Isle of the Seventh Sentry

by Fortune Kent

  “I hope,” she said, “my place here will be as merited as I’m sure yours is. Only in my case the earning must follow having the position.”

  He studied her over his coffee cup. “You have the Worthington tongue,” he said. “And you resemble your grandmother when she was young. The way she looks in the old portraits upstairs.”

  “How is Grandmother?” Beth asked.

  “I hope she’ll be up this afternoon. Dr. Smith will be along shortly to see her. Fortunately, she didn’t hear any of the excitement last night.”

  “I’ve never known a nightmare to so upset me,” Beth said, blushing not so much for the disturbance in the night as for the lie she must now live. She almost wished she had told Jeffrey what happened, in front of all those people, no matter what the consequences. But once she blamed her screams on a recurring dream she could find no way to change her story.

  “An understandable reaction.” Charles’s voice was sympathetic. “After the journey, the new people, the storm, the tree scraping against the balcony. Careless of the gardeners to let that happen; I don’t understand it. There was some damage to the stables, too—the storm was so sudden Jeffrey was out helping with the horses. Had a nasty fall and got himself all scratched up. Another muffin?”

  Beth shook her head. So that was his story, she thought. She distrusted Jeffrey, felt uneasy with John Price, but there was a kindness about Charles Fremont. She smiled at him. “I can’t remember when I’ve had such a wonderful breakfast,” she said. She had eaten a bowl of oatmeal, a soft-boiled egg, a lamb chop, and two muffins.

  “Besides the Worthington tongue,” Charles told her, “you also have the Worthington appetite.”

  Forthright and friendly, Beth decided. Enemy or not, she liked Charles, felt at ease with him.

  When she rose he held out his hand. “Please,” he said, “let me show you our new library.”

  Beth followed the old man down the central hall to a door halfway between the kitchen and the front of the house. The room was windowless, the fireplace dark, the only light coming from two small oil lamps. Between the lamps a portrait of George Washington looked serenely down on them. The high walls were paneled with dark wood and two entire sides were, from floor to ceiling, covered with shelf upon shelf of books.

  A room for secrets, Beth thought, for maps of lost islands in distant seas, for clandestine meetings and concealed doors opening into dark passageways.

  The furnishings were sparse—four leather armchairs and a rolltop desk whose yellow oak finish contrasted with the somberness of the rest of the room. Three square tables were clear except for lamps and candelabra, the entire library remarkable for the lack of the bric-a-brac so common in the other homes she had known. A shiny spittoon sat strategically in one corner.

  “The books are mostly English,” Charles said. “I don’t care for many American authors, but here’s one you may enjoy.” He limped to the desk and held up a large leather-bound volume. “A new life of Washington with several passages on his army’s encampment near Newburgh and his refusing the crown there.” He placed the book on the corner of the desk. “Come for it anytime,” he said.

  “I know the desk doesn’t fit the decor,” he anticipated her question. “We brought very few pieces from the old New York City office when we sold Worthington Stoves, but I had to have my desk. Seems to make the accounts balance more easily. Of course Jeffrey handles the bulk of the business since we no longer have the factory.”

  Beth felt the hair tingle on the back of her neck. A sensing, an awareness, like nothing she had known before. She turned slowly, casually. Jeffrey leaned indolently against the door. Tall, dark. Speak of the devil, she thought.

  “Dr. Smith is here,” Jeffrey told them.

  Charles selected a cane from the holder.

  “Good,” he said. “Come, Elizabeth, we’ll have you meet the unfortunate Dr. Smith.”

  Why unfortunate? Beth started to ask, then checked herself. I don’t dare ask—I might be expected to know. I must be more careful.

  The doctor waited in the hall. He bowed formally to Beth when Charles introduced them. Rumpled. No other word described him, Beth thought. Younger than she’d expected, about forty, although his brown hair was tinged with gray. But the hair was disheveled as though he had been in a strong wind. He was tall and dressed in black, but the clothes were wrinkled and a size too large. His face looked smooth and scrubbed, yet his rimless glasses were smudged.

  “How is Grandmother?” Beth asked him.

  “I’ll know better after seeing her,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry,” he added hurriedly. “I’m very sorry. Sometimes I talk without thinking.”

  Beth nodded acceptance of the apology. Why does the doctor keep watching me? she wondered. He seemed distracted, but still she felt his stare. And not the usual attention of a man to a woman he finds attractive.

  “What did you say, doctor?” Beth asked. He had been talking, she realized, while she daydreamed. Jeffrey leaned against the hat rack, a superior smile on his face.

  “Dyspepsia caused by anxiety,” the doctor repeated.

  He doesn’t believe in lengthy diagnoses, Beth thought.

  “The doctor has a theory,” Charles told Beth. “Doesn’t really believe in physical ills. The mind, he maintains, controls the body. Melancholia, hypochondria, anxieties, and so forth. And he abhors Turlington’s Balsam and all the other remedies we’ve been using for years.”

  “Your description,” the doctor said, “does little credit to my theories.”

  Charles put his arm on the taller man’s shoulder. “Let me take you up to Mrs. Worthington,” he said, “before her granddaughter comes to think we don’t get along.”

  The two men climbed the stairs. Out of the corner of her eye Beth saw the doctor pause at the landing and gaze down at her, then disappear into the upper hall.

  “Shall we stroll down past the summerhouse?” Jeffrey asked, holding the front door open. Beth sighed to herself, feeling her stomach tighten. Was she ready?

  “I’d like Mrs. Jamison to come,” Beth said.

  He looked down at her with a question in his flecked brown eyes. “A chaperone? To accompany you and your brother? In broad daylight?” He smiled his deprecating smile.

  “All right,” Beth gave in. Outside, the sun was above the trees, but the breeze was cool. They walked in silence, Beth holding her green skirt above the ground, Jeffrey idly flicking his walking stick at the underbrush.

  “A delightful day,” she remarked when they entered the summerhouse, a small, open, pine log structure, octagonally shaped, benches around the sides with two picnic tables in the center. Beth put both of her hands on the railing, and looked down the long hill to the shore road and the river beyond. Two sailboats scudded before the wind, and a rowboat slowly made its way past Sentry Island. Mist rose from the water around the island so the land was shrouded as though seen through a heavy veil.

  Jeffrey didn’t answer.

  “I liked your Charles Fremont,” she said.

  No reply. She turned to face him. He was sitting on one of the benches with his feet stretched out, at ease, his eyes appraising her.

  “He showed me the new library,” she said. Why do I keep chattering? she asked herself. Am I so ill at ease I can’t be patient?

  Jeffrey raised his eyebrows. “The new library?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “The room with no windows and the two walls filled with books and the portrait of Washington.”

  “The room you describe,” Jeffrey said, “has been unchanged for the last twenty-five years. There is no new library.”

  The time of testing had begun. And, Beth wondered with a sensation of emptiness, have I already failed?

  Chapter Five

  The library had remained unchanged for two decades! Had she misunderstood Charles or was this a ruse planned to entrap her? Was Charles lying? Or Jeffrey? Or both of them?

  Myriad possibilities whirled through her mind
. She desperately recalled the references to the library in the diary—“I read in the library this morning”—hardly helpful, and “alone in the dark library,” a clue, but vague. She must rely on her intuition.

  “Mr. Fremont referred to the room as the ‘new library,’” she said, attempting to sound annoyed. “If he chooses to describe the room as new, for whatever reason he may have, I certainly don’t wish to argue.”

  Jeffrey held up his hand. “Be patient with me,” he said. “I was merely surprised.”

  “Which shall it be?” she persisted. “How shall I designate the library—as new or old or middle-aged?”

  Jeffrey smiled and touched her lightly on the arm. “From this day forth,” he said, “the library shall be new.”

  His unexpected gesture confused her. What was there about this man? Beth wondered. Not handsome, certainly. Tall, yes, and she liked men taller than she. Self- assured, and this was a welcome change from the many men she had put off with her assertiveness. He wouldn’t place her on a pedestal, treat her like a statue to be worshipped. He would challenge her to be a woman. Masculine. Was that the word?

  He had pleasant features, she thought, but with coloring altogether too dark, hair too black, face too swarthy. What would a phrenologist make of his head? Were the regions in his brain that controlled self-esteem and arrogance enlarged, causing bumps on those portions of his skull? Did he have an especially well-developed tendency to amativeness? Stop, she told herself. This is not at all the direction for my thoughts to run.

  “What are you thinking?” Jeffrey asked.

  Beth turned away to hide the color rising to her face.

  “I was thinking,” she said, choosing her words with care, “and why I was thinking this I know not—but I was struck by the fact you have never discussed the weather with me.”

  “The weather? Would you like to talk about the weather?”

  “No, not really. Although most men I’ve met usually appear quite fascinated by the weather. The prevailing direction of the wind, the likelihood of rain, and, although more unusual, the prediction of weather based on the formation of the clouds.”

  “I’m not most men,” he said sharply.

  Beth turned and looked into his expressionless face. No, she thought, you’re not most men. You upset and disturb me, make me want to reach out and touch you.

  “I’m your brother,” he added.

  “Yes, my brother,” she repeated. Why did the word trouble her so much?

  “Where are you going?” she asked. He was walking back toward the house.

  “Come along.” He motioned her to follow. “I have work to do. A meeting this evening, then day after tomorrow, Monday, back to the city for a few days.”

  Tomorrow was Sunday The crowded days had lost their identity for her.

  “Is there a Roman Catholic church here?” she asked.

  “A Papist, my sister a Papist,” he shook his head. “Yes, yes there is, attended mostly by the britchers,” he said.

  “The britchers?”

  “Yes, britchers, Paddies, the Irish. We call them britchers because of the knee britches they wear. They’re laborers who work in the quarry and the brickyards.” He had been talking to her over his shoulder. Now he waited for her and spoke directly and without pretense.

  “I thought your letters,” he said, “describing the wreck and being brought up in Ashtabula to be quite astounding.” He pronounced the name of the town doubtfully.

  “Ashtabula does exist,” Beth said, “and so do I and I was raised there.”

  “You remember nothing after the shipwreck? Being rescued or whatever?”

  “No, my next recollection is of sitting in the kitchen with Mrs. Shepherd at the stove, her back to me. She told me later I’d been with them over a month by then, left by a family moving west who’d found me miles back, alone and lost, and what with their eight children they had no room for me.”

  “And the Shepherds never heard of the ship being lost?” His tone was skeptical.

  “No, never. Or if they did, they never connected me with it. They lived on the farm then and Mr. Shepherd was ill. News came slowly, brought by peddlers and the like. After a time I came to look on Mrs. Shepherd as my mother, and I believed all women were like her, kind and warm, quoting proverbs and believing in women’s rights and the water cure and in not choking your body with corsets. And though I knew there were other religions, I never understood why everyone wasn’t a Catholic.”

  “A Catholic,” Jeffrey shook his head. “The one fact making the rest almost believable is your Catholicism. It would be so easy for you to be a Presbyterian like the rest of us, or to pretend to be.”

  “Not for me,” she said flatly. She changed the subject. “You were telling me about the meeting in New York.”

  “With some of the larger landowners in the valley. The Livingstons, Schuylers, van Rensselaers. The Worthington estate is nowhere near as large; we have only a few hundred tenants, but the agitation seems to be centering here.”

  “The anti-renters? I saw one of their handbills in Newburgh.”

  “Those fools. Don’t have the sense to realize when they’re well off.”

  “But—” Beth began.

  “Rebels,” he said scornfully. He swung his stick viciously at a weed, beheading it. “Revolutionists.”

  “In 1776 they…” Beth spoke again, but he strode on, exclaiming to himself, shut off from her.

  They came out from under the trees and walked across the lawn, and Beth saw the house rise over her, a vast sweep of stone and wood with countless windows, sloping roofs, and tall brick chimneys. Her eyes returned to the windows, windows set not in a pattern, not row on row, but seemingly placed at random as paint splatters from a brush. A house of windows—round windows, square windows, oval windows, rectangular windows. They’re watching me, Beth thought. Judging me. And waiting.

  Beth and Jeffrey climbed the porch steps and sat in deep wicker armchairs. A faint murmur of voices came from inside, and from behind the house she heard the slow, steady rasp of sawing wood.

  “Vous souvenez-vous des jeus des échecs que nous jouions ici sur ce porche?” Jeffrey asked.

  Beth smiled sweetly at him. “Yes, I remember playing chess with you,” she said. “You taught me the game, and then I usually beat you.”

  “A long time ago, but Grandmother often mentions our games. I’ve played a bit since then. And although Charles is quite good, I manage to hold my own.”

  Jeffrey opened one of the drawers in a low chest along the wall. What was he doing? she asked herself. He came back and placed a checkered board on the small table in front of her.

  “I’ll bring the chessmen,” he said. “They’re in the library.” He bowed slightly. “I’m sorry. The new library.”

  “Why don’t you take care of your business?” she asked. “We can play later. Chess is much more an evening game, don’t you think?”

  He was through the door and into the house before she finished, and she rose and went to the door. He returned with an oblong box under one arm.

  “I must find Mrs. Jamison,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since early this morning.”

  Jeffrey held both hands toward her, clenched into fists.

  Large, strong hands. “Choose one,” he told her. Beth’s fingers tingled when she touched the soft hair on the back of his right hand.

  “You play black,” he said and held up the chess piece for her to see. “I have the first move.”

  Jeffrey positioned the heavy carved pieces on the board, first hers, then his. He advanced one of his middle pawns two squares and looked at Beth, who still stood at the. door.

  “Your move,” he said.

  She sighed and sat across from him. “Yes, my move,” she repeated. She pointed to one of her tall, cylindrical-shaped pieces. “This is called a castle?” she asked.

  He smiled. A particularly male smile which infuriated her. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “They can mov
e only straight ahead or to the side.”

  “This is the queen?” He nodded. “The bishop?” She put her chin on her palm and stared at the board. Finally she nudged one of her pawns ahead. “They can move two spaces only the first time?” Jeffrey grunted his assent and quickly advanced another pawn.

  He continued to play rapidly, confidently, while Beth pondered each move. He attacked, she defended.

  After about the tenth move Jeffrey reached for his remaining bishop and seemed ready to make a long diagonal sweep across the board. He stopped, reconsidered, drew back his hand and, elbows on his knees, studied the position. His glance at Beth was speculative and appraising. He moved a castle.

  She placed her queen deep in his territory. “Check,” she said.

  “Ha!” he replied and with the castle captured her queen. He dropped her most powerful piece into the box. “A blunder,” he told her.

  Beth brought her castle directly across the board to capture his castle. “Yes,” she said, “yours.” She waited a moment before adding quietly, “Checkmate.” She couldn’t keep the exultation from her voice.

  He sat immobile as the minutes passed—one, two, three. He finally swore and reached out with a sweeping gesture and scattered the wooden chessmen so they bounced along the floor, twirled to rest on the mat, under the table, in a potted plant. One fell in her lap. She retrieved the tall heavy piece and placed it upright on the board. The white king.

  Jeffrey glowered at her.

  “Like old times, Jeffrey,” she said and smiled.

  Jeffrey sat clenching and unclenching his fists until at last he took the box from the table and knelt to return the pieces to their hollowed-out places. She could sense his anger, his fury.

  “The French, the chess—I can understand those,” he said. “Many women know languages, and a knowledge of chess isn’t completely unheard of. But come, let us talk of other things, events within the family. Let’s see if you can continue to maneuver as adroitly as you did with your chessmen.”

  She sat stiffly, her hands gripping the arms of the chair. The moment she dreaded was here.

  “Tell me, for example,” he said, “what became of the brooch your grandmother—”