Skye Cameron

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  My one pleasure grew from the change in my father. It was as if he had lain, not lifeless as he seemed, but fallow all this time. The seeds of life were still within him and they had begun to grow again in the warmth of my mother’s need for him. Indeed, he spoke of this to me one morning when I sat in his room, sewing lace on a wedding petticoat.

  “It seems a queer thing, lassie, but ’tis as if I’d had time at last to know myself as never before. As if I’d been down to the edge of the last rocky shores of the reason, with black waters curling to my very feet. Yet I’ve turned my back upon the tide and walked away from it. And having done so, I know waters black as those can never touch me again.”

  Because he had walked away from the darkness, because he had vanquished his own demon, there was now a force of life and hope and energy that seemed to emanate from him. I had known him as a man of force in the past, but this new thing was somehow greater. Inert his body might be, but his spirit had fought free.

  He talked to me now as he had used to do in the old days and I listened gladly, hopefully. Once more the urge to write his thoughts was upon him and sometimes I found him scribbling in an old copybook. It was the beginning of new life for him.

  While I sat with him that morning, working without heart at my trousseau making, the maid came tapping at the door. Aunt Natalie and Delphine had gone to the market and the girl seemed at a loss.

  “There is a gentleman to see mam’zelle,” she told me and cast a nervous glance over her shoulder.

  I looked out on the gallery and saw that Justin Law had followed her upstairs and around the gallery’s turn.

  “Good morning, Miss Cameron,” he said as I stared at him in astonishment. “I wanted to see you, and I couldn’t take the chance of being asked to leave before I found you.”

  I sent the maid off, too shaken by Justin’s sudden appearance to know what to say to him. I glanced at my father and he smiled and nodded.

  “Bring him in here, my lass.”

  “I—I’d like you to meet my father,” I told Justin and led him into the room.

  Somehow he looked larger than ever in that small space, and I had once more the impression of a man who could be angry and violent. A man with a dark and ugly past. I tried to remind myself of these things as I introduced him to Papa, but I saw his expression soften as he took my father’s hand and my own resistance to him softened as well.

  I knew the handclasp my father gave him would be strong and affirmative, not the handshake of an invalid, and I was proud that he could meet Justin equally as a man, even though he lay supine upon a bed.

  “Sit down for a moment, sir,” Papa said with a gesture toward the chair I had left. “I know you want to talk to Skye, but I am glad of this chance to meet you. I’ve heard about you from the others in this house.”

  Justin seated himself in the chair beside the bed, a wry amusement in his eyes. “I’ll wager you’ve had a varied account of me, in that case,” he said.

  “I make up my own mind about a man when I meet him,” Papa said. “You look like your father. I knew Harry Law for a short time when I was in New Orleans before the war. I counted him a friend. And proud I am to meet his son.”

  This was something I had not known. I took my little stool away to a corner and tried to efface myself, so these two could know each other. The blue cat Beau stood guard at the door, but he did not bend his supercilious look upon us today.

  I saw all hesitancy go out of Justin, and even the realization that the man he spoke with was an invalid. In a few moments they were talking earnestly of Justin’s father, of the sudden way in which he had left New Orleans and the stigma of spying that had stained his name.

  “If you knew my father,” Justin said, “will you tell me whether you could ever believe him a spy working against the South?”

  “Of course he was no spy,” said Papa. “And I doubt there was a man who would have thought him so. Though of course tempers must have run high before the firing upon Sumter.”

  Justin agreed grimly and my father led the talk away from the South, asking him questions about Colorado and his life in the West.

  I was content to watch and listen. It was enough to have this unexpected chance to observe Justin openly, to study the way his fair hair grew above his ears, the way it dipped at the back. I watched his hands as he moved them in speaking and remembered with sweet pain the time his grip had lost itself in my hair. I was of course memorizing him for all future time.

  But Justin had come to talk to me—whatever that might portend—and in a little while he turned to me with a question in his eyes.

  “Perhaps I could see you in the parlor for a few minutes,” I suggested.

  He rose and told my father good-by. Then he followed me along the gallery to the dim and shuttered parlor. I sat stiffly on the little palisander sofa and waited to hear whatever he had come to say.

  As usual he moved about the room, speaking to me as he walked. There was no softness in his face now. The anger, the sense of violence suppressed were there again, yet he was trying to hold himself in check.

  “I was too hasty when we talked the other day,” he said curtly. “I have realized since that whether this marriage is right for you or not is none of my affair or concern. Clearly you seem to be good for my brother. Do you still mean to go through with marrying him?”

  None of his affair or concern, my heart repeated. It was difficult to hear his other words.

  “Of course,” I said faintly and waited again.

  He paused in his pacing and faced me, his hands gripping the back of a chair. “Very well then, I’ll set my brother up in an office of my new company in the North. We are opening a branch on the Ohio River. Will that suit you?”

  “We will go anywhere out of New Orleans,” I said.

  “Well, then? You don’t look very happy about it.”

  “Courtney and I will be most grateful,” I told him stiffly. “When we are settled we will be able to bring my father and mother North to live with us.”

  “Courtney in the same house with your mother?” he asked.

  I nodded. “My father is truly recovering for the first time since his accident. Mama knows now that she belongs to him.”

  “And I suppose you’ll be enough to hold Courtney’s attention,” he said. “But get your hair out of that ugly knot and—”

  I rose abruptly. “What you are doing for us does not give you any right to dictate my appearance.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I’m sorry.” His tone softened. “Sorry for many things, Skye.” He held out his hand in a sudden gesture. “Sorry this has to be good-by.”

  His sudden kindness was nearly my undoing. A rush of feeling went through me and my attempt at indignation was forgotten. I could not let him go like this. There was more I must say to him. But even as I fought to control this betraying surge of emotion, I heard my uncle’s step on the stairs coming up to the gallery.

  “Hush,” I warned Justin, and tried to gesture him out of sight. Since the dinner party, the very name of Justin Law had become enough to anger my uncle. If he found him here now, there would surely be a clash.

  The gallery shutters were closed, the room dim, but the door to the hall stood open and my uncle in passing glanced in. Justin had not moved. He stood in the middle of the room looking as if he would welcome an encounter with Robert Tourneau. Uncle Robert saw him and paused in the doorway.

  “Good morning, M’sieu Law. Why was I not informed of your presence in my house?”

  “I came to see Miss Cameron,” Justin told him.

  “A gentleman does not call on a lady without the consent and knowledge of her family, m’sieu. And you, Skye—”

  “It was a business matter,” Justin broke in.

  I held my breath, hoping he would say no more. I did not want Uncle Robert to know what we planned until the last possible moment. Then there would be no way to stop us. But Justin was less afraid of my uncle and less cautious than I.
He went right on.

  “I have decided to take my brother into business as my partner. He will manage an office on the Ohio River. So he and Skye will be leaving for the North right after their marriage.”

  Uncle Robert stared at him in angry amazement. “What nonsense is this? Courtney will do nothing of the kind. He is obligated to me for the very clothes he wears. He will do exactly as I say!”

  “If he’s in debt to you I shall pay off his debts, naturally,” Justin said. “I too owe a debt, but of a different sort. I owe it because of my father, whose good name you destroyed.”

  “It was I who got your father out of this city with a whole skin.” Uncle Robert was very nearly shouting now. I had never seen him so disturbed.

  “After you spread the rumor that he was a spy,” said Justin. “This much, at least, I know.”

  Uncle Robert pointed to the door. His very beard seemed to bristle with rage. “Get out of my house! Get out and never set foot in it again. I should have known better than to accept one of your repute. A scoundrel, a murderer!”

  Justin didn’t wait for him to finish. He strode to the door without another look for either of us. But as he passed me I saw his face and knew that he was relishing this scene of anger and violence. He was in an element to which he was accustomed and which became him well. His steps were light and secure upon the stairs.

  Uncle Robert turned to me. “Go to your room, Skye! You had no business receiving that man alone. I will speak to you later. You may forget this nonsense of going North with Courtney. I shall not allow it.”

  He went out of the room and crossed the hall to his study. I wasted not a moment, but flew to the windows that opened on the street gallery. With shaking fingers I unlatched the shutters and stepped out into the hot sunlight of late morning. I had to see Justin again before he was gone from my life for the last time.

  For a moment I feared that he had vanished along the banquette beneath the gallery. Then I saw his broad shoulders, the wide brim of his gray hat as he crossed the street.

  “Justin!” I called softly. And again, “Justin, wait!”

  Several vendors looked up at me with interest and amusement, and one of them signaled Justin across the street, called me to his attention. He swung about and wove his way back through the noisy traffic to a point beneath my balcony. With the same mocking bow I remembered from that day on Gallatin Street, he swept off his hat. “At your service, mademoiselle.”

  I pressed my hands against the iron rail, caring nothing for the attention I might attract. “I must see you again,” I whispered. “There’s something I must say to you.”

  Blue mockery was alive in his eyes. “I’ll be on the docks around three o’clock this afternoon, Miss Cameron,” he said and turned away from me to cross the street.

  I stepped back from the blazing sunlight of the gallery into the dim quiet of the parlor. The docks! Always this man was friend and enemy, confusing, dismaying. No lady would walk alone upon the docks, but I knew I would be there that afternoon. Nothing would keep me away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I returned to my father’s room with Justin’s words still ringing in my ears. Papa smiled and gestured me to the chair near his bed.

  “What did you think of him?” I asked. What my father thought of Justin Law meant a great deal to me at that moment.

  Papa closed his eyes, and I was glad not to have him watching my face as he spoke.

  “There’s strength in the man, and honesty,” he mused. “And there’s anger in him too. I think he has been misused in some way.”

  “He has been in prison—for murder, they say.” I spoke faintly.

  “The West is a rough country,” my father said. “Men live by cruder laws.”

  “But—murder?” I persisted, pressing the blade of the ugly word to wound myself more deeply.

  “I think that’s not the whole of it. He seems a man after my own heart. As he is, perhaps, after yours, lassie.”

  I looked away quickly, not wanting him to read my feelings. “He is going to make it possible for Courtney and me to leave New Orleans, Papa. Courtney will be in charge of an office Justin is opening in the North. Later you and Mama can join us there.”

  “So there’s generosity in the man too. And is this what you want, Skye?”

  With all my heart I longed to tell him the truth. But my father must never know that I married Courtney for anything but love. I forced the trembling from my lips, made myself answer.

  “It is what I want, Papa.”

  “Yet I think you are in love with Justin Law, lassie dear. It grieves me to see you hurt again. Why do you marry Courtney, if it is his brother you love?”

  I answered quickly. “No, no! I don’t love him. Truly he is not a man a woman can happily love. And he’s not for marrying. He has told me that.”

  “Men have spoken such words before. And if you do not love Courtney—”

  “I love Courtney,” I told him. “It is a different love. I’ve promised myself to make it a good marriage. If we can only get away from this house, away from New Orleans, then that will be possible.”

  “Once you wanted to run away from New England,” Papa reminded me. “Now you are downcast because you’re marrying the man you say you love, and not another. And again you want to run away. This is a puzzling thing for a man like me to understand.”

  “I am like other women,” I said. “I cry over the wrong things and I want a moon I wouldn’t know what to do with if I got it. Doesn’t every girl dart in contrary directions when marriage is upon her—wanting and not wanting?”

  He spoke thoughtfully. “You mustn’t let Robert Tourneau force you into what he desires, if you find it wrong for you.”

  This was dangerous ground. “No one is forcing me. Papa, there is true gentleness in Courtney, and oh, but I want a man who is gentle!”

  “Of course,” he said. “And I would want no other for you.”

  I bent and kissed him lightly, then went out of the room before he could draw me back to dangerous territory. It was true that I wanted a man who was gentle. A man who was strong and violent and sometimes frightening, yet could be gentle and tender as a woman if he chose. And there were words I must speak to such a man.

  When the noon meal was over I put on the golden-brown dress that shimmered with an orange flame. I loosened my hair upon my shoulders and pinned it back with silver combs in the style Delphine had shown me. Then I took from its nest of tissue paper in my armoire the little hat of pale fern-green. My mother had never missed it that day I’d picked it up from the floor in her room.

  This time when I faced my mirror with the hat in my hands, I was not afraid. With my hair upon my shoulders the small bit of fluff was made for me. I would never be conventionally beautiful like my mother, and I knew now that it did not matter. The girl who looked gravely back at me from the mirror was arresting and had a distinction of her own. She was gaining the courage to be herself. If I could never see Justin again, then at best I would leave him remember me as he liked me best.

  I waited my chance and slipped out unnoticed. But I was no more than a square from the Tourneau house when a small figure dashed toward me across the street. It was the boy, Lanny Fontaine.

  “What good fortune, mam’zelle!” he cried. “They watch me so closely that it is very hard to escape. Today my chance came and I have hurried at once to see you. But I feared to approach your house too closely.”

  I could only regard the child with dismay. At any other time I would have welcomed his company, but now I must get to the docks quickly and by the shortest route possible, lest I miss Justin altogether. My own problem was urgent and uppermost in my mind.

  “Is anything wrong at home?” I asked him.

  “No, mam’zelle,” he said. “It is only that you are my friend and I hoped to see you.”

  I couldn’t walk away from his beseeching look. I would have to figure out what to do with him when I reached the docks.

  “T
hen come with me,” I said hurriedly. “I’m going to meet someone by the river.”

  His eyes danced as he walked beside me. “Ah, I would like to see la belle rivière. I’ve not seen it since I came to New Orleans. Thank you, mam’zelle.”

  He must have sensed the urgency in me for he made little attempt to talk as we hurried along, darting across streets between the wheels of vehicles, under the noses of horses, weaving our way along the usual thronged banquettes. When we reached Jackson Square we turned toward the river, walked quickly past the French Market and across the railroad tracks. The Mississippi was very near now, but we could not see it, though it was higher than the town. The levee and the sheds along the docks hid it from our view.

  As we climbed steps leading to the docks that were built along the levee, my heart began a deep, anxious pounding. Would Justin really be here? And if he was, would I be able to say the things I had come to say? Anxiety urged me along and I was hardly aware of the boy as he walked beside me.

  In a few moments we were out among open wooden sheds and warehouses, on a boardwalk above the water. But now I could only stop and stare about me in helpless bewilderment. Here at the edge of the Vieux Carré was a world completely foreign. Masted ships were anchored, sometimes two or three deep, along the docks. There were luggers and fishing vessels and steamboats—a world of rope and canvas, foreign faces and the sound of foreign speech mingling with the native French and English. The river lapped muddy and brown at our feet and the gulf wind blew in our faces.