He led and I followed. My son’s feet found the stones my own knew so well, and in a few moments we were at the water’s edge where we could follow the band of damp, hard-packed sand.
“Race you!” Richard cried.
We flew along the beach running together at first. But he was faster than I, and in a few moments he had outdistanced me. I came to a stop with my heart pounding, and waved to him in defeat. Kindly, he waited for me to catch up. The lighthouse was near now, the grassy bank on which it stood rising above the bare sands of the beach. The tall white tower blazed with reflected light under the moon, and its head, where once a lifesaving lamp had burned, reached into the dark, deeply blue sky. The smell of the ocean on the night wind was wonderful.
“You’re not very good at running,” Richard said.
“I did better when I was your age,” I told him. “But I can’t keep up with you now.”
He was pleased by the small victory and his uneasiness with me was fading. For once, the anxieties that beset me so self-consciously when I was with him were gone. Tonight he and I were equals.
We climbed the grassy sandbank to the foot of the lighthouse, and went up three cement steps. Richard took the key from his pocket. It was an old key, and quite large. He handled it with assurance and it went easily into the lock. The door creaked open upon utter blackness.
“Are you afraid of the dark?” he said.
“I think I am—a little,” I admitted. “The time I went up with your father he turned on the lights.”
“Did they see them from the house and come running out to scold you?” he wanted to know.
I shook my head. “No one woke up at all that night.”
“Sometimes they wake up,” he said. “But they’re never in time to catch me before I get to the top. My mother doesn’t care, but Grandmother Amalie and my father worry about me. Aunt Floria thinks it’s okay. She understands about adventures. She did the same thing when she was young, she says.”
“Elise”—I could not say “your mother” to him—“never liked the lighthouse. She only climbed the stairs once that I remember, and she got dizzy at the top.”
“I know,” he said tolerantly. “She told me about that.”
We went through the yawning darkness of the door. Richard fumbled for the switchboard and found a lever. Dim lights came on all the way up. I could stand in the center of the stone floor and look all that dizzy way to the crown of the tower.
“If they see the lights tonight,” Richard said, “it won’t matter. Because you’re along. I meant to come by myself—” There was doubt in his voice again and he hesitated.
“Thank you for bringing me with you,” I said quickly. “I don’t think I’d ever have the nerve to come alone.”
He gave me a fleeting smile that was somehow touching, and started ahead of me up the circling iron steps. I took hold of the metal railing and climbed after him, around and around on the wedged steps, until I was out of breath and had to stop for a moment. He waited for me three steps ahead.
“You’re not a very good climber either,” he told me. “My father can go all the way up without stopping to rest, and so can I.”
I smiled at him apologetically. “You’re in practice. I’m sorry to hold you back.”
“That’s all right. The moon will be out for a long while yet, and there’s lots of time. Isn’t it peculiar how there’s lots of time in the middle of the night, when somehow there’s no time at all during the day?”
“Do you often come outside and wander around at night?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When I feel like it. Mostly I sleep too hard, and I forget to get up.”
Which was just as well, I presumed from my adult point of view. We climbed again, up to the place where the great light was housed—a light that no longer served. Here a door opened upon the narrow catwalk that ran about the tower. Richard stepped through it ahead of me.
“Are you afraid?” he asked again.
I had always been a little uneasy in this high place, but I had never admitted the fact to Giles, and I would not admit it to his son.
“Of course not,” I said, and stepped onto the circling wooden walk, holding the railing with both hands.
The night made a marvelous radiance around us. Far below, the island seemed composed of great banks of soft, dark trees that moved tremulously beneath the windy sky. Here and there the white band of a winding road was visible, and I knew one of those roads led to the ruins of Bellevue, where I had been struck by a chunk of tabby only a few days before. My head no longer hurt, and the lump was gone, with only a faint bruise remaining to show what had happened. But standing there under the moonlit sky, with the shadowy island spreading away at my feet—and a dark patch of shadow off there somewhere that was Bellevue—it no longer seemed unbelievable that I had been struck down by intent. I knew the conviction was in me to stay. For all her bravado, Elise was afraid of me now. And Elise, afraid, was dangerous.
We moved on around the circling walk to where we could see the stretch of beach, no longer dull gray, but glistening like metal, with the moon forming a wide path upon the ocean. Behind the beach the white columns of Sea Oaks could be glimpsed among its live oaks, and still farther away the sloping silver roof of The Bitterns. No lights burned anywhere. The houses slept, and the night was still.
“What were you going to show me?” Richard asked.
There was something his father had made me see that long-ago night when we had climbed this tower together.
“Look out at the island,” I said. “There’s a place on the tower from which you can see nearly all of it at once, with the lights of Malvern in the distance over the causeway. Here—this is the spot. At night it looks as if the island were floating on the ocean and the river. It has almost the shape of a ship at sea, with the prow pointing into the Atlantic. The lighthouse is the bridge of the ship, and any minute now we may take off across the ocean.”
My son did not disappoint me. He was gifted with imagination and he rested his arms along the rail and savored the picture I had given him. Where once I had stood beside his father in this place, with all my senses open to the beauty of the scene, now I stood with our son and felt for the moment tranquillity between us.
“It really is like that,” Richard said softly, as if he did not want to break the spell of the night.
I dared to reach out and touch his hand. “Moon magic,” I said.
He did not pull away, but looked up at me with something like affection. “I’m glad my father showed you this when you were my age, Cousin Lacey. So you could show it to me now. I wonder why he never did?”
“Sometimes we lose the magic when we grow up. Sometimes we forget.”
“I never will,” he said. “Someday when all the island belongs to me, I’ll bring my son up here in the middle of the night, and I’ll show him the ship sailing out to sea in the moonlight. Maybe by that time I’ll have taken the name of Hampton, the way my mother wants me to do. So my son will be a Hampton too, and it will be our ship, with me the captain.”
I drew my hand from his and shivered in the wind that whipped about the lighthouse, all tranquillity gone. He caught me at once.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Ladies always get cold when everything’s most interesting.”
“I’m not all that cold,” I denied valiantly. “I’m doing fine.”
But I was not. The ship was gone, and the moon magic with it. Richard Severn was no Hampton, and he would suffer if he knew the truth as Elise would tell it to him.
He was still studying the outline of the island. “It’s the same shape as that piece of driftwood that used to sit on my father’s desk,” he mused soberly.
“I know,” I agreed. “I found that bit of wood on the beach a long time ago when I was a little girl. I gave it to your father and he kept it all those years.”
The boy beside me was silent.
“The trouble with smashing something is that it can never be put
back together again,” I said. “Once when I was small I broke a cup that belonged to my mother, because I was angry with her. She was fond of it, and afterwards I suffered because I couldn’t bring it back to her. I got over being angry, but I never got over having smashed the cup.”
“It is like that.” Richard looked up at me in wonder, as if it surprised him to realize that someone else had experienced anger and reprisal and pain as he had done.
He moved on around the tower, and I followed him. When we paused again to look up at the moon sailing its dark blue ocean of sky, he asked me a question, almost wistfully.
“Why doesn’t my mother like you?”
I was unprepared and I lost him then because I answered evasively.
“I don’t know,” I said, and was sharply aware of the false note in my voice, aware that his sensitive ears had heard and responded to it.
He turned his face away from the moonlight, and dark shadow lay across it. “My mother would hate it if she knew I was up here with you.”
“Elise is my cousin,” I said. “We shouldn’t hate each other.”
“But you do,” he accused. “Perhaps it’s because you hated her first that she has to hate you back?”
“Let’s not talk about it,” I pleaded. “We were happy together up here, Richard. We were friends. Let it stay that way.”
Even his voice had a dark note in it as he reacted to the sense of a change in me—a change I could not control. “It can’t stay that way. I don’t know what got into me. I don’t know why I let you come up here with me. I must have been crazy. You’re not really my friend. You’re an enemy.” His guilt no longer had to do with injury to his father, but with what he regarded as betrayal of Elise.
I tried to answer him reasonably. “Even if Elise and I have our differences, that doesn’t mean that you and I can’t be friends. I’ve loved you from the time you were a baby, and I don’t want to give up loving you now.”
“Well, I don’t love you,” he said. “I don’t want to be with you at all. I’m going down from the tower. You’ve spoiled everything for me tonight.”
There was nothing I could say to him with this change upon him—and upon me. He had gone thoroughly back to Elise and out of my reach, even as I became a concerned and worrying mother. I stepped ahead of him through the tower door and started down the wedged steps circling round and round the empty center space beyond the rail. Richard came after me and I was aware of a certain stealthiness in the way he moved, of a softness in his tread as his sneakers found one iron step after the other behind me.
I took the steps as fast as I could, moving with my back stiffly erect, not looking around at him. I did not like that feeling of stealthiness on his part, or the fact that he believed himself Elise’s son, with his first loyalty to her.
When we were halfway down I felt a sudden slight pressure in the small of my back and knew that he pressed a hand against me. It was all I could do not to jerk away from his touch and put my back against the rail. But I did not, though my fingers gripped the railing more tightly than ever. After a moment he laughed, and the sound echoed eerily through the tower, though the touch at my back was gone.
“I could have pushed you,” he said. “I could have pushed you and you might have rolled all the way down the steps. Or even gone under the rail and fallen clear to the bottom.”
Only then did I move closer to the wall and turn to look up at him. His small face was very white in the dim lighting.
“But you didn’t push me,” I said.
“No, I didn’t—I didn’t!” he cried, and ran past me down the steep stairway.
I followed more slowly, watching his slight figure circle below me and disappear at the foot of the stairs. When I reached the bottom the lower room was empty. I found the proper lever and plunged the lighthouse into darkness. Then I opened the door and stepped into shadowy moonlight.
I would have expected Richard to run away home, leaving me to make my way back alone. But once more he had waited for me. He did not speak as I came out of the tower. When he saw me, he started down the bank ahead, and hurried along the beach. Not once as I hastened after him did he look back to see if I was coming. I did not try to speak to him, or call his name. I simply hurried, as he did, across the moonlit sands toward Sea Oaks.
We saw at once that lights were on in the house, upstairs and down. Giles, wearing slacks and a jacket, came out the door just as we started up the steps to the portico.
Richard faced his father defiantly. “I had somebody with me. I didn’t go alone.”
Giles stepped aside and let us go past him into the house. Beyond in the lighted hallway, Aunt Amalie stood with Charles, both in night clothes and robes, while halfway up the stairs behind them, Elise sat on a step, wrapped in a filmy pink gown. She yawned deliberately as we came through the door.
“You gave us a fright,” Aunt Amalie said. “We saw the lights and thought Richard had gone up the tower alone, as he’s not supposed to do.”
Charles supported her words. “You might have tapped on our door, Lacey, and let us know about your adventure.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think of doing that.” Nor would I have. I had been thinking only of my son.
Richard ran past us up the stairs to Elise. He flung himself into her arms and she held him sleepily.
“I didn’t mean for Cousin Lacey to go with me!” he cried. “She wanted to come along, and there wasn’t any way to stop her. I didn’t want her with me!”
“That’s all right, dear,” Elise said, looking at me slyly over his head. “I know you’re my boy.”
He clung to her until his father spoke from the foot of the stairs. “Let’s all get back to bed.”
Charles agreed. “It’s after three by this time.”
We started up the stairs. Elise released Richard, and rose from her step. Like the others, I went to my room, but when I was inside I stood with my ear to the door listening. When all was quiet I waited ten minutes longer, and then opened the door just a crack.
Giles was coming out of Richard’s room, and I waited until he had gone down the hall to his own room. The upper hall was a shadowy place, but Giles had left Richard’s door open, and a band of moonlight came through the crack. I crossed the hall quietly and looked in. If the boy had been tucked in by his father, he was no longer there. In his pajamas he stood before a window, staring wistfully out in the direction of the lighthouse tower.
“I came to say good night,” I whispered. “I came to thank you for taking me with you up the tower.”
He turned from the window abruptly, and then switched on a light so he could see me. His face worked unhappily, and for one concerned moment I was afraid he might burst into tears. But he managed to control his emotion.
“Good night,” he said and went to fling himself into bed.
I stepped into the room and turned off the light.
He spoke in a muffled tone from under the bedclothes. “I wouldn’t have pushed you,” he said.
I went to the bed and touched the sheet near his cheek. “I know that. I know that very well.”
No sound came from beneath the covers and I went quietly out of the room.
10
The next two days passed in a rush of preparation for the ball. There was a quickening of tempo that seemed to catch Elise and Aunt Amalie into it. Richard was keyed up with anticipation, and even Charles, being so much a part of the island, seemed to enjoy the flurry. Only Giles and I were set apart. Apart from participating in the preparations, and apart from each other. At least Giles had his work and could get away from the house.
On the day before the ball a storm blew out of the north and rain beat down upon the island. During the morning I left Elise and Amalie to their busy preparations, put on my rain things, and went outside. I’d had enough of Sea Oaks for the time being. I considered asking Richard to come with me, then thought better of it. He had been uneasily distant toward me since the night we had c
limbed the lighthouse tower. It was as though he wanted to please Elise by snubbing me, yet could not be altogether set against me as he had been before our middle-of-the-night adventure. It seemed best not to disturb his tenuous uncertainty.
Once away from the house, I struck out across the burying ground toward The Bitterns, walking fast through a light drizzle. I had nearly reached the house when the rain came down hard again, and I ran for the white gate in the hedge.
I could hear the music before I ran up the steps. Inside, Floria was playing the piano. The sound brought back old memories. Elise used to say that Floria played up our island storms—that when she played her hurricane music, the wind always blew. But I think it was the other way around. When it stormed, Floria liked to pit her music against the tumult outdoors. There was something about bad weather that brought out in her a desire to play music that matched any storm in its intensity. What she was playing now sounded like Moussorgsky, and it suited the day.
The front door stood open. I did not attempt to ring above the sounds, outside and in, but flung off my wet things and left them in the hall. Then I went into Aunt Amalie’s Victorian parlor.
The piano was near the front windows, and Floria sat at the keyboard facing me. Somehow there was a look of storm on her face as well, as her fingers flew across the keys. She looked up and saw me, but she gave no sign, continuing to play, so wrapped in her music that she could not surface to greet me. Her red hair was loose upon her shoulders and she wore her favorite tapestry pants with a deeply yellow blouse.
I went to the velvet sofa and sat down, not caring whether she paid any attention to me or not. Her music suited my mood too, and I closed my eyes and listened to its violence. Outside there was a rumble of thunder above the rumble of bass notes, and the sound satisfied some need in me, released something of my own suppressed desire for storm and fury that would rip away all the evasiveness of deceit.
When the great chords finally came to an end and sound died away, a quivering silence hung in the room, with only the slash of wind and rain against the panes to contrast with the stillness inside. Floria put the piano lid down with a strangely contrasting gentleness, and looked at me across the room.
Lost Island Page 17
