and Andrew—had been in love with Carrie Corcoran. If Sybil McLean was aware of this, if her husband had loved Carrie, then indeed she might entertain hatred for Carrie’s daughter.

  She was staring into the fire and had not seen my quick glance at the portrait. I fancy she had expected some indignant outburst from me that would have given her opportunity to hurl further vituperation upon me. But when I said nothing, she chose a new course and went on in quieter tones.

  “Of course you can save yourself—if you choose. You can run away.”

  I had turned my back on her to face a tall cheval glass in order to see how the dress might be altered to fit me. Now I stared at her averted head in the mirror, caught by her last words.

  “What do you mean—run away?”

  “Back to New York.” She caught my eyes upon her in the mirror and her look intensified. “Something might be arranged. I could let you have a little money, perhaps. After all, the marriage was wholly a matter of expedience—and a mistake.”

  “You mean it was a mistake because the captain could not after all fulfill his own part of the bargain and change his will? Thus I am of no use to you or to your son?”

  “Of what use could you possibly be?” she demanded. “If you go away everything will be forgotten in a little while. My son has no desire to marry again. What has happened will not matter.”

  “What if I should want to marry?”

  She threw me a scornful look, implying that no one would want me.

  What she suggested was a possible solution. Perhaps. I might choose this course of escaping from a dreadful situation. But I would not run away behind Brock’s back at the mere instigation of his mother. I would first tell him what I meant to do. It was even possible that he might help me to leave if I faced him with my request. All these things I thought quite honestly. There was in me still a naïve, well-intentioned belief that sincere effort would bring about an honorable answer to my problem.

  “I will consider your suggestion,” I told Mrs. McLean and took off the black dress.

  She seemed agitated as she accepted it from my hands, as though the fact that I did not immediately seize upon her advice disturbed her. Perhaps she really thought I might have some design upon her son. If that was so, I felt inclined to let her worry.

  “Was Laurel the only child of the marriage?” I asked as I put on my own dress.

  Mrs. McLean had risen to open a handsome box, inlaid with a Chinese scene in mother-of-pearl and ivory. From it she took thread and thimble and small gold, birds’-wing scissors, delaying her answer.

  “I would have liked a fine grandson,” she said at last. “A boy to resemble his grandfather. Their first child was a boy, but he died when he was two years old. The second was a girl—stillborn. And then Laurel, who is a changeling if ever I saw one. She is like no one else in the family.”

  I remained silent, thinking that Laurel resembled her father, and perhaps her grandfather, far more than her grandmother was willing to admit. There was something in her as well of her grandmother’s deep-rooted resentment against life.

  I had still another question I wanted to ask as I struggled with the last hooks on my bodice.

  “Did Brock never want to follow in his father’s steps? Did he never long to go to sea?”

  “The sea!” Mrs. McLean echoed the words as though she rejected all that had to do with ships and the sea. “The sea took my husband. He was buried beneath its waves. And it would have taken my son too, had it not been for the war. Young as he was, he had his master’s papers and he had made a voyage as captain of a ship. Sometimes I thank God for the shot that shattered his hip in a sea battle and set him forever upon the land. If I were you, girl, I would not mention the sea to my son.”

  I was growing tired of being addressed brusquely as “girl” by the members of this household.

  “My name is Miranda, Mrs. McLean,” I told her quietly.

  Pale cold eyes dismissed me. “Perhaps you had better go now and prepare to move your things into your husband’s room at the front of the house across from mine. I will get to work on Rose’s dress and have it ready for you this afternoon.”

  If she had meant to surprise me, to take me aback, she had succeeded. Such a move was the last thing I wanted. Indeed, since little notice had been taken of me last night, I had begun to think that not even the outward conventions of marriage would be expected of me.

  “I’d prefer to stay in the room I now occupy,” I said. “After all, this is not a real marriage.” Yet even as I heard them, my own words sounded like the pleading they were.

  “You have no choice in the matter,” she told me with curt satisfaction. “I offered you an avenue of escape which you have refused. Now you will find out that the marriage is real enough. My son has given the order that you are to be moved into the front room.”

  I very nearly ran from her presence, feeling shocked and not a little frightened. Nevertheless, all my new, inward stubbornness was aroused. I had no intention of being forced by Brock McLean into the true role of a young bride. If he so much as lifted a hand to touch me, I would fight him with all my strength. I would cause a scandal in this house if there was any attempt by him to consummate this ridiculous marriage. Thus, talking heatedly to myself, I bolstered my courage and my determination.

  Later, however, when Joseph came upstairs to move my trunk and few possessions, I could not countermand his orders. It was not with the servants that my battle must be joined. I must regain my freedom from Brock himself, and I would not flee ignobly and in fear.

  He did not reappear that morning. I supposed he was away taking care of the details of the funeral. There was considerable coming and going of visitors to the house by now—of friends arriving to condole and to pay their last respects. Lien remained in quiet charge of the front parlor where her husband’s body rested, while Sybil McLean, unable to dislodge her from her dutiful role, moved in and about ignoring her.

  The noon meal was hurried. Brock was still absent and Ian Pryott I saw not at all, though I looked into the library more than once, hoping to find him there. On an occasion when I encountered Laurel in the hallway, she glowered at me with bleak dislike, as though I had betrayed her. As perhaps I had. I could guess that some punishment had been dealt her that I had no way of blocking, and I realized too late that I had made her a reckless promise, impossible for me to keep.

  Not until afternoon did the household assemble in its entirety. By that time I was wearing Rose McLean’s hastily fitted dress. How I looked could not have mattered less to me. There were problems more real to be met.

  For the first time I must take my place in public on Brock’s arm—to all appearances his wife. The ordeal was one I could not face with equanimity. During the drive to the cemetery, in the carriage with Brock, Laurel, and Mrs. McLean, I held myself stiffly erect. I was as silent as the man at my side, determined to betray nothing of my inner trepidation.

  SEVEN

  Gray cloud banks were massed above the country cemetery
where Bascombs had been buried for more than a hundred years, spoiling our beautiful day. That the afternoon should put on mourning for Captain Obadiah seemed fitting.

  Of the once large clan of Bascombs no family member remained to grieve his passing. But the captain’s friends were many, and in lieu of blood kin, the McLeans stood nearest the grave. I leaned correctly on my husband’s arm and wore his ring upon my finger, but I could not believe that such things made me Mrs. Brock McLean. Again I had the sense of watching a play at which I was merely a spectator.

  Not far from our small grouping stood the captain’s wife. There had been no one else to attend Lien and Ian Pryott had stepped in to accompany her to the cemetery. He stood beside her now, supporting her fragile weight upon his arm. Lien had chosen to cover her exotic white garments with a long black cloak which hid her entire person from view, its hood engulfing her head and shadowing her face. Once, above her bent head, Ian’s eyes met mine and he gave me that quizzical look I was coming to dread—as though he laughed secretly at us all, and especially at me.

  As I stood there, listening to the minister’s sonorous words, which seemed to have little to do with the real Captain Obadiah, I was again more intensely aware of small impressions than of those with larger import. My mind could grasp and believe in the twittering of sparrows in a nearby tree, and the look of them, gray as the branches on which they perched. From the direction of the road where our carriages waited, I could hear the creak of wheels and harness, the stamp of hooves, an occasional neighing, and low voices as coachmen talked among themselves.

  I felt no more moved by the scene before me than were the horses or the sparrows. The coffin had been lowered into raw earth and whatever lay there had no meaning for me, no relationship to me. I could no longer identify the wizened old man who had so changed my life with the hero of those childhood legends I had loved.

  When Dr. Price, the same minister who had married me to Brock, spoke his last words and cast a handful of earth upon the coffin, a sudden outburst of sobbing startled us all. Laurel, standing on the other side of her father, had burst into stormy tears. The sound returned me abruptly to a sense of reality and I was oddly grateful to the child, however indecorous her sobbing seemed in this silent place where all emotion had been hidden and suppressed. One of us, at least, was able to mourn Captain Obadiah in a manner that came from the heart.

  When earth had fallen upon the coffin, the group about the grave began to break up. Mrs. McLean drew the weeping child away, and Lien turned toward the carriages, with Ian still accompanying her. Only the man at my side did not move except to release my hand from his arm, as though he wanted to stand alone and unhampered. I stepped back a little and waited, watching him. As I did so a new and fresh awareness came upon me without warning.

  It was as if I saw Brock McLean in a new light, removed from any effect he might have upon my own life. Here was a man who had been cruelly defeated at every turn. Injury to his leg had kept him from the sea. Only a few years before he must have stood in this very place grieving over the loss of his wife. Even the work to which he had given himself since his injury might be taken from him because the captain had not acted quickly and wisely. Yet there was sorrow in his manner as he turned from the grave.

  On impulse I spoke to him softly. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

  If he felt grief, the sound of my voice banished all evidence of it. He looked at me with distaste, as though I had said something foolish—as perhaps I had. That I was sorry for all that had befallen him in the past I could hardly explain. Nor was such feeling on my part anything he would welcome. I felt ill-at-ease again, and to cover my lack of composure I spoke a thought that had occurred to me earlier.

  “While we’re here,” I said humbly, “will you show me where my mother is buried?”

  I would not have been surprised if he had refused, but to my relief he did not. He allowed the others to return to the carriages and without a word led me along grassy aisles to a sloping hillside where a weeping beech tree stood near the far side of the cemetery. Here, where the beech cast its shadow, stood an unpretentious headstone of New England granite. Though granite seemed somehow inappropriate for one who had lived so gaily and fully as the girl of whom my father had so often told me. No sentiment had been inscribed upon the stone, but merely a name. I bent to read the letters: CARRIE CORCORAN HEATH.

  In my imaginings I had felt that when I stood in this place she would become real for me. But the woman who was buried here was a stranger—someone I had never known, someone who had nothing to do with me. I hardly knew I spoke aloud.

  “I wish I could find her,” I said.

  There was no sympathy in the man who stood beside me. “What good would it do you to find her? Why should you want to?”

  I knew I would receive from Brock McLean no understanding of a loneliness and a need which seemed to have redoubled now that I found myself in this place and devoid of all feeling. Yet I sought to make him understand.

  “I want to know all about her, all there is to be discovered, I want her to stop being a stranger to me—someone I’ve only heard about from others. I want to know my mother.”

  “And when you find that she was a coquette who liked to collect men’s hearts—what have you then?”

  It angered me that he should say such a thing when she could not answer for herself. At least I, her daughter, was here to answer for her.

  “How do you know she was like that?” I demanded. “Just because she was pretty, because she was someone who attracted love—”

  He did not let me finish. “I know because she destroyed my father. I was old enough at the time to see it happen. She hardened him and made him a bitter, unforgiving husband to my mother. All because he’d loved Carrie Corcoran as a young man and tried to forget her by marrying another woman. But Carrie never let go of anyone she could subjugate. You’ve seen what my mother is like now—a shell of what she once was. I have only sympathy for her—and pity. My father made her suffer because she could not be to him what Carrie had been. Do you think you are not a painful thorn in her side, looking as much as you do like your mother?”

  “But that’s not my fault,” I began.

  He cut in upon my words at once. “What does fault matter when every glimpse of you wounds her? How do you think she must feel having you thrust into our midst where you must become a part of our lives whether we wish it or not?”

  He was speaking with a deadly control that was more searing than anger, and I felt chilled and not a little frightened. Still I tried to answer him.

  “So now, whether it’s reasonable or not, you must try to punish Carrie Corcoran through me?”

  His laugh had an unpleasant ring and he cut it off abruptly, perhaps remembering where he was. “You are a foolish and romantic child. What you, personally, may feel or be, is nothing to my mother. Or to me, for that matter. It’s the opening of old wounds that is hard to live with.”

  “Then let me go,” I pleaded. “All you need to do is let me go.”

  He turned sharply from me and started toward the carriages, walking quickly so that I had to run a little to keep up with him. He seemed to manage his wounded leg more evenly when he hurried than when he moved slowly and deliberately. There was no question now of setting my pace to his.

  Mrs. McLean stood beside the carriage, receiving the condolences of friends. I could tell at once, however, that she watched for Brock. I glanced about for Ian and saw him helping Lien into a carriage, tucking her voluminous cloak about her. He caught my eyes in mockery, as if he congratulated me on playing so well the dutiful role of a McLean wife. His look dismissed me from any communication with him as if I had gone over to the clan of McLean.

  Increasingly it seemed that there was no one to whom I could turn as night itself awaited me at the end of the day. Always the room at Bascomb’s Point waited for me. That room which I must now share with Brock McLean. Fearfully I glanced at the sky. But though the sun had vani
shed behind scudding banks of gray cloud, there was still light in the heavens. A little of the afternoon was left.

  Brock handed his mother and me into the barouche, but when we looked around for Laurel we saw that she had run off to Lien’s carriage, to ride with Ian and the captain’s wife. I wished I might have done the same, even though there was no welcome for me there either.

  Again we were silent on the drive back to the house, except for a single comment Mrs. McLean made about the mourners who were coming to the house for supper. Brock did not speak, and I sensed in him a smoldering, as if he could barely contain himself politely. When we reached Bascomb’s Point, he did not go inside to play the role of host, but whistled the great black dog out of its kennel. Then man and dog went off together in the direction of the point.

  I ran upstairs and stepped to the front window. Somewhat to the right of the lighthouse I could see the black dog and the black-browed Scotsman standing at the edge of rocky cliffs on the ocean side. They faced a sea that was as bleak and gray as the sky it reflected. I had the feeling that I had tested a dangerous fire that afternoon in the things I had said about my mother. What did he expect of me, this man who was so unwilling—and so undesired!—a husband? Last night I had been forgotten, but would I be again?

  Still garbed for out-of-doors, I stole downstairs. The last traces of incense had been aired from the front parlor. Lien no longer stood guard beside a casket but had retired to her own part of the house. The furniture had been set to rights and friends of the family were gathered in the room, their voices less subdued, now that the funeral was over. Had I been accepted in this house, I would have offered to assist in the kitchen, or tried to make myself useful in some other way. But I knew that Mrs. Crawford would not welcome my help, nor would Mrs. McLean. It would be enough if, of necessity, I put in an appearance at suppertime as Brock’s wife.

  I slipped past the parlor door unnoticed, and once outside I wandered again toward the old, unused lighthouse. When I entered the building and looked about, I found the place empty, with no sounds coming from beyond closed doors off the main room. I went to one of the doors and opened it. What I found was an unexpected place of wonder.