Lost Island

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “It was certainly nothing of the kind,” his father said. “It belongs to your grandfather Charles and your Grandmother Amalie, and to no one else.”

  Stubbornly, Richard returned his father’s look. Then he ran to Elise, who slipped an arm about him. Watching him, I could understand the power which the possession of the brooch had given him. There must have been a certain solace in knowing that he had a secret so marvelous it gave him power over everyone. I could not condone what he had done, but I could understand it. It was unfortunate that Elise should now support him in his behavior.

  “Don’t scold him,” she said to Giles. “If I had a secret like that, I’d keep it too. If I had that brooch I’d never tell a soul.”

  “The question,” Aunt Amalie said, “is where it is now. Are you certain, Richard dear, that it was in its box yesterday?”

  “I put it there yesterday morning,” Richard said. “I had it out for a couple of hours, and then I put it safely away. There’s no mistake about that.”

  “Is it possible,” Paul asked, “that one of the servants followed Richard on some occasion, found out about the brooch and took it?”

  “I’d trust Vinnie or George with anything I own,” Charles said. “And the stable boys have been with us for years.”

  “I wonder—” Floria mused aloud, “which one of us wanted that brooch enough to steal it from its hiding place and spirit it away.” Her eyes looked as bright as her sister’s now, as though the Merlin mood was upon her.

  Charles shook his head, not smiling. “There seems to be no reason why any one of us would have the brooch. But I know what I shall do. I am going to return this box to its place behind the loose brick. I’ll leave it there, and perhaps whoever has borrowed the brooch will put it back.”

  Elise laughed softly and moved away from the group. “Borrowed! What a lovely word. Imagine some member of the sacred Hamptons or the noble Severns playing a trick like this. It’s quite delicious.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” Floria said.

  Aunt Amalie waved her hands. “That’s enough. Charles is right. We will try it this way and see what happens. Then if the brooch is returned, there will be no questions asked, no accusations made.”

  “No questions or accusations,” Giles said. “Only ugly suspicions of one another from now on.”

  “No, it mustn’t be like that,” Charles said. “We must make allowances for whatever the motive may have been.” He looked about for Richard. “You may take the box and return it to its hiding place,” he told the boy, giving him the container. “We will charge you to look there once a day and see if the brooch is inside. You make pick the hour you want to investigate, and let us know what it is. The rest of the time you are to stay away from the burying ground. No spying—understand?”

  “I understand,” Richard said.

  There was still a tense excitement about him, but there was pride now, as well, and I was grateful to Charles for his gesture. The boy ran off with the box in his hands, and I knew Charles’s instructions would be obeyed to the letter. Nevertheless, Giles looked thoroughly disturbed, and I understood that as well. Charles’s way was gentle and carried forgiveness, rather than any sting of censure. Richard had gotten off too easily. He had learned nothing from what had happened. It was difficult to be a parent when you had some sense of responsibility to your son. Elise wanted only to bind him to her. She cared nothing about the cost to the child. I wondered what Richard thought. I wondered how he accepted the various attitudes around him. I did not know him well enough to judge.

  Lunch was an oddly quiet meal that day. Perhaps what Giles had said about suspicion of one another was already taking root. And there was an uneasiness on another score as well. Whether by accident or intent, Elise and Paul had met in the burying ground this morning, and Floria’s anger still smoldered.

  After the meal everyone dispersed about his own affairs. Aunt Amalie took a nap in the early afternoon, so I could not be with her, though I would have liked to talk over in private this latest development. I did not really know what I thought about what had happened. Perhaps I was a little afraid to puzzle over it. No one on the island would take the brooch because of its value. No one wanted it for money. Any one of those who lived here would wish only to see it restored to the glass case where it belonged. Its loss had been regretted and resented through the years, with Charles having to live with a good deal of the blame. Yet everyone loved Charles and would want only to see him free of that blame after all this time. In spite of these facts, someone had spirited the brooch away and was keeping it maliciously for some secret purpose.

  I was in my room, standing idly by a window, when a firm rap came at the door. I went to open it and found Giles standing there. His eyes were green, like his son’s, and they had the same bright adventurous look in them that I had seen in Richard’s.

  “Get into some outdoor clothes,” he told me peremptorily. “We’re going for a boat ride.”

  There was nothing I would like better. I smiled at him and closed the door. Then I rushed about my room, pulling slacks and blouse from the closet, dressing as quickly as I could. When I was ready in navy and white, I tied a blue-flowered scarf about my hair, and hurried downstairs. Not for a moment did I permit myself to stop and think about what I was doing. Giles had said, “Come,” and I was coming as fast as I possibly could. What consequences there might be, I was not yet ready to face. Not until I stepped into the hall did I suddenly realize that being alone with Giles was not the wisest course of action I could take. He had spoken as though he had reached the point where he was ready to throw caution to the winds, no matter how he might play into Elise’s hands.

  He waited for me at the foot of the stairs, and I called down to him, “Could we take Richard with us?”

  “If you like,” he said. “Only hurry along. The afternoon’s waiting for us.”

  I went to Richard’s door and tapped on it. He opened it at once, staring at me.

  “Your father and I are going for a boat ride,” I said. “We’d like to have you with us, if you want to come.”

  For an instant a response lighted his face, then he turned away and started to close the door. “I don’t want to go if you’re with him.”

  “Wait,” I said, and put my hand out, my shock and hurt undoubtedly showing in my face. “Why do you feel this way about me, Richard?”

  There was something of Elise in the expression he wore. “I still think that maybe you’re the one who took that brooch. It’s funny it should disappear the very day you came back to the island. Perhaps—”

  “You can’t believe that!” I broke in. “You’re making up something foolish. You know that, don’t you?”

  He closed the door and left me staring at the wooden panel. I turned away and went slowly down the stairs.

  Giles saw the look on my face. “What’s the matter? The boy’s always eager for any chance to get out in the boat.”

  “He has decided to dislike me,” I said. “He doesn’t want to go if I’m along.”

  “The skies won’t fall because of that,” Giles said. “Don’t look so woebegone. He’s a moody child and you can’t count on what his reactions will be. He’ll get over it.”

  We walked out the door together and down the steps. I still felt shaken by Richard’s behavior.

  “Ever since that time at the Sea Oaks plant when I got caught in one of the freezing rooms, he has turned against me,” I said. “When I returned this time I thought he would have forgotten whatever struck him then. But he wants to taunt and torment me. I don’t know what’s happened to him, or what to think.”

  “Then let’s not think about it for now,” Giles said as we started along the path toward the beach and the boathouse. “I’ll have a talk with him sometime soon and see if I can find out what’s troubling him. He doesn’t know you well, of course, but he has always spoken affectionately of his Cousin Lacey in New York. And he seemed to like you well enough that day we went t
o the beach.”

  “I think someone has been telling him lies about me,” I said.

  “That’s possible.” Giles’s tone was dry. “We don’t have far to look for the source, if that’s true. But children change easily, and this mood may not be permanent at all. In any case, let’s forget it for the time being. I want a free, happy afternoon with you. We deserve that, at least.”

  Giles’s boat was fairly new and he told me about it as we got aboard. It was a nineteen-foot outboard, made of fiber glass, with a double hull—very seaworthy. He slipped behind the white wheel on the starboard side, and I took the seat opposite. The day had turned from gray to sunny, but a canvas stretched overhead to give us shade. The hull was painted a soft blue inside, echoing the sky.

  Giles cast off and in a few moments we were planing around the point of land where Sea Oaks stood, following a calm sea toward The Bitterns and Malvern River. In a little while we were running past the tabby ruins of the old fort, past rocky embankments where fiddler crabs scuttled about. Then we were in the river proper, with wide stretches of marsh on either hand. Low in the water, all we could see was the green of marsh grass, with creeks and water indentations leading into the marsh at frequent intervals. At a distance, where the ground was higher, the sea myrtles began, and then the loblolly pines of the island.

  I lazed in my seat, listening to the roar of the boat that kept us from talking. I watched the gray water flashing past, and now and then turned to see the foaming wake stretching out behind us, with muddy brown shadows churning in its midst. The soreness of my encounter with Richard was still upon me, but I was trying to put it out of my mind—to put everything hurtful out of my mind, and enjoy the fact that I was alone with Giles in this world of marsh and water.

  We flashed past a sandbank where a white egret stood fishing, and followed a section of the river where shell banks fought off the erosion.

  “Where are we going?” I shouted to Giles.

  “Palmetto Island,” he called back to me. “You remember the small, private island to the northwest of Hampton? The owners are away, and sometimes I look in on the place for them.”

  I was silent again, but not content. I could not, after all, put the thought of Richard from my mind. What was happening spelled disaster. My son could never grow up whole and well balanced in such an atmosphere. I remembered the time when he had said he was being pulled in different ways. How torn he must feel now, how bewildered and uncertain. His behavior in itself cried out for help. He needed to know where the boundaries lay. He needed to know where he must stop, and go no further. Instead, because of Elise, there was a lawlessness in the landscape about him, and instead of being taught to love, he was taught to hate. Yet no one had been able to stop Elise. Giles stood helpless against the force of her destructiveness, and Aunt Amalie was too loving and permissive in her approach. Not that she could not take a strong stand when she chose, but unless I could make her see what she did not want to see, she would do nothing. Oddly enough, only Floria, aside from Giles, had the perception to understand fully what Elise was doing. But there was too much hate of her sister in Floria for there to be wise guidance left over for Richard.

  All that I’d witnessed left me sore and filled with a futile longing to help. But there was nothing to be done now. I tried to turn my attention to the scene around me.

  Out in the channel an orange marker showed up brightly. We planed away from it in a wide arc to follow the opening to a creek. Hampton Island was behind us now, and for a little way there were high bluffs, with the forest growing close to their edge. Here rock had been used against the erosion that went on everywhere.

  “Palmetto Island,” Giles said. “We’ll go around to the other side where the house is.”

  Where trees had fallen in this wilderness, the slashed gap was like a window into the forest. You could see deeply in among trees tangled with vines and choking with undergrowth, highlighted by streaming bars of sunlight. Giles slowed the boat as the banks of the creek narrowed and we followed a curving course around the island. The loud roaring of the motor lessened, and once Giles cut it back to a murmur so that we could watch a blue heron take off from a swampy hummock and fly above the mud-colored water of the creek. For an instant I felt a surge of deep happiness at the sight because I was witnessing it with Giles. He must have felt the same thing, for he reached across to touch my hand, and I held to him until the great bird was out of sight.

  We were bound around the head of the island, and Giles told me there was a boathouse on the other side of the point of land on which the house was built. Through the trees, not far away, I could see the house now. It vanished as we drew closer to land.

  “We’ll stay on this side,” he said. “There’s a dock and we can get up the bank without going clear around to the boathouse.”

  In a few moments the weathered brown dock came into view, thrusting into the creek. Giles drew the boat skillfully alongside and made it fast. Then he helped me out. With the motor silent, the world about us was very still. Those who lived on this island had a wilderness at their doorstep.

  We climbed up a flight of wooden steps, and then made our way along a narrow path that led through scrubby palmetto, and loblolly pine. I could see the house on ahead of us—a low, one-story cabin, very spacious, with a roof that sloped to a wide overhang on either side of the front door. The timbers had a dark shine there among the sweet gums, and there were cabbage palms all around.

  “I have a key,” Giles said. “We’ll take a look inside and see that everything’s in order.”

  We went up the steps and found that the outer door stood slightly ajar. When Giles tried the screen door, he discovered that it was unlocked.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “The Barretts usually lock up carefully when they are away. Let’s have a look around.”

  Inside, there was evidence of an occupant. Lunch dishes had not been cleared from a table, and an open book lay face down on a couch. Over the back of a chair hung a pale yellow kerchief that had a familiar look.

  From the rear of the cabin beyond a partitioning wall, came the sound of running steps, then the creak of another door being opened and softly closed.

  “There’s someone here,” I said.

  Giles ran toward the door at the rear of the cabin, and I dashed to a window and looked out. Vanishing among the trees I saw a flash of intense green.

  “That looks like Floria,” I called to Giles.

  He turned away from the door. “Then let her go. She probably has a boat around by the boathouse. Though what she’s doing here, I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” said a voice from the door behind us.

  We swung about together and found that we were facing Hadley Rikers. His neatly trimmed beard somehow gave him a cocksure look, and he smiled at us easily, confidently.

  “Greetings,” he said. “I didn’t expect visitors. The Barretts said I’d have the island to myself.”

  Giles said nothing at all. The dark blood had risen in his face, and I was almost afraid that he might make some move of violence.

  “Hello, Lacey,” Hadley said. “You’ll be glad to know that I’ve come here for a few weeks’ stay to work over that manuscript of mine. It appears that a good deal of revision is necessary before I make a resubmission.”

  “This should be a … a good place to work,” I said feebly.

  He nodded. “It is. I have the Barretts’ boat for getting back to civilization, and my car is over in Malvern. I don’t mind fending for myself. I’d planned to look in on Hampton Island before long.”

  It was difficult for Giles to be civil. He was staring around the cabin, a little white about the lips, and I edged backward toward the yellow kerchief that hung over a chair. I remembered it now. That last time I’d seen it, it was knotted about Elise’s neck. While both men were regarding each other warily, I wadded the scarf up and stuffed it into a pocket of my slacks.

  The moment of tension between the two men s
eemed to go on forever, but at last it was Hadley Rikers who turned away, the insolent smile fading from his mouth. Giles would not play his polite and outrageous game. He strode past him out the door and let the screen bang behind him. I hurried after him, and Hadley sprang to open the door for me, looking less poised and confident now.

  Neither of us spoke, and I followed Giles back to the boat. Down on the strip of dock we were out of sight of the house, and he pulled me suddenly into his arms.

  “Oh, Lacey, Lacey!” he whispered against my hair.

  I put my arms about him and held him close. I lifted my face for his kiss and put my cheek against his. I knew the torment that he was feeling, knew the rage against Elise that tore at him mercilessly.

  “Don’t,” I said at last. “Don’t let it tear you up like that. If she’s meeting him here, then they’re playing into your hands. It should make everything easier for you.”

  “It could have been Elise running away through the trees,” he said.

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve never seen her wear that poisonous shade of green. That was Floria’s color.”

  He helped me down into the boat, but before he untied the mooring rope, I spoke to him.

  “Could we talk a little?” I said. “Once you start the motor there’ll be no chance. And I want to talk about Richard.”

  “Of course,” he said. He slipped into the pilot’s seat, and I took my place opposite.

  “Floria wrote me about what happened a little while ago,” I began. “I mean when Richard got angry with Vinnie—the malicious damage he did to her wash. And then how he tried to pay you back for spanking him by breaking that little driftwood ship.”

  “Yes.” Giles’s eyes darkened. “We had a bad time for a while. I couldn’t reach the boy. He seemed outside any punishment or counseling I could give him. It was unfortunate that I had to go away from the island just then. When I came back, he seemed changed toward me—like a different boy.”

  “He needs help,” I said. “He needs help desperately. Even though I know him so little, I’ve seen the change.”