At least these hours, during which I posed and Ian worked on his carving, were the only tranquil ones during this time of waiting disquiet. As I quickly discovered, Ian had an uncanny talent for portraiture in wood. The face of the figurehead was growing remarkably into a likeness of my own. He was an exacting sculptor and at first he was dissatisfied with his work, regarding it critically every step of the way. Nevertheless it progressed day by day toward completion and as its excellence became evident Ian’s discontent faded and a certain exultation took its place. He knew at last that what he was doing was good and the fact excited and heartened him.
In the afternoons, when the weather was pleasant I wandered about the Bascomb’s Point area, exploring to some extent. I was still marking time, unwilling to fit myself into any pattern that might seem permanent. I had few duties around the house, since Mrs. Crawford did not welcome my help. She had followed my suggestion, however, and persuaded Mrs. McLean that nothing could be managed without her supervision. The two of them took up their duties once more, shutting me out as though I did not exist. Since I was still wholly concerned with my own unanswered questions, and blocked in the solving of my main problems, this did not disturb me.
The third change that came about during this time was in Laurel. She had shown more interest in the refurbishing of her wardrobe than I would have expected. Perhaps the novelty of a friendly, not-too-critical personal interest where none had existed before was too flattering to be resisted. Slowly, a bit at a time, she appeared to be lowering the guard she held against me. She was still wary as some little woods’ animal—as if she expected a trap—but she was less influenced now by her elders’ disapproval of me than she had been at first.
Once or twice I caught Brock watching her with an air of baffled relief, and though he gave me no credit for this emerging change he did not oppose me, or interfere. Tacitly, without words, I had been given leave to do as I liked with the child. There were no more warnings to me not to interfere. Or perhaps, I thought, this was simply further evidence of his complete indifference to all I was, all I did.
In the end these things were indeed a mere marking of time. Beneath the surface our unrest and hidden discontents churned and tormented us all. Eventually, as must happen when suspicion and anger and hatred are too long contained, the pressure would rise, disaster would explode.
On the day when the threat that hung over us descended with the slash of a sword, I had wandered out upon the point of land beyond the lighthouse and climbed down to a broad ledge of rock where the sea cliffs plunged dizzily away at my feet. It was a gray afternoon of threatening storm, with a fierce wind blowing and the seas running high. I had dressed warmly and tied a thick wool muffler over my head, so I was well shielded from the blast.
I loved a day like this when the sea took on the grim look of the sky and rolled landward endlessly in mountainous corrugations. Ridge after swelling ridge would hurl itself upon the rocky shore and break with a crash, sending white spray so high in the air that specks of it flecked my cheeks and touched my lips with salt. Sea birds careened in the wind, sailing and diving in their wild play, alighting at times upon the rocks below. They had little fear of me since I sat as still as the very stones themselves.
It was here that Laurel found me and clambered down to sit beside me. A child born of the sea herself, she never tired of watching its moods and the changing of its face. I smiled at her without speaking and she sat beside me for some time in silence. We shared a kinship in our feeling for the sea and it was something we needed no words to express. Today her hair, beneath her green hood, was neatly combed, and no torn fringe of petticoat hung below her coat. I marked my work with satisfaction. She seemed less of the wild thing today—at least in appearance. I knew this was my doing and I took pleasure in this beginning I had made with the child. Whatever else was wrong with my life, in this one direction I was having some salutary effect.
After a time, when the silence between us grew long, Laurel began to talk to me in her impish, gossipy way. “I went in to look at the figurehead when you finished posing this morning, Miss Miranda. It is much more beautiful now that it has a face. It looks exactly like you, in spite of the Chinese headdress Ian has carved for it. My grandmother is angry. She is having headaches and lying awake at night because of it. She torments my father because he doesn’t stop you from posing, or stop Ian from carving.”
“I’m sorry your grandmother is upset,” I said. “Perhaps your father knows there is no harm in my posing.”
“Lien is upset, too,” Laurel went on, a young Cassandra, always most cheerful when she could prophesy disaster. “She says the evil spirits of the flesh that belonged to the captain and that have been loosed at Bascomb’s Point are getting stronger every minute. She says nothing will stop them until they wreak their wicked purpose.” She shivered with eerie pleasure as she spoke.
“I don’t feel this,” I said—a bold statement that was not altogether true. “And I don’t think Ian feels it. Yet if it were true, I’m sure he would be aware of the fact.”
Laurel shrugged. “Ian likes making everyone squirm for once. I don’t blame him. But sometimes I think he ought to be more frightened than he is.”
“Ian frightened? Why should he be frightened?”
She reverted in a flash to her old manner and leaned forward to peer disconcertingly into my face. “Why shouldn’t he be, with the spirits growing angry? You’re afraid, aren’t you? You weren’t afraid before, but you’re afraid now, because the dog is baying at night. And because someone wants you to be dead.”
I reached out and clasped her by the arm before she could move away. “Stop that! You know you can’t frighten me with such talk. If you mean to keep it up, you can go away and leave me alone. I liked it here in this quiet place before you came.”
She was accustomed enough to adult rejection, to being sent off to a supper of bread and milk. But she was not accustomed to a rejection of her company on an equal basis, simply because someone did not enjoy having her near. This was not punishment but dismissal. Instead of snatching herself out of my grasp, she wriggled a little closer, her manner contrite.
“I’m sorry, Miss Miranda. I know you’re not afraid. If you’ll let me stay, I’ll tell you things you want to know.”
I said nothing, watching a great breaker hurl itself upon the rocks below and shatter like broken glass. The roar came up to us, followed by the echo of water gurgling away in caves and crevices near the water’s edge.
“I know why Lucifer bays at night,” Laurel persisted.
I held my tongue, and she went on, tantalized by my silence. “He’s baying because Tom Henderson’s ghost has left the Pride and come to Bascomb’s Point. Lucifer’s trying to tell us all that Tom means to take revenge because he was murdered.”
Just as the child had disturbed me and taken away from the first eagerness of my arrival at Bascomb’s Point, so she disturbed and shocked me now.
“You must not say such things!” I cried. “The police know the man fell—and that’s all there is to it!”
She looked pleased at having upset me. No longer worried about being sent away, she nodded in a patronizing fashion. “Oh, I don’t think you pushed him the way they say over in town. But someone did. Miss Miranda, don’t you believe that wickedness can get into the air just like a sea fog? You can’t touch it, and you can’t blow it away unless a great wind comes up, but you know all the time that it’s there and you can’t see your way because of it. Don’t you feel things like that, Miss Miranda? I do, and so does Lucifer. The bad thing is not to know where the wickedness is coming from.”
Almost she persuaded me, this all too sentient child, for I had indeed sensed a miasma in the air. In her own way Laurel possessed a wisdom beyond her years. Or perhaps it was child-wisdom. A child lived closer to elemental things than those who had matured and substituted reason for feeling. Perhaps I was still young enough to feel this too, and I could not laugh at Laurel.
“Listen to me,” I said. “If you hear anything, or learn anything that is real—not just talk about ghosts—come and tell me. Will you do that? Will you tell me first of all?”
I suppose it was unwise to let her know that I could take her so seriously. At once she preened herself, like a sea gull smoothing its wings in vain satisfaction. At once she began to perform for me. She drew up her knees and rested her chin upon them, wrapped her arms about her legs and closed her eyes as if she were lost in some embryonic trance.
“I can feel it now,” she murmured. “It is coming close—very close. The wickedness is stealing toward us over the point in an evil mist. If we breathe it we will choke and die. It’s coming so close that—”
Above our heads a foot struck a pebble and we both started violently and looked upward in alarm. The stone rolled over the ledge and went bouncing from crag to crag down the cliff, lost at last in the water’s surging roar. Above us on the rocky edge of the precipice Brock McLean stood watching. There was that about his appearance and manner that seemed all the more disturbing after Laurel’s eerie words. Once more an uneasy elation seemed to possess him—some strange mingling of triumph and satisfaction, laced with a more deadly potion that I could not place.
Laurel leaned toward me to whisper and I felt the quivering of her body. “I was only making it up, Miss Miranda. I didn’t feel anything. It’s not my father who is wicked! It’s not—” She did not finish, but sprang to her feet and went leaping away over the rocks to climb to the top at another place, to disappear from view, fleeing in panic.
Her words left me aquiver as well, and for a single dreadful instant I looked down over jagged rocks and wondered what it would feel like to go pitching over, dropping like a stone until my body struck the water, or was dashed against the rocks themselves. Then I shook off my fright and this false sense of premonition, forcing myself to look calmly upward at the man above. Not for anything would I fly in obvious terror from his approach. I would not give him that satisfaction.
He climbed down to the boulder on which I sat and came to a halt beside me. I did not speak, but returned to my contemplation of surf breaking far below. I had no wish to look longer into that storm-ridden countenance, though the spell Laurel’s words had set upon me was fading.
His voice when he spoke held so little animosity, verged so closely on praise that I was pleasantly surprised and all too easily disarmed.
“There is a change in Laurel,” he said. “I know this is your doing. She has needed a gentling hand. I am grateful.”
I managed to answer tartly, hiding the rush of foolish delight that went through me at his words. “It is no thanks to your being a loving father that there is a change in her.”
“I know that,” he said with unexpected humility. “I have been too often wrapt in my own concerns, so that my only use with the child has been to admonish and discipline. She has lost all affection for me.”
This I contradicted at once. “Your daughter loves you deeply. She admires you, though she would never admit it to you, and she longs to be admired. But when you give her nothing of praise, nothing of appreciation, what can she do but hide her feelings behind the pretense of hostility toward you that she wears?”
His gentler mood could last just so long and I sensed that my criticism ruffled its edges. Brock was not accustomed to women who spoke the truth to him so boldly. He stood in silence beside me and I went back to watching the sea, my blood pulsing to its rhythm.
After a time he spoke again. “The sea interests you?”
“Why not?” I said. “It is endlessly fascinating and I can watch it endlessly. If I’d been a man I would have been a sailor. I’d have gone to far away countries and brought back silks and jades and rare teas.”
“That’s the romantic side,” he said and lowered himself to my rock, so that he sat with his elbow touching my arm. “The sea can be as treacherous as she is romantic. She’s forever pitted against the ships that sail her. I’ve seen her when she has torn away the royals and cracked the mizzen in two and set the sheets snapping like to break. I’ve seen her sweep the decks with waves that threaten to bury a ship and send to his death any poor fellow whose numb hands will no longer hold to frozen rigging. You’d feel less sentimental if you’d seen her in that role.”
“I’d still find her fascinating,” I insisted. “You know her and you don’t hate her.” I looked at him then, into that broad, dark-browed face so close to my own that his breath touched my cheek and my own breathing quickened. I spoke more eagerly. “Anyone can read your love for the sea. It’s in your eyes when you look at her, and in the sound of your voice when you speak of her. Perhaps you’re unhappy because you deny her and turn your back on her.”
He glowered at me more darkly than ever. “I deny her? When have I ever denied that I’ve loved her all my life? More constantly than I’ve loved any woman.”
“Then your wife must have hated the sea,” I said.
“Rose?” His tone softened as he spoke her name. “She hated nothing. But I think she was glad to have me home. She was a gentle soul—too gentle for this rough world.”
He spoke as of someone gently loved and long lost, and I sensed that he no longer grieved over her death, as his mother had wanted me to believe he did.
Aware of this still tempered mood, I urged upon him once more the plan I had not mentioned since his first rejection of it.
“If you go to Salem and bring the Sea Jade home, you can refit her and have the chance to sail again yourself.”
The sound he made in answer was harsh—a sound of repudiation and pain.
“But why not?” I persisted. “The ship deserves better than to be used ignobly. She was your father’s dream come to perfection. There is nothing to keep you from setting her on the seas again if you so desire.”
He gave me a sidelong, scowling look. “Why are you ridden by this obsession?”
I was not entirely sure myself why the vision seemed so clear in my mind—so fitting and right.
“She killed my father and destroyed yours,” Brock went went on. “Why give her another chance? Who knows that she might not perform her old tricks all over again? Who knows what deadly force we might stir up by bringing her back to Scots Harbor?”
This—from Brock McLean!—was too much for me. I laughed in his face. “So now I know where Laurel gets her talent for imagining strange visions. Is this a Scotsman’s second sight?”
He looked straight into my eyes and there was no amusement in his own. “There is much in the world beyond your ken, my lass. Perhaps you’d be wise to stay out of deeps that do not concern you lest they close over your head.”
“As they did over Tom Henderson’s?” I said.
At once I sensed the rising of anger in him, but there was a wariness as well, as though he suddenly stepped with caution.
“Are you afraid to sail again?” I taunted when he did not answer.
I’m not fit to sail again!” he told me savagely. “There’s no harder task on the seas than sailing a clipper ship to get the best from her. The crew must have a master they can respect. Not one who is only half a man.”
For once his suffering was fully visible and I found myself shaken at the sight of it. Yet I did not relent. “Why do you discredit yourself? Why won’t you take the gamble and prove to yourself what you are? Why must you be afraid of failure?”
I thought for a moment that he would lash out at me in fury and I braced myself against the expected flood. Instead, he startled me by laughing wryly to himself, as though something amused him.
“What a cocklebur you are, Miss Miranda! I can see how you work your spell with Laurel. Your insert yourself insidiously at a sensitive point and those who oppose you find the bur hurts less if they go in the direction you wish. Is that what you’re trying with me? Because you want Sea Jade brought home?”
I did not really know what I wanted. It was as if some lodestar drew me without reference to reason.
Brock’s momentary amusement vanished. There was a change in him—unaccountable and somehow deadly.
“The figurehead will never go to sea,” he told me flatly.
I could not let well enough alone. “But why are you against it? If you will only look at it, you may not feel so strongly. This new carving has nothing to do with my mother or with anything that happened in the past. It is my face Ian has depicted.”
“I’ve no need to look at the thing,” he said roughly and sprang to his feet in the seemingly light, quick way that never paid tribute to his lameness, though it must always cost him great effort.
I knew he would be gone in a moment and the promise I wanted from him to bring Sea Jade home was still far from given. I rose and put my hand on his arm, holding him there. He merely stared at my hand until I flushed and drew it away. Once more it was as though a strong current flowed between us, quickening in my blood, carrying me along to some disastrous undertow of emotion. Whether he felt it or not I could not tell, but I fought the current, giving him back scowl for scowl.
“The least you can do is to come with me and look at the figurehead,” I said.
He made a sudden gesture as if relinquishing all responsibility and turned toward the lighthouse. “Have it your way then. Come show me this masterpiece.”
He did not wait to help me, and as I clambered upon the rocks after him I heard the dog in the distance, though not baying now, as he did at the moon. This howling came from the heart—a wild and grievous, lonely sound.
“Lucifer mourns his master,” I said as I caught up with Brock. “Have you neglected him lately?”
“If you’ll wait for me here,” he said, “I’ll get him now and take him with us.”
Sea Jade Page 20
