“Watch her,” I warned. “She has some foolish notion of going out in this storm. She’s hardly in a sane state.”
When Delphine had promised to do what she could, I went downstairs to my father’s room. Mama was with him and she looked up anxiously when I entered.
“I thought you’d never come, Skye. I’d have gone to look for you earlier, but your father would not let me. Is it true there has been a duel?”
I nodded, feeling a little numb now, after all the currents of emotion which had washed over me.
“Can you tell us about it, lassie?” my father asked.
So I told them all that had happened at the Dueling Oaks in the gray dawn. My mother’s gasps alternated between excitement and shock. Papa listened with sympathy, yet with the delight of the Scot in a rousing good tale of derring-do. When I told of how Justin had kept Courtney from fighting and of how he had conducted himself in the duel, Papa exclaimed that he would have liked to witness the affair himself.
Having told the story, I felt limp with reaction. I’d had nothing to eat that morning, yet I felt I could not bear to swallow food. I said I would lie down for a little while and went into my room and stretched out on the bed.
But the oblivion of sleep for which I longed would not come. What was to happen to us now? How was I to live? Justin was still under the same roof. If I chose, I could go downstairs and see him again. But what would that avail me? Each new parting cost me more than the last. While I lay there, Delphine brought me a bowl of rich soup and stood over me until I ate. Yes, she said, she had seen to Madame Law. I need trouble myself about nothing. I must sleep now and regain my strength.
Still I did not sleep and after a time Lanny came tapping at my door. I went to let him in and tried to smile a welcome. His bright face told me how successful the talk with his father had been.
“I am to live in a big house in the Garden District!” he cried. “And there I will have another grandmother. One I have never met. My father says she is a kind lady who will love me.”
“That’s true,” I said. “And you will love her.” Lanny’s coming might well mean a new life for Aurore Law. “But what of your mother?” That was a question I had to ask.
Lanny sobered. “She is to come there too, if she wishes. My father does not desire to harm her, mam’zelle, as she thinks—though I do not believe he likes her very well. Just now I went to her room to tell her she need have no fear, but she is not there. And her cloak and umbrella also are missing. Do you know where she may have gone?”
I stared at him. Had Isabelle escaped from the house after all? On foot in this storm, she would be a pitiful object. I must discover what had happened at once.
Leaving Lanny in Papa’s room, I ran upstairs, to find Delphine pacing the corridor outside Uncle Robert’s door.
“Do you know where Mrs. Law is?” I asked her. “Lanny says his mother is gone from her room.”
Delphine looked at me without expression. “I do not know where she is at this moment, mam’zelle. I called to her attention the severity of the storm, but she insisted that she must leave the house.”
“Delphine!” I cried. “You didn’t let her go outside?”
Something seemed to flicker in Delphine’s eyes. “What was I to do? She pleaded with me, being in fear of her life.” Calmly Delphine told me what had happened.
I could see the whole thing clearly. Delphine had helped her with her cloak, handed her the umbrella, kept a guard over her as she led her downstairs. I could see the moment in that windy passageway when the storm must have reached for Isabelle with angry fingers, yet had frightened her no more than the delusions of her own mind. Delphine had opened the gate and let her out upon the street.
“Do not concern yourself, mam’zelle,” Delphine said. “What becomes of her is of no consequence to anyone.”
Her words filled me with horror, yet I could see how it was with Delphine. All her loyalty belonged to Uncle Robert. She might also use her wisdom to help those whom she respected as she did my father. But since Isabelle was of no further value to my uncle, it had been easy to do the primitive, ruthless thing. She would never understand that I must be bound by a different law.
I turned away from her surprise at my concern and ran downstairs to the office, where Justin sat drinking his coffee. He had changed from the stained shirt and now wore his jacket buttoned loose over his wounded shoulder, the sleeve hanging empty and free. He jumped up at the sight of me.
“Skye! I’ve been longing to see you, to talk to you.”
But there was no time for talking. “Isabelle has run away into the storm,” I told him quickly. “She thinks you mean her harm and she persuaded Delphine to let her out of the house. I think she intends to take a ferry across the river. But she’s in a weak, half-crazed state and I don’t know what will happen to her.”
“I’ll go after her at once,” Justin said, as I fully knew he would.
He was wounded and I hated to see him go into the storm, yet I knew without question that this was what he must do. When he had gone I went upstairs to my own room and locked the door. Quietly I sat in my rocker thinking.
In me, as in Delphine, there was a primitive being. There was a woman who wanted to echo Delphine’s thought. Let her go. She does not matter to anyone. If she never comes back then it will make all the difference in my life. Yet I listened to the voice in a detached way, knowing that it had nothing to do with me, could never truly shake me.
And that was a strange revelation. For I knew that the girl I had been in New England would have thought only of her own desires, her own loves and hates. Yet a little while ago I had smoothed back the hair on Isabelle’s hot forehead and had felt only compassion.
Who was I? When had I begun this growing? When had I changed from girl into woman? This morning at the Oaks? Or earlier still? It did not matter. There was a new strength in me and I knew I could meet and face whatever must be faced. Never again would I be hopelessly caught in such a trap as my uncle had woven around me. There would be defeat for me only if I accepted defeat and bowed under it. In that moment of strange clarity I felt closely akin to my father. Like him, I had gone down to the dark shores, and I had turned my back and walked away.
I bent my head and covered my face with my hands. There were no words to the prayer that flowed through me, but with all my being I asked for the one thing a man or woman might pray for—strength to meet any trial that lay ahead. Strength for Isabelle, for Justin, for me. Even for my uncle. Compassion was a warm, enveloping thing that dissolved all that was hateful and ugly. When Uncle Robert recovered, he might well be a broken man, but whether he was or not, I could only pity him for the empty shell he had made of his life.
The hours of that stormy day were long and no word came. By evening the rain had abated a little and the roofs of New Orleans ceased to run torrents of water. Still there was no word of Justin and there was little chance now that word would reach us before tomorrow. Perhaps he had crossed the river in search of Isabelle.
All night long I stayed up waiting, and in the early hours of dawn I heard him at the gate. I flew downstairs to let him in and saw that he was alone, wet and cold, his face a little gray in the pale light.
I asked no questions. “Come upstairs,” I said. “There’s an empty room off the gallery.” It was Isabelle’s room.
Delphine came out of her quarters, a wrapper over her long nightdress, and for once no tignon concealed the shining black hair that hung in a braid down her back. I asked her to make coffee, warm some food, bring them upstairs. She gave me a startled look, but went at once to do my bidding.
In the small bedroom, I helped Justin out of his jacket, pulled off his boots, brought a dressing gown of my father’s so that he could rid himself of wet clothes. When Delphine came in with a tray, he drank the thick black coffee, but he wanted no food. He must talk to me first, tell me all that had happened. I tried to persuade him to rest, and let everything else wait. But this he wo
uld not do.
Delphine stayed in the doorway, as if she had every intention of remaining, but for once I was stronger than she. I told her to go away and shut the door in her face. Then I sat down beside the bed and held Justin’s hand in my own two.
Evenly, without emotion, he began to tell me—not what had happened the night before, but how he had met Isabelle in the beginning and what had occurred long ago in Colorado.
For all that she was an actress in a traveling company, Isabelle had been a girl from home. She had Creole grandparents on one side, and so had Justin. She was a pretty thing, older than he, but young in manner. She was eager for pleasure and a softer life than she had been able to lead. Already she was tired of the theater that had seemed so glamorous to her in the beginning.
I sat very still and listened with all my being. I could imagine how welcome Justin’s interest must have seemed to the young Isabelle. He had been no more than a boy, lost in the rapture of first love. So surely had he believed that the mine his father had left him would come in and make him wealthy that he had convinced her too. Mainly, perhaps, because that was what she wanted to believe.
So they were married and Isabelle had entered a life for which she lacked the stamina. She had lacked, too, the ability to love in spite of circumstances. The child had been a further burden for her, and Justin knew his wife began to look in the direction of the stage again.
In marriage she had revealed her narrow self-interests and a disturbing tendency to fly to pieces when faced with responsibility. When a wealthy mineowner in Leadville began to pay her attention it went to her head. She must have believed his avowal of love and have seen in him rescue from the life she had been forced to live with Justin. With her tendency to hysteria and her quickness to move in impulsive rage, she had been unable to accept the moment when her lover lost interest in her and was attracted to someone new.
Justin had been working too hard, and had been too bone-weary and desperate in his own efforts to keep going with the mine, to have any suspicion of his wife. He had idealized her, had seen in her what he wanted to see, as a young man often will. Feeling that his own mother had betrayed his father in refusing to come west with him, he had looked to Isabelle to restore his belief in women.
Then one day he came home unexpectedly to find tragedy awaiting him. Isabelle had shot her lover in a frustrated rage and was in a state of utter terror. In spite of his own horror and shock, there seemed only one course of action for a young and chivalrous man. He himself must take the blame. He must save Isabelle at all costs.
I listened, my eyes brimming with tears. He had borne so much, been betrayed so grievously. There was a bitter note in his voice as he went on.
“She recovered fast enough when she found she wouldn’t be held to account for her own actions. During the trial she refused to admit that the man who was killed had been her lover. In the end it looked as though I had shot an unarmed man on sheer, unjustified suspicion. Only a faint doubt which remained against Isabelle saved me from the gallows.”
In an even, emotionless tone he went on to tell me what must have happened afterwards, as far as he could piece it together.
Isabelle had waited until he was safely behind bars. Then she fled the state with her baby son, took a stage name and managed to play her way through the South until she could reach Louisiana and leave the little boy with her mother. By that time she must have wanted only to escape Justin forever and dissociate herself from the possibility of being arrested for the crime. This much Justin had been able to learn since he had come to Louisiana and found friends of the child’s grandmother to inform him. Only when the grandmother had died a year or so before, had Isabelle once more accepted the duties of motherhood and taken the child with her on the road.
“Thank God he was not in her hands for long,” Justin said. “I believe his grandmother must have been a fine woman.”
Of course the mine had eventually proved valuable beyond all hope. His father’s partner had been scrupulous and honest. He did not try to take advantage of the fact that Justin was in jail. And he never believed in his “confession.” Years later this same partner had met an old fellow who had followed the will-o’-the-wisp of lost mines all his life, and who had a story to tell.
On the very day of the murder this man had gone to Justin’s house, hoping for a handout. The door had stood open and when no one answered his knock he walked in. The sight that greeted him was so horrifying that he fled at once, not wanting to be charged with the murder himself. But it had been on his conscience all these years that he had lacked the courage to speak up for an innocent man. At length he came back to Leadville and sought Justin’s partner to tell him the story. At the hour when he had stumbled upon the body, Justin was in another part of town. He could not have committed the act. It was obvious now that he had lied to save his wife. The old man remembered details so clearly that those who listened to him were impressed. In the end Justin had been given a pardon. Since no one knew where the wife had gone, nothing further could be done. It would probably not be possible to prove at this late date that Isabelle had committed the crime with which her husband had been charged.
“My chief purpose in coming to New Orleans,” Justin finished, “was to find some trace of my son. But I also wanted to see my mother and brother again and discover just what had happened to the fortune my father must have left with Robert Tourneau.”
I longed to comfort him with my love, but there was still more to be told.
“You—found her last night?” I asked softly.
He brushed a hand wearily across his face. “I found her. But too late, Skye. And the fault is mine.”
I held his hand tightly and listened to the rest of the story. Justin himself did not know too clearly what had happened. Probably Isabelle sought only to escape across the river, to hide herself in some small, unlikely place where no one would be apt to seek for her. She feared his anger because after she had left him in prison to take the blame for her crime, she had disappeared with his son. He had every right to hate her, and her own conscience must have whipped her with fear.
Ferry crossings on the river were delayed by the storm. The Mississippi had turned to a raging muddy torrent and when Isabelle reached the dock she found others waiting there in the rain. She was more frantic than they, however, driven perhaps by the guilty terror that was in her.
“I know,” Justin said, “that she was convinced that I meant her bodily harm, though I had never laid a finger on her in violence. It could be that Tourneau put the thought in her mind, where it found ready soil in her knowledge of how she had cheated me. When she saw me there on the dock she struggled to get aboard the boat that was readying itself to leave.”
Justin had called to her to wait, but she had fled from him, hurled herself to the dock’s edge. Whether she slipped, or whether she acted with intention, no one could tell. Justin had heard the cries of those who saw her fall, but he did not realize that she had gone into the river until he too reached the edge of the dock where he could look down upon the turbulent water. The current was strong, but she had gone in where the flow pinned her against the side of the ferry—or she would have been lost forever down the river.
“I started to go in after her,” Justin said, “but men on the dock held me back. A sailor from the boat had already thrown in a life belt and jumped in to rescue her. When they were hauled on deck she was unconscious. I worked over her myself until the water was driven from her lungs and she recovered consciousness. Then I found a carriage and took her to the hospital.”
All night he had stayed with her, but the doctor had said the struggle was too difficult for her weak and fluttering heart. She had died just before dawn.
Afterwards he had come directly here.
He stopped and I put his hand against my cheek. I did not beg him not to reproach himself, for I knew that would be futile. Justin too had found compassion in the long stormy hours of the night.
He reache
d out and put his other hand upon the brightness of my hair. “I can remember what she was like when I first knew her. So pretty and young and gay. And I can remember my own youth. All I had hoped for and wanted of life centering about Isabelle and me. It was like that, Skye.”
I felt the tears wet on my cheeks. I could remember too. That a dream might be mistaken did not make it any less poignant to look back upon.
He moved his hand across my hair and then beneath my chin, tilting my head so that he could look into my eyes. “Will you want to make your home with me here in New Orleans?”
“My home is where you are,” I said and knew this would always be so.
He sat up and I went into his arms. He held me close and tight for a moment before he let me go.
“You must rest now,” I said. “Go to sleep. I’ll come back the moment you want me.”
The room was dim and quiet, its shutters closed against the rising sun. I drew the door softly to behind me and stood upon the gallery for a moment, looking down upon the brightening courtyard.
The storm was over, the sky clear overhead. New Orleans was wakening to a new day.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Skye Cameron Page 27
