I could feel myself flushing. “Touch me? You’re being ridiculous. The boy is my only concern.”
“You’re an obstinate girl,” he said. “And you’re also rather a darling. I wish I could believe in a favorable outcome for your hopes. But I don’t. I continue to feel lucky to be out of that house when darkness falls.”
Like the silly sort of woman Andrew deplored, I fastened my attention on the word “darling” and forgot the rest. While Andrew was not, I told myself, the type of man who appealed to me romantically, I liked him and I could not help feeling pleased to have him call me a darling. Even though I knew he used the word lightly. I gave him a smile and he blew me a mocking kiss. We were friends again.
It was past nine by the time Andrew squired me back to Washington Square. I’d had a pleasantly gay evening and I told him so. He held my hand a moment longer and more warmly than he should have.
“Be careful, Megan,” he warned me again. “Do take care.”
The words meant little to me. Already I had forgotten my uneasiness in Jeremy’s company that afternoon. I let myself in with my latchkey and went upstairs, humming softly to myself because for once I felt young and irresponsible and not unattractive. There would be time enough tomorrow to become again my workaday self.
When I had taken off my outdoor things, I went to the door of Jeremy’s room next to mine and asked if I might come in.
He was sitting up in bed reading a book and he stared at me in bright defiance. I noted the title with surprise. It was the book on Egypt that I had left in the schoolroom.
“I see you’ve been out of bed,” I said.
His manner dared me to scold him. “I’m reading about Osiris.”
I was more than pleased, but I did not betray that fact. “A most interesting subject.”
“My father is an Osiris now,” he announced, the defiance still in evidence.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He seemed to sense that I was not going to scold him for getting out of bed, and he seemed to relax a little. Most intelligently he explained what he had read in the book. The Egyptians had believed during the period of the Osiris cult that when a man died he became “an Osiris,” accountable to the god for his sins on earth.
“Some day,” Jeremy said, “I will stand in the Judgment Hall of Osiris and be punished for everything I’ve done on earth.”
My heart went out to him in pity. I sat in a chair beside his bed and spoke quietly of the sort of God in whom I believed. A forgiving, understanding God.
“Not even the modern Egyptians believe in Osiris any more,” I said.
“But I’ve seen Osiris,” Jeremy insisted. “He’s there in Uncle Brandon’s library, wearing the White Crown with the plumes. And I’m not afraid of him. He’s beautiful and stern and wise. If he wants to punish me, it will be right.”
His words distressed me. It didn’t seem wise to identify the head in his uncle’s library with some supernatural force, and I tried to persuade him from the notion.
“Perhaps all the old gods add up to one God in the end,” I said. “Osiris is part of a very big pattern.”
He looked at me with something strangely like hope in his eyes, but I lacked the wisdom to know exactly what I had said or done that had helped him. Before I could tell him good night and leave him, Miss Garth came to the door and saw him sitting up in bed with the book on his knees.
“You should be asleep,” she said and took the volume from him so quickly that he had no time to hold it from her. When she saw the title she frowned her disapproval.
“What sort of heathenish trash are you reading?” she demanded, and then looked at me. “I believe this belongs to you, Miss Kincaid?”
Even as I nodded, I found myself wondering how this handsome woman, with her fine carriage and beautiful dark hair, could be so invariably unpleasant. For the dozenth time she was making me feel myself a culprit who could do nothing but harm to Jeremy. I supposed that was her purpose—to be so unpleasant that I would eventually leave this house in defeat and her jealously guarded prerogatives would be again unchallenged. I would not play into her hands. I took the book from her and set it on the table next to Jeremy’s bed.
“Mr. Reid approves of our interest in Egypt,” I told her. “It’s perfectly all right for Jeremy to borrow my book if he likes.”
I glanced at the boy and found him watching me in a curiously intent way. He ignored Miss Garth and spoke directly to me.
“Sometime will you let me play with your carrousel?” he asked. “Selina talks about it all the time. She says you won’t let her touch it.”
“Perhaps I’ll let you play with it sometime,” I said and smiled at him.
EIGHT
Back in my own room I found myself restless and disturbed. The words Jeremy had spoken about the Osiris head had touched me with a now familiar chill. His identifying the head with his own destiny was somehow frightening. When he said, “My father is an Osiris now,” he touched on something deeper and more menacing.
It was too late to light my fire anew, and I got ready for bed quickly. Yet when I had bound my hair in plaits and put on my warm flannel nightgown with the feather-stitched collar that spoke of my mother’s patient fingers, I sat absently on the edge of the bed, lost in thought.
It was encouraging, I told myself, that Jeremy had shown interest in the book about Egypt and in the carrousel. Perhaps both these things could be used to draw him into further interest, even if his notions about Osiris followed a strange road. If only I could prevail upon his uncle to talk to him as he used to about Egypt and his experience there, his own interest might help to counteract Jeremy’s apathy.
The thought of Jeremy’s uncle led me down another road. If Leslie Reid was still in love with her first husband, as Andrew said, who could blame Brandon for finding solace elsewhere? How must he feel when his brother had won Leslie as he had not been able to do? A pattern had begun to reveal itself concerning Brandon’s relationship with his brother. Dwight had been the gifted, handsome, successful younger son. Or so everyone seemed to claim, though it was hard for me to imagine Brandon in a lesser light when it came to comparison with any man. Yet it seemed that Dwight had stood in his older brother’s way at almost every point. He had been favored by a father Brandon loved devotedly. He had carved out a successful political career, and his star had been brightly on the rise at the time of his death. He had married the beautiful Leslie, who had loved him and still did.
All this was clear. Yet still I could not understand how it happened that a year after Dwight’s death his grieving, loving widow had married the brother she could not love. The more I puzzled, the more confusing the maze became. Somewhere there must lie a key, but so far I had not found it. It was even possible that an effort was being made to keep it out of my hands. Even, perhaps, by Brandon himself?
The room’s chill penetrated my preoccupation at last and I turned out the gas and got under the covers, pulling the quilts over me to my very nose. Now that I lay in bed and tried to sleep I began to hear the wind. It had risen without my noticing and it rattled the branches of the ailanthus against my window pane, and set a distant shutter banging. What a wild dance it must be enjoying through Washington Square with all those trees to play among and all that space in which to wheel about.
I fancied the wind as a dark, hooded figure, stormy-browed and bitter, stripping the last dead leaves from the trees, hurling winter upon us before it was time. In this fanciful state it was easy to confuse the dark and hooded figure of my imaginings with Brandon Reid. He too was stormy and bitter, strewing bleakness about him, offering little of warmth or reassurance. And yet … and yet …
I suppose I dozed, for I know that time passed and I occasionally waked from some uneasy dream. Then the wind held its breath and the very lull wakened me so that I lay listening to the sudden quiet. In the hush it seemed that the stairs creaked with the weight of feet upon them. Was Garth up? I wondered: It was unlikely that
either Mr. Reid or Jeremy’s mother would come to the third floor at this hour. There was another creak, and, thinking of Jeremy, I knew I must investigate.
Slipping out of bed, I threw my blue flannel wrapper over my gown and lighted a candle. Then I opened my door and stepped into the hall. The gas was always turned off at night and shadows stirred and wavered as chill drafts touched my candle flame. The dark wind capered over the rooftops and pressed at every cranny, puffing its breath the length of the hallway. Jeremy’s door stood open and when I stepped into his room I found that he was indeed gone from his bed.
I had no doubt as to his goal and I ran down the stairs, shielding my candle from drafts, hoping its feeble flicker would not forsake me on this windy night. Beneath the library door there was an edging of light which told me that Brandon Reid was working late.
Dwight Reid’s door stood closed, but the knob turned beneath my fingers and I went softly into the room. Here heavy draperies drawn across shuttered windows muffled the wild sounds outdoors, and only the sobbing of the boy on the bed filled the room. Here my candle flame burned straight, and the shadows were quiet. Jeremy lay face down upon his father’s bed, weeping his heart out. I did not touch him, but stood close by.
“I’m here, Jeremy,” I whispered. “Cry all you like. I’ll wait for you until you feel better.”
After one startled instant when he turned his head to look at me, he paid no further attention, but gave full vent to a grief so terrible that it wrenched my heart. I put the candle upon the high bureau and sat in a chair to wait. The boy’s sobs grew stormier, and I wondered if I had better try to calm him.
In the distance the library door opened, and I knew that Brandon Reid had heard. His footsteps sounded firmly as he strode down the hall. I rose to face the door and was sharply aware of the picture he made, impressively, darkly handsome in the deep burgundy of his dressing gown, his thick hair touched to brightness by candlelight.
I put a finger to my lips and went swiftly to him. He blocked my path in the doorway as he had done once before when I had first met him. But this time I stood upon no ceremony. I put a hand to the smooth satin facing across the chest of his gown and pushed him back into the hall in no uncertain manner.
He was clearly displeased, and his dark brows drew into a frown. “What is wrong?” he demanded. “How did Jeremy get into that room?”
“Don’t let him hear you,” I pleaded. “He needs to cry, as he needed to run away today. Perhaps when he has released all this pent-up emotion he’ll be quieter, happier.”
I could sense a stirring of high impatience in Brandon Reid, as though he too had borne more than enough for one day and was moving toward some explosion.
“There has been too much of coddling,” he said angrily. “The boy must be stopped at once.”
He moved again toward Dwight’s room, but at that moment Leslie’s door opened and she came into the hall, her red hair in soft disarray about her shoulders, a lacy, silken gown caught half-revealing over the full curves of her bosom, her amber eyes wide with alarm. In both hands she held the tall brass candlestick I had noted beside the hearth in her room, and its flame dipped and bowed in the drafty hall.
“What is it?” she cried. “What has happened?”
For once her husband seemed to look in cold distaste upon her tremulous beauty. “Your son is in Dwight’s room,” he told her curtly.
Leslie’s gaze flew toward the source of those wrenching sobs and then back to her husband’s face. “But that’s dreadful! He must be brought out at once!” She put the great candlestick down upon the hall table and flung out her hands in entreaty to her husband.
“Go in and comfort him, then,” Brandon Reid challenged. “Go in yourself and bring him out.”
She shrank before the whiplash of his tone, and I saw tears in her eyes, saw the wide searching look she turned upon him, as if she beseeched him for something without speaking a word.
He looked into the white face, lifted so pleadingly to his own, and a derisive smile touched his mouth. “Always so beautiful,” he said. “There’s no disarray that doesn’t become you, my dear. Dwight was a fortunate man.”
What his words meant to her I did not know, but she turned from him and fled back to her room, leaving her candle to add to the guttering shadows. From the open doorway Jeremy’s sobs had lessened a little, though they still wracked his small body. His uncle wasted no further time on me. He strode to the door and went into the room. At least his encounter with Leslie had taken the edge from his anger, for now his tone was more restrained.
“Listen to me, Jeremy,” he said. “I have decided on your punishment. Sit up and take it like a soldier.”
To my surprise, Jeremy gave a long, strangling gulp and then sat up on the bed, his face puffy and streaked with weeping. Brandon Reid took a large white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his gown and gave it to the boy, waiting sternly until Jeremy had wiped his face and blown his nose. Then he spoke with the air of a judge pronouncing sentence.
“Because you willfully disobeyed my rules this afternoon and ran away, causing much grief to Miss Kincaid and worry to me, I have decided that you will not be permitted to attend the matinee for which I now have tickets.”
Jeremy, of course, had known about the planned outing, but he had never given any sign as to whether it pleased him or not. Now his eyes widened and I saw his lips quiver.
“Yes, sir,” he said, swallowing hard, and I knew he had been stricken with a dreadful disappointment.
His uncle gave him a curt good night and went out of the room. But while he was done with the boy, he was not done with me. I flew into the hall after him.
“How could you be so cruel?” I demanded, forgetting that I was hardly more than a servant in this house. “Your punishment is too severe; it’s the wrong one. He needs the pleasure of that matinee. I won’t have him cheated of it!”
He looked at me impatiently and without liking, and the chill in his gray eyes cut through my every defense. Clearly he did not like importunate women.
“Have it your own way,” he said coldly, “but get the boy back to his own room.”
As he turned from me his look fell on the oversized candlestick. He gestured toward it as carelessly as though there had been no clash between us.
“My wife has forgotten her favorite illumination,” he said. He picked up the huge ornamental stick and held it high, smiling without amusement. “It is not inappropriate that this once graced a seraglio in the days of the Ottoman Empire. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Kincaid, I’ll put this where it belongs.” He carried it toward Leslie’s door, and from the tail of my eye I saw the door open, as though she had been watching.
I had no interest in candlesticks, seraglios, or the Reids’ marriage and I returned to Jeremy at once. He still sat on the edge of the bed, with his uncle’s large white handkerchief clutched in his fingers.
“Come,” I said, and held out my hand to him gently.
He let me take his hand as if he were a very small child, and came with me docilely. Back in his own room I tucked him into bed. With all my heart I longed to put my arms about him, to offer the unspoken comfort of a caress, but I did not dare more than a light pat on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll sleep well now. And you needn’t worry about the matinee. I’ve spoken to your uncle, and he has relented. The punishment is withdrawn and you’ll have a lovely time at the play.”
I waited for some sign of pleasure, but he lay back quietly on his pillow, staring at me as though I had offered him a gift of ashes. With a flash of understanding I knew that Brandon Reid had been right and I wrong. Jeremy had wanted to be punished and he had wanted a punishment that was real and would deprive him of pleasure. In the same flash I knew that I must undo the harm I might have wrought in canceling his uncle’s edict.
Conversationally, as though I had noticed nothing, I began to talk to him. “I’ve never l
iked the word ‘punishment.’ It’s true that when we do wrong things, we must pay for them. That goes for grownups as well as children. So I’m going to choose a payment for you to make. You’ve asked me to let you play with my brother’s carrousel. But now I will not, after all, allow you to touch it. And that is final.”
For a moment longer he stared at me. Then he closed his eyes heavily as though he could stay awake no longer. I knew he had accepted my authority and was not dissatisfied. He was still a little boy who wanted very much to go to a play.
I stood looking down at him, so quickly and peacefully asleep, and wondered how I had ever felt a moment’s fear of Jeremy Reid.
NINE
The following days were surprisingly quiet. As I had hoped, Jeremy had spent himself completely and it had done him good. He was not markedly different in his general attitude or behavior, but he was not so wound up with tension within himself. As a result, I felt more secure in my position. My employer would have to admit, if he troubled to observe Jeremy at all, that I had not been wholly wrong.
One December morning when Miss Garth and I were having breakfast with the children in the nursery, Selina brought up the subject of Christmas and the presents she wanted to make for her mother and her Uncle Brandon. She bubbled with her usual enthusiasm, and I saw Jeremy watching her with something like speculation in his eyes.
“What are you going to make for your uncle?” I asked the boy.
Selina, always swift as a hummingbird, answered before he could find words in his more thoughtful way.
“Last year he never made a thing for anyone!” she cried. “He was a very selfish boy.”
Jeremy retreated into his shell of indifference and would not be coaxed out. I could have spanked Selina for quenching the look I had seen in his eyes.
However, after breakfast, when I went into the schoolroom to start my work on a set of pinafores I was making for his sister, Jeremy followed me there, a thoughtful expression on his face. I did not press him and paid no attention as he roamed about the room, poking into things as he liked to do. He paused before a basket of assorted trimmings I had stored on a shelf, and after a moment’s searching he brought out a small box of tubular, cut-steel beads and held them up to me.
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