A Respectable Actress

by Dorothy Love

  “Thank you. I hope so too.” Soon enough, the Savannah papers would arrive on the island, and her troubles would be laid bare. Until then, India saw no point in discussing them. The room seemed to be closing in. She got to her feet. “I’m feeling the need for some fresh air. Would you mind if I took a walk around the grounds?”

  “Of course not. I’d go with you, except I promised to finish writing these letters in time to send them back with the Neptune this afternoon. My cousins in Charleston are thoroughly convinced that I’m wasting away out here with so few people for company. They worry if they don’t hear from me each and every week.”

  India hurried upstairs to get her hat and coat, and when she returned to the parlor, Amelia opened the front door. “Just turn right past the old rose garden and follow the footpath. It winds through most of the property and comes out on the other side of the house, by where the slave hospital used to be. Stay on the path and you won’t lose your way.”

  India set off. The morning had dawned sunny and clear, with a stiff wind blowing in from the Atlantic. She passed the abandoned rose garden and found the footpath, a narrow track bordered on both sides by overgrown hedges, blighted orange trees, and the remains of several outbuildings. Here was what appeared to be a chicken coop on brick pillars, the front still covered with rusting wire; ahead stood the remains of a large carriage house. The doors had been torn away, revealing an old leather-topped conveyance missing one wheel. Everything spoke of loss and ruin. The very air seemed tinged with sadness.

  She paused to pick a small yellow bloom pushing through a patch of dead grass, then continued on her way. The path led deeper into the thick woods and across a narrow stream choked with weeds and blackened tree limbs. Mockingbirds called from a thicket draped in wild jasmine and carpeted with red and green mosses. The pale winter sun filtered through the trees, dappling the water. She crossed a crumbling causeway that led across a salt marsh and stopped to watch tall brown grasses that moved in the wind like a living sea.

  A smooth red pebble at the bottom of the stream caught her eye. As India bent to retrieve it, she was grabbed roughly from behind and yanked off her feet.

  A scream escaped her lips and echoed through the deserted woods.

  CHAPTER 5

  INDIA WRENCHED FREE AND SPUN AROUND, HER HEART thudding against her ribs. “Mr. Sinclair! You frightened me.”

  “I’m sorry. But you were in danger.” He picked up a stick lying beside the footpath and stirred the water. A long black snake thicker than a man’s wrist roiled and twisted in the water before slithering away.

  India’s knees buckled, and his arms came around her. “I thought it was a rotted limb,” she said, her cheek against the rough wool of his coat.

  “It’s a cottonmouth. Some folks call them water moccasins. It’s highly poisonous by any name.”

  She drew back and looked up at him. “Why . . . why didn’t you kill it?”

  “These waters are rife with them. One snake more or less won’t make any difference. You must be careful of them, and the alligators, when you’re out here.”

  He released her and studied her with such an intense and odd expression in his eyes that India felt an unaccustomed shyness. “Is something wrong? Do I have dirt on my nose?”

  He laughed. “Nothing of the sort. I’m afraid I’ve set your hat askew. Your hat pin is coming out.”

  India reached for it at the same moment he did, and her fingers brushed his, sending an unexpected wave of longing rushing through her.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me.” He secured her hat pin and retied the satin bow under her chin. “Good as new.”

  The look in his eyes, a mixture of wonder and surprise, mirrored her own emotions.

  She strove to school her voice. “Thank you.”

  He offered his arm as they continued along the footpath. “I wonder. Is it too soon to ask if I may call you India?”

  She shook her head, inordinately pleased with his request and with the sound of her name on his lips.

  “Good. And you ought to call me Philip.”

  “All right.” She was still trembling, still shaken by the intensity of his unintended embrace. To cover her confusion she plucked another wild bloom. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I got back from the bluff earlier than expected, and Amelia told me you’d gone for a walk. I thought I’d better find you.” She nodded, her attention drawn to the remnants of a burned-out building barely visible through the stands of oaks. Only the foundation, a portion of one wall, and the chimney remained. Mounds of shattered glass, hardened ash, and blackened rubble protruded spire-like into the bright December sky.

  Mr. Sinclair—Philip—pressed her arm more closely to his and hurried her along the path. “That was our chapel,” he said. “My grandfather built it in 1800. It survived the war virtually intact, only to burn down four years ago.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as they moved into the sunlight again. “It looks dangerous. As if it might collapse at any moment.”

  “I’ve been meaning to have it torn down. Maybe I’ll get to it after Christmas. In the meantime, I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

  They emerged into a clearing where a few slave cabins—also made of tabby—still stood. Chickens pecked at the dirt, scattering at the approach of a small black dog. A Negro girl pegging clothes to the line raised her eyes to them as they passed. From inside her cabin came the thin, reedy wail of an infant.

  They crested a small rise that afforded a view of the old slave hospital, and beyond it, the marshes and the line of cobalt blue marking the beginnings of the sea. Despite the ruin around her, India was drawn to the island’s rugged beauty. Light shimmered on the blue water. Winter had turned the wind-stirred marsh grasses to a deep amber. An osprey circled lazily above the water before disappearing into the twisted limb of an old oak draped with Spanish moss. She could imagine how beautiful Indigo Point must have looked before the war destroyed everything.

  She followed Philip along a narrow strip of sandy beach, listening to the whisper of the incoming tide and the sharp cries of gulls wheeling overhead. Remembering a long-ago walk on a beach with her father, India took a deep breath, willing herself to let go of the persistent emptiness of bereavement. Philip walked beside her in companionable silence, as if he understood how vast and inhospitable the world seemed to her now.

  “This was my favorite spot when I was a boy,” he said after a time. “When my grandmother came to take care of the servants in the hospital, I’d bring my books out here and read for hours, waiting for the steamboats to pass. Usually she’d find me fast asleep by the time she was ready to start home.”

  “You spoke of her last evening,” India said. “You must have loved her a great deal.”

  “Grandmama Timmons was the only mother I really knew. She looked after me from the time I was ten. She was everything to me.”

  “You were lucky to have her. After my mother died, it was mostly just Father and me,” India said. “He did his best, but sometimes I felt more like his parent than the other way around.” “How did your mother die?” He took her hand to help her over a patch of nettles in the path.

  “Childbed fever. When I was th
ree days old.”

  India wondered what had happened to his mother, but he became quiet and withdrawn and she didn’t want to pry. To lighten the mood she asked more questions about his boyhood. He seemed grateful for the change of subject and regaled her with elaborate tales of fishing expeditions, failed pirating adventures, and the broken arm he’d suffered in a rough-and-tumble fight with his cousins. “It still pains me some when the weather turns.”

  He told a silly joke, and the sound of her own laughter startled her. It made no sense that she should feel so lighthearted when her freedom was at stake, but perhaps it was sometimes necessary to surrender to happiness, no matter how fleeting.

  “What about you, India?” he asked. “What did you do for fun when you were a child?”

  “I don’t remember many times when I felt like a child. I was usually rehearsing for a play or traveling with Father to a performance. Once we went to an outdoor circus, and a magician tried to teach me a trick. But I never could master it. In Boston I went to tea parties at my aunt’s.”

  “Tea parties?” He grinned and arched his brows. “Sounds deadly.”

  “Oh no. My aunt was an eccentric and prone to inviting all sorts of people to the house. I never knew who might turn up from one week to the next. She was just as apt to invite a band of gypsies as the mayor. She played the mandolin and kept canaries and several cats and had a library filled with books.”

  “Anybody who collects books can’t be all bad.”

  India smiled. “Life became much more ordinary after her death. I don’t remember much more than that, but I do miss her sometimes, even now.”

  A few minutes’ walk brought them into the yard again. On the porch, an ancient black woman wearing a faded blue dress wielded a broom.

  Philip and India mounted the steps to the front door.

  “Morning, Almarene,” he said. “How’s your rheumatism today?”

  “Not too bad, Mr. Philip. Not too bad.” Almarene finished sweeping the porch and leaned on her broom handle. “’Course these cooler mornings been makin’ it act up some, but I don’t reckon we can do nothing ’bout the weathah.”

  “I suppose not.” Philip inclined his head toward India. “This is our houseguest, Miss Hartley.”

  “Uh-huh.” Almarene eyed India. “I made up your room. Made you a fire.” The woman sent India a pointed look. “Took some doin’ but I cleaned up that mess off the bottom of that fancy purple skirt.”

  India’s stomach clenched. She was grateful to the woman for removing the bloodstains and saving her costume from the rag bin. But people talked. No doubt every person on St. Simons would know about those stains before the sun set on this day.

  “Thank you,” India said. “But I don’t expect you to—”

  “Long as you sleep under this roof, you fam’bly, and that means you bear lookin’ after. That’s how Miss Amelia runs things at Indigo Point.” Almarene cocked her head. “Now, Mr. Philip, I ’spect you got important work to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I surely do.”

  “Then why’re you standin’ here jawin’? I got work to do my own self.”

  His eyes lit with amusement, but he bowed gravely. “You are absolutely right. Come, Miss Hartley.”

  They went inside. Philip helped India with her hat and coat and showed her into a study off the main hallway. Here, the desk, chairs, and tables were newer and finer. India surmised that he had furnished this room recently. A fire danced in the grate, casting a warm glow over the polished wood and the silver tea service that waited on a mahogany side table.

  He directed her to a chair by a window that overlooked another of the gardens, then took his seat behind his desk. India noticed his hands as he rummaged in the desk drawer for a pad and pencil. His were the long slender fingers that might belong to a musician or a sculptor. She touched her face where his thumb had brushed her skin, and heat suffused her cheeks.

  He poured tea and offered her a cup before picking up his pad and pencil.

  “Now,” he said. “I think you ought to tell me about that gun.”

  CHAPTER 6

  INDIGO POINT, CHRISTMAS DAY

  PHILIP INVITED THE LUMBER MILL OWNER—MR. Dodge—and a few of the other islanders to a small reception on Christmas afternoon. India had tried to avoid making an appearance, but Philip insisted it was better to show up and act as if she had nothing to hide. She dreaded it, but his careful questioning as they worked on her case had convinced her of his sound judgment. If he thought it best to mingle with the locals, then she would gather up her resolve and do it.

  She chose the deep-green velvet dress she’d bought in New York last winter and draped it across her bed while she attended to her hair.

  Binah knocked and came into the room, her arms laden with wood. “Mr. Philip said to bring you some firewood.” She dumped it onto the hearth and brushed off her hands. “There it be.”

  “Thank you. I am a bit chilly.”

  Binah sidled closer to the dressing table. “What’s that?”

  “This?” India picked up a small silver box. “It’s rice powder. It keeps my nose from getting shiny.”

  “Huh.”

  India picked up her hairbrush and attempted to arrange her famous curls, but the pins kept slipping out.

  “You ain’t doin’ it right,” Binah said.

  India turned in her chair. “Is that so? Do you know how to dress hair?”

  The girl shrugged. “A little, I guess. Used to do Hannah June’s hair ’fore she run off. Been some time back since she up and went. Didn’t say a word to nobody.”

  “Oh? Who was she?”

  “My sister. I used to do other folks’ hair at Indigo Point, too, but that was a long time ago.”

  “I see. Would you be willing to give mine a try?”

  Another shrug.

  “I’ll pay you, Binah. I must go downstairs in a little while to meet a group of strangers, and I want to look my best.”

  “All right.” The girl took up the hairbrush and pins. “I heard Mrs. Catchpole tell Mama you a theater lady.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She says Mr. Philip ought not to of brought you here. She says theater folks ain’t respectable.”

  India had long since learned not to let such opinions rankle. “I don’t expect to be here for very long.”

  The girl began pinning India’s hair. When she was finished, it was not the perfect coif Fabienne could have achieved, but it was superior to India’s own efforts.

  Binah leaned forward, and India caught a glimpse of a necklace half hidden inside the girl’s worn blouse. It was made of fine gold wires twisted together to form a loose collar that winked in the gray light coming through the window. It was so distinctive India couldn’t resist remarking on it.

  Binah tucked the necklace back into her blouse. Her expression softened. “My sister had one too. They was gifts from a gentleman who fancied her.”

  “I see. Well, it’s quite striking. Perhaps you ought to put it away and save it for special occasions.”

  “Special occasions?” Binah laughed
. “I ain’t going nowhere. Hannah June, she used to say if you got something that makes you happy, you best enjoy it while you can.”

  “She has a point.” India took out her powder brush and leaned into the mirror.

  “Mrs. Catchpole says theater women goin’ to the devil ’cause they paint up they faces.”

  “I don’t know about that. I hope it isn’t true.” India dipped her finger into her jar of lip pomade and smoothed some on.

  Binah watched, apparently fascinated. “How come they paint up they faces?”

  “So we can change the way we look. We can make our skin darker or lighter, make our cheekbones look sharper and our eyes more deeply set.” India smiled into the mirror. “You wouldn’t recognize me at all if you saw me in my greasepaint.”

  Binah frowned. “What’s greasepaint?”

  India took her makeup case from the wardrobe. She opened it and showed the girl the row of small jars within. “Greasepaint is made from lard and pigments.”

  “Lard and pigs?”

  “Pigments. Different colors made from things like crushed rose petals and charcoal.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you like to try some on?”

  Binah backed away. “No, ma’am! I ain’t goin’ to the devil when I die.”

  Stung, India snapped the case shut. “I wouldn’t believe everything Mrs. Catchpole tells you.”

  “I got to go.”

  India took a coin from her reticule and pressed it into Binah’s palm. The girl pocketed it and left the room. India slipped into her green velvet dress and went downstairs.

  Amelia came forward to greet her, her eyes warm with welcome. “What a pretty dress. And so appropriate for Christmas. Though it doesn’t feel much like Christmas, does it?”